Customer Reviews

A Dance to the Music of Time First Movement

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4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

First, although I adore this series, I would like to demur from the description of this series as a comedy. Certainly there are many comic situations and laughable characters, but Powell's (pronounced POE-UHL, not POW-UHL) comedy is intended less to make uslaugh than to make ussmile. I know many novels that are far funnier than this one, and if that were the book's only virtue, it would not enjoy the status that it does.

Above all, this is a work that limns in almost tedious detail the interrelations and interworkings of a segment of English society in the 20th century. These first three books take you from the early twenties into the early thirties. Despite the series great length, there is nothing epic about the scale of the novels except for the overall length of of the series as a whole. The scenes are all horribly mundane. A party here, a dinner there, a chance meeting in a bar, more parties, more dinners. But as the parties and dinners multiply, and as one social encounter builds upon another, the series does indeed take on an epic quality.

This new edition is far more attractive than the old mass market edition of the series, but I do wish that someone would have taken the effort to supply an appendix (perhaps to the final volume) that would (as in some editions of Trollope and Proust) explain who all the characters are and to whom they are related. By the sixth volume in the series, I began to find it extremely difficult to remember precisely where each character fit in the social world as a whole.

The greatest virtues of Powell's series are his richly delineated characters (of which there are at least fifty to a hundred who are to some degree significant) and his marvelously elegant prose. I believe that anyone who loves novels would love this series, in particular those who have enjoyed Proust.

_A Dance to the Music of Time_ is an extremely absorbing and well-crafted novel (composed of 12 smaller novels). Its subject is the decline of the English upper classes from the First World War to about 1970, a decline seen is inevitable and probably necessary, but somehow also regrettable.

Such a description might make the novel seem stuffy, but it is not. _A Dance to the Music of Time_ is at times very funny indeed, and always interesting. always involving. It features an enormous cast of characters, and Powell has the remarkable ability to make his characters memorable with the briefest of descriptions. In addition, Powell's prose is addictive: very characteristic, idiosyncratic, and elegant.

The long novel follows the life of the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, from his time at Eton just after World War I to retirement in the English countryside in the late '60s. But Jenkins, though the narrator, is in many ways not the most important character. The comic villain Widmerpool, a creature of pure will, and awkward malevolence, is the other fulcrum around which the novel pivots.

This first volume of the University of Chicago Press' beautiful four-volume Trade Paperback edition contains the first three books: _A Question of Upbringing_, which follows Nick Jenkins and his friends Charles Stringham and Peter Templer, along with Kenneth Widmerpool, through the last few terms at Eton, and summer spent in France, and then time at Oxford; _A Buyer's Market_, which covers Nick and his friends in their early 20s, attending dances and dinners, having love affairs, and beginning to make careers; and _The Acceptance World_, which shows the young men becoming settled in their careers, and beginning to marry and divorce and have more affairs as their "dance" continues.

This is simply outstanding stuff.

Once in a while you get the foolish idea to embark on a vast reading experience (Remembrance of Thing Past sits on my shelf unread and unreadable--by me, anyway). Well, recently I ordered the four-volume, twelve novel elegant U. of Chicago edition of this Powell classic and have spent the past five weeks luxuriating in the music wafting from its nearly 3,000 pages of polished prose, intricate and elaborate plotting and acute psychological appreciation of the human character. And what a cast of characters. Powell must rival Dickens in his capacity to invent delightfully eccentric and scene-stealing minor characters---Uncle Giles, Trewalney, Umfraville, Erridge and his besotted butler among so many others. My own favorites are Mrs. Erdleigh ("hearing secret harmonies" in both this life and the next), Teddy Jeavons, and the heartbreaking Gwatkin. And looming over all the megomaniacal Widmerpool (ably assisted by his horror of a wife in the latter novels), as morbidly fascinating as a car wreck, who gives the magnum opus its unity. And don't believe any nonsense about the epic losing its power in the post-WWII novels. Powell may have the conservative's disdain for the radicalism of the sixties, but Scorpio is delineated with fairness and vigor, and the Quiggen twins are a hoot. I did not think I would ever ever again encounter a serial reading experience as delightful as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels but "Dance"-- for sheer enjoyment, delight, and intelligence---has been the reading pleasure of a lifetime. "The Vision of visions heals the blindness of sight." Yes.

Anthony Powell's twelve-volume sequence "A Dance to the Music of Time" tracks wealthy Englishman Nicholas Jenkins and his social circle from youth in 1921 to senescence in 1971 and features a cast of over four hundred characters. The title and concept behind the work are expressed through Jenkins' reminisces while watching constructionmen at work on a winter's day:

"Something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire suddenly suggested Poussin's scene which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard places. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again."

