But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. 'You don't know what that is? Well, in opera in a permanent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must have a prima donna - always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool and a tenor who always plays the lover to her and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something and a basso, who is the villain or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor.

'Who are you? Where do you fit into poetry and myth? Do you know who I think you are, Ramsay? I think you are Fifth Business. It is actually late in the novel when the character, Lisle – herself fifth business, though this doesn’t come up in the novel – explains to Dunstan who he really is rather WHAT his is, namely fifth business. This reply of Ramsey to his retirement testimonial is, itself, this marvelous novel, FIFTH BUSINESS, and the rub is that to justify his life Ramsey must explain the value of his life in terms of “fifth business,” a way of life that is, by its very definition, not normally centered on itself. With a bit of anger in tone, he sets out to set the record straight writing what amounts to an defense of his life. Dunstan takes great umbrage at the so-called tribute, seeing it as trivializing his life and missing the essence of it. There has been a testimonial dinner, and a “tribute” to him published in a magazine under the control of the present headmaster. Since I have several reviews of Davies' work I have set up a page to collect my comments and other links to Davies' workĭunstan Ramsey has retired from teaching history at an exclusive Canadian school after 45 years. New York: Penguin Books, 1990 (first published in 1970). Davies, Robertson: FIFTH BUSINESS FIFTH BUSINESS

Fifth business davies