Name: World of Wonders
Rating: 3.666666666666667 (3 reviews)
ISBN: 9780143194156

Robertson Davies

World of Wonders is the third novel in Robertson Davies’s celebrated Deptford Trilogy, which began with Fifth Business and The Manticore. Called “a spectacular, soaring work, an astounding tour de force unequaled in recent literature,” it is the story of Magnus Eisengrim, master illusionist, the most illustrious magician of his age.

World of Wonders

This is the third novel in Davies's major work, The Deptford Trilogy. This novel tells the life story of the unfortunate boy introduced in The Fifth Business, who was spirited away from his Canadian home by one of the members of a traveling side show, the Wanless World of Wonders.

Edwin Lang

The takeaway for me in Robertson Davies’ World of Wonder was the notion of wolf. Although this idea comes late in the story, I was left feeling that this is what the book built up to. The novel unfolds as an autobiography of Magnus Eisengrim, world famous master illusionist and magician, told to a group that had formed in 1970 to make a biographical film celebrating the centenary of the death on 1871 of the illustrious Robert Houdini, himself a master illusionist. The group includes friends from way back, that include the wealthy Leisel and the historian ‘Dunny’ Ramsay, and minor characters such as the film’s producer, an executive for the British Broadcasting Corporation, Roland Ingestree, and at 6’ 8’’, the gargantuan film director Jurgen Lind, a formidably intelligent upper-class egotist and finally Harry Kinghoven, the gifted cameraman not to mention a small number of hanger’s on. The main characters are all old now, and it shows in how they treat one another. Sometimes peremptorily, always grumpily. Robertson Davies notes their egotism and even bloated sense of self, repeatedly. The idea of the wolf was this book’s key takeaway for me because I guess in creating a life story of oneself, at about age 72, as Magnus Eisengrim was doing here one might not consciously describe oneself as a beast that devours another for personal gain. Perhaps because it is such a scary notion in a society that is trying to maintain the façade of being a civilized and caring one. And it is not because Eisengrim is a particularly bad man at all. As he said, he had the respect of a large segment of society, earned a good living in work that he enjoyed and brought lively and stimulating entertainment to the masses. Somewhat classically, Eisengrim (christened as Paul Dempster) left his home to join a circus. His mother seemed to have had some kind of nervous breakdown and had become the scandal of the town, a ‘hoor. His father was strict and religious but not crazily unkind. But Eisengrim, still a young boy, overspent stolen family-funds (15 cents) that was not his own in order to attend a Fair visiting town and rather than go home to shame and punishment hid in the circus portion of the Fair. Although he became the unwitting victim of a sexual predator. the perpetrating pedophile, Willard, an unconscionably selfish man, nonetheless began Eisengrim’s mentorship in rudimentary magic and perhaps more important how to dupe naïve customers. The degree of deception used in an exhibit was measured in ‘gaff’. Eisengrim stayed with the circus, rechristened as Cass Fletcher, later describing the experience as ‘hate and bitterness were the elements in which he lived’, surviving by spending his working days hidden in the massive head of a grotesque fortune-telling doll, Abdullah, a complex mechanical mechanism that was 100% gaff in which as a small boy Eisengrim lived inside to operate expertly to fleece customers. As Canada matured and became more urban, circuses like the World of Wonders that Eisengrim had belonged to vanished from the landscape. After his circus career came to an end, Eisengrim wandered Europe as a low-class magician with his mentor until the latter died. Eisengrim then returned to Canada and through a stroke of luck joined a modest theatrical group where he began his second major stage of development as a stand-in for the main character, Sir John Tresize. He was rechristened, again, emerging this time as Mungo Fetch. It was Eisengrim’s first experience in creating a non-mechanical non-complicated feat of illusion, of being someone else, that is, Sir John’s double for athletic feats on stage that Sir John could no longer perform. But in following Sir John and his wife Lady Tresize and other actors he learned what it meant to act and have some class. He was nonetheless only an apprentice shop-steward and looked upon poorly by his colleagues for his ravenous appetite for success. He learned through this experience though what Robertson Davies calls ‘the inexplicable but beautiful controlled sympathy between the artist and the audience’. We don’t know much about how Eisengrim made the leap from theatrical fan-boy to the master illusionist and magician that he ultimately became. His journey from theatre stage-hand to a one-man sensation is hinted at by Leisel in that she masterminded his fledgling career once the theatre, like the circus, collapsed with the death of its lead actors. Leisel, from a wealthy family, had the funds and management skills and Eisengrim had the talent and drive, and together as friends and casual lovers they formed a sophisticated magic show. It was Leisel who christened Paul Dempster one last time as Magnus Eisengrim, with the surname taken after the name of a minor devil in the European beast-legend-story Reynard the Fox, a great wolf that everyone fears but who is not bad. This book is the third installment of the Deptford trilogy featuring Magnus Eisengrim, and here he is portrayed not only as a successful illusionist but of something of a magis. Leisel calls that quality of Magnus as being part of the Magian World View, that is, he was mysteriously in touch and got his power as a magician by being part of ‘the unfathomable wonder of the invisible world that exists side to side with the roughness, cruelty and day-to-day demands of the tangible world’. There was a feral quality to Magus Eisengrim and this reference could not help but pique our interest. I may now have to read Davies’ two other books. I don’t know if I can recommend this or the other books of the trilogy. Robertson Davies is an important author, likened to Gabriel García Márquez, in particular for his craft and because of his mastery of magical realism. So his books including the Deptford Trilogy are likely a worthwhile read as this one has been but it is written in an old dense style with a lot of Canadian-references. So it is something of a slog. But if you are a Canadian reading this, I’d say go for it. Reflecting on Eisengrim’s so-called wolfish quality and the greatness that he achieved reminded me of an incident in Winston Churchill’s life where staff were complaining of his ill-treatment of them, and somewhat surprised, he defended himself saying ‘But I am a great man’. Edwin

Wayne Johnston

Magnus Eisengrim, the illustrious magician star of a movie being filmed in Switzerland, spends his free time relating the sad story of his life to his director and producer, a cameraman, a mysterious hostess, and a Canadian schoolmaster, in the third volume of the Deptford Trilogy. Reprint.

Cams Campbell

A very well written novel that is the perfect part of the trilogy. Having now read all three, I should very much like to read them again as the three novels are very cleverly intertwined in terms of the timeline. 

Thanks to the Incomparable podcast for recommending the trilogy to me.

Carroll Lachnit

Seriously, folks, you HAVE to read the Deptford Trilogy, of which this is a part. Wonderful, weird, great book. And Canadian!

World of Wonders

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