The Acceptance World [Import] [Hardcover]

Anthony Powell (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Strauss and Cudahy; First U.S. edition (1955)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 043459900X
• ISBN-13: 978-0434599004
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,606,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powell at his very best, and one of the three best in'Dance', December 31, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Acceptance World (A Dance to the Music of Time) (Paperback)

I loved Acceptance World, which has Powell's writing on the London art scene (hilarious) and his more meditative style at its most enthralling. This book occassionally puts Powell in Proust's class, in my opinion, and I wouldn't say that about most of the other novels in the series, as much as I have enjoyed them.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anxious to continue the series, February 22, 2003

By 

Glen Engel Cox (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Acceptance World (A Dance to the Music of Time) (Paperback)

This is number three of twelve in the 12-part "A Dance to the Music of Time" series. I found the first two volumes a little dull and slow, but I am continuing to read this series mainly due to Richard Horton's exhortations. With this book, I finally got a sense of why Richard keeps urging me along; something finally clicked. As characters reappeared, I welcomed them back as old friends, and didn't need to flip back to find where they had entered the story before. Jenkins, the narrator, started doing something, rather than just commenting on the actions of Stringham, Templar, and Widmerpool. Marriages were consummated and broken. Literary and political differences moved into the foreground of the novel. For once, I even thought I saw a plot.

I guess what really happened is that I warmed to both Powell's prose and subjects. In the first two books, I thought there were occasions upon which Powell waxed poetical--loving bits of description that put both character-building and story into suspension until the subject at hand was drained of detail. I am the first to admit that I am not one fond of overt description, but one can sit still for only so long before something falls asleep.

Jenkins and his contemporaries are in their late 20s in this book, which takes place in the golden years between the two World Wars. Trouble is brewing in the world, seen here in some characters who are pronounced revolutionaries, followers of Marx and Trotsky.

A quote from page 63 sums up the idea of this series in my mind:

Afterwards, that dinner in the Grill seemed to partake of the nature of a ritual feast, a rite from which the four of us emerged to take up new positions in the formal dance with which human life is concerned. At the time, its charm seemed to reside in a difference from the usual run of things.... But, in a sense, nothing in life is planned--or everything is--because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.

And, while I am in a quoting mood, here is a line that seemed apt: "There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you." Lines like that have me anxious to continue the series.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Gold..., January 29, 2011

By 

Paul Rooney "Paul Rooney" (Opotiki,New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Acceptance World (Dance to the Music of Time) (Hardcover)

Volume three has our narrator out into the real world where he and his circle have to confront all of life's realities even with their wealth and social advantages.

This volume is very funny with much of the story centered on the London art world.

We see a more casual side to the socialising in this volume. That is to be expected I suppose as we are now into the late 1920's early 1930's with the " slump" underway. Characters political beliefs are coming to the fore with the upper class love affair with Marxism becoming apparent with several of them.

The annual 'Le Bas' dinner is hilarious, not just the writing but the images invoked because of the manners of the time.

And Nick starts to get some sex, which has been a while coming - he hasn't made the most of his opportunities up until now.

Roll on volume four.