Robertson Davies - Davies in Popular Culture

Davies in Popular Culture

  • Davies is one of the authors mentioned in the Moxy Früvous song "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors". The line "Who needs a shave? He's Robertson Davies" makes reference to his long white beard.
  • In The Sacred Art of Stealing, Christopher Brookmyre (an admirer of Davies) has a character refer to a painting of "The Marriage at Cana", saying that some experts consider it to be a fake. This is a reference to a decidedly fake (although excellent) picture painted by Francis Cornish, the protagonist in What's Bred in the Bone. Many of the characters in Brookmyre's novels are named after characters in Davies's books.
  • John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany contains several references to Davies' novels, including strong echoes of Fifth Business; for example, the narrators of both novels work as teachers in Toronto in private schools (Bishop Strachan School in Meany and a fictionalisation of Upper Canada College in Davies's novels).
  • Indie-rock band Tokyo Police Club references the gravel pit scene from Fifth Business in their song Your English Is Good.

Read more about this topic:  Robertson Davies

Famous quotes containing the words davies, popular and/or culture:

    Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
    —Robertson Davies (b. 1913)

    Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    If you’re anxious for to shine in the high esthetic line as a man
    of culture rare,
    You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant
    them everywhere.
    You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your
    complicated state of mind,
    The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a
    transcendental kind.
    Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)