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.
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Famous quotes containing the words davies, popular and/or culture:
“And I could see that child’s one eye
Which seemed to laugh, and say with glee:
‘What caused my death you’ll never know—
Perhaps my mother murdered me.’
”
—William Henry Davies (1871–1940)
“An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)