Customer comments on this selection.
 Essential!
Anthony Powell's masterpiece "A Dance to the Music of Time" is essential reading for any lover of literature.
 Now is the Winter of Our Discontent
To arrive at the 4th movement of 20th Century British author Anthony Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time," is, of course, to arrive at the season of winter, as we can see from the front of the soft-cover volume, a reprint of the painting by the 16th century French artist Nicolas Poussin, from which title Powell's masterwork, initially a 12-book series, takes its own. The series'1st movement, chronicling the schooldays of Powell's narrator, Nick Jenkins, was, of course, spring; the second movement, chronicling the palmy young adulthood in London of the narrator, his friends and acquaintances, was summer. World War II was fall. We now arrive at winter, melancholy; discontented, to quote Shakespeare's Richard III; and shot through with death. Powell's language is frequently more Latinate and pompous than in his earlier books; his plots and characters are less dense, and less funny. Our narrator, Jenkins, becomes less an actor in the tale than a bystander; the books read almost as a prolonged afterword as loose ends are tied up.
"Books Do Furnish a Room," first in the final trilogy, is set in the immediate post-war years of the late 1940's. Mention is made of the many people Jenkins knew who were lost in the war: his closest friends from schooldays, Peter Templer and Charles Stringham; his friend from young London salad days, Barnby. Several of his wife Isobel's many siblings have also been lost: as well as her aunt Molly Jeavons. Our narrator Jenkins is working on a study of Robert Burton, sixteenth-century author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," and the mood is melancholy indeed. Mention is made of the difficulty and expense of getting clothing ration coupons, flowers, alcoholic beverages, gas. "Books Do Furnish a Room" is the nickname of a literary compere of Jenkins'; but he does not dominate this volume. Instead, we see quite a lot of Kenneth Widmerpool, the boys'bete noir from schooldays, and the woman he's married, Charles Stringham's universally-acknowledged to be difficult niece, Pamela Flitton. However, the book largely centers on X.Trapnel, mysterious author, whom I've always thought was based on the mysterious real-life 20th century German-American writer B. Traven, author of the 1927 novel "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," among other works - it was made into a famous movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, directed by Huston's famous son John. And then, of course, there's Trevanian, pen named author of "The Eiger Sanction."
The second book, "Temporary Kings," centers on an international literary convention in Venice. We meet some new characters, principally American academic Russell Gwinnett. But the action really centers on Lord Widmerpool, as he has been named a life peer, and his wife, Lady Pamela. More of Jenkins' friends and relations are lost.
In "Hearing Secret Harmonies," the last book, set in the 1960's, we meet and will see a lot of one Scorpio Murtlock, youthful guru extraordinaire and leader of his own cult. But once again, Widmerpool, now Lord Widmerpool, chancellor of a red-brick university, will dominate, as he is first caught up in the student unrest that characterized that long-gone era; and then delivers himself and his goods to Murtlock. And yet more of Jenkins' friends, relations, and acquaintances are lost.
It's rather a glum volume, all told, and not nearly as entertaining as its brilliant predecessors. But if, you've read your way through this lengthy series, and,like some of us, you want to know what happened then --- well, you might as well read it.
Annabel Lee - Redux
About this fourth movement, two salient features strike me: 1) If you are not deeply steeped in literature or, perhaps, to put a finer point on it, the history of literature, if you don't understand this remark, made by Nick in The Temporary Kings, the second of these three final efforts, that, "It is often pointed out that one form of Romanticism is to be self-consciously Classical.", you are going to miss out on much of the work's depth. Indeed, if you have not read one particular book, Burton's delightful, age-old, rambling The Anatomy of Melancholy, you will miss out on much. So much is seen through a literary lens. 2.) This movement is indeed a departure from the other three, in that, were I asked to sum up its theme in one word, that word would be: Necrophilia
I'm not going to delve into the psychology of Pamela Widmerpool nee Flitton or into that of Russell Gwinnett here. But let's just say that, primarily through these two characters, this movement plumbs the depths of sadism and masochism (particularly the latter) so subtly and deftly, and yet so uncompromisingly that it makes just about anything else written on these themes seem exhibitionist and superficial by comparison.
Also, a word on the opus as a whole, now that I've read all four movements: It does not measure up to the standard of Proust, as is often claimed. Really, it's an entirely different sort of work than Proust's. Proust is solipsistic (in a profound sense) and poetic. Powell is gregarious and deeply prosaic. His style of writing reminds me of the Latin I had to construe as a youth.
Near the end of the third movement, our narrator Jenkins confesses to a weakness for Poe. Here, that "weakness" blossoms improbably like a rose in a charnel house. After completing this fourth movement and meditating on the entire "Dance" for some time, I discovered that the overall affect on me was that it was extremely weird, weird in a way that I find impossible to put into exact wording, weird, no doubt, in the way that critic Harold Bloom uses the word when he avers that all great literature strikes the reader in this way, as weird.
As odd as this recommendation may sound, one could do worse, far worse, than to return to Poe's poem Annabel Lee after completing this massive opus in order to gain a sort of perspective, whether one likes the poem or not, perhaps particularly if one does not.
The greatest novel in 20th century English litterature
Anthony Powell has been dubbed "the English Proust". Having read both Proust and Powell, I think it would be more accurate to say that Proust is the French Anthony Powell, A.P. being, in my opinion, by far the more accomplished writer. I remember reading a caption to the effect that after reading Powell's works, returning to other writers's required an effort of the will. This is exactly how I felt after enjoying Dance. The manyfold characters of Dance have now become more real to me than most people I've know in my life and it is fair to say that A.P. belongs to that category of rare writers who can change your outlook on life. An abridged audio version of Dance is available (read by Simon Callow) but it is on audiocassette and out of stock. I hope this or another audio version will be made available in more modern form (CD etc.) for those who like the spoken word too. I can't get enough of Dance, whether it be text, sound or TV series.
I agree with a previous reviewer that the later volumes of Dance are weaker than the earlier, and I wish Powell had chosen something more mainstream than necrophilia to pepper his tale of the fifties. But as A.P. himself wrote in his memoirs: with every writer there's something to put up with. "Dance" is too good to deserve less than five stars on account of a somewhat bizarre last part.
 A BAD END to a DELIGHTFUL SERIES
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Dance series for a graduate level course over the summer of 2003....until I got to the last volume. In my opinion the books peaked with the sixth, "The Kindly Ones" and finshed delightfully at book nine "The Military Philosophers". Most major character lines were completed and the story had reached a logical and chronological end. For this reason Volume Four reads like a long and arduous addendum. The new characters are unappealing and the loss of the most interesting personalities from the prior three volumes is immense. Further, a personal irritation of mine is the continued use of archaic verse lifted from often bad and lugubrious poetry. Powell is indiscrimant in adding pages from irrelevant works while not advancing the story line. Did he write these last three novels to augment his income as he approached his later years? Regardless they alloy this otherwise delightful series. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR, END AT BOOK 9, DON'T BOTHER WITH THIS VOLUME.
|