The grand theme of Powell's work is nothing less than life itself--specifically, how our lives are defined by our relation to other people. In A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING, we are introduced to Nicholas while he is in his final years at Eton, along with his roommates Templer (a young man desirious of women and money) and Stringham (a melancholy soul with a tumultuous family life). Widmerpool, who eventually becomes the villain of the cycle, is an awkward and little-liked boy who exists on the edges of this world. As the novel progresses, Jenkins finishes school, stays for a time with both of his former roommates, spends a summer in France, and experiences the first year at university. It may seem like there is little to it, but Powell's observations about life and growing up are more than substantial enough to make for a novel.

In A BUYER'S MARKET we catch up with Jenkins three years or so later, when he's finished with university and working at a firm that publishes art books. Here he and his peers are entering society, attending numerous parties and balls meant to facilitate this process, and already having some taste of power. A large portion of the novel takes place in the course of a single night as Jenkins goes from dinner to ball to low house party, a homage to Joyce's ULYSSES. He runs into Widmerpool again, who starts to show something of his true nature, and a few other characters already known to the reader, as well as a host of new associates who play major roles here and in the future.

The main topics of THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD, set at the end of the 1920s not long after the Great Depression, are the literary world and Marxist politics. Two men known to Jenkins at university have become writers and are vying for favour from the elder statesman of literary life, St. John Clarke. Quiggin, one of the promising writers, a fervent supporter of the Party (later dismayed that another character has become a Trotskyist). Jenkins begins his first serious relationship--while his friends are already married, some already divorced--and feels that he has finally come of age.

My only real complaint about this thoroughly entertaining set of novels is that Powell is quite imprecise about chronology, favouring expressions like "a year or more earlier", "eighteen months or less", "ages ago", etc. to relate one event to another. I felt that with a little great effort he could have made the reader more certain of what happens when.

"A Dance to the Music of Time" is not accessible to many readers simply because of the concentration and spare time required to get through it. Still, if you are taking a long sea voyage or boarding the Trans-Siberian, this is a good book to take along. Few writers have been capable of so massive a work with so grand a theme.

"Dance" is a monster of a project; 12 novels that feature a small core of characters that appear in each book and approximately 400 lessor characters that appear and disappear and sometimes reappear years (and books) later.

The first movement consists of three social novels and tells the story of Nicholas (Nick) Jenkins' life from his last year at school in the early 1920s (probably Eaton) to his life as a writer living in London and working in the art publishing industry around 1930.

Powell's style is very dated and ponderous, major world events get a sentence or two while a particular dinner or party might get three chapters. The really amazing thing is that if you stick with him, the series starts to work. The characters become very real, and despite the highly stratified nature of upper class English society he describes, you find them sympathetic and interesting.

A major plus point here is the wonderful true-life ambiguity of everyone. There no black and white heroes or villains in these novels, even the dreaded Kennith Windmerpool emerges as a real human being, with real concerns and triumphs and failures. Nick starts disliking him, never really warms to him, but like us, grows to respect his drive and ambition. Nick, like many a narrator, emerges as a somewhat passive observant young man although not without resources and a strong sex drive!

No way is this series of novels for everyone, but if you like good description, some very sly English humour, and believable developed characters in your books, then give it a shot. There are also some excellent resources on the Net that identify the "real" people the characters are based upon. Be warned, if you complete the first movement of the dance, you're committed to read the next three.

I place this work among literary mammoths of our time, including Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past," Durrell's "The Alexandria Quartet" and Henry Williamson's "A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight." My judgment results not merely from this work's great length, but rather in Powell's greatly detailed characters, sprawling plot development and sheer READABILITY. Despite its great length [about 3,000 pages] it still pales in length in comparison to the aforementioned "Chronicle," which at times, plods along and tallies up to approximately 8,000 pages. Bravo to the University of Chicago Press for re-publishing this work in such a beautiful edition, as well. Buy this set and read this wonderful work. You'll enjoy it.

Holds your interest like a best-seller, yet there is a lot more here than just a good yarn. The completely realistic way all of the characters act as they advance from youth to old age, combined with Powell's understated ironic style (and a series of clever twists of novelistic fate that continually reinvent the main characters) make this a great, guilt-free, read. Buy all three volumes, and hit the beach!

For me, the most impressive aspect of Anthony Powell's *Dance to the Music of Time* series is not the hilarious comedy, not the dazzling style of writing, not even the epic scope of this series of 12 novels covering upper class life in England from the 1920s to the '70s. For me it is the astounding *reality* of the characters, both major and minor, who populate these novels. They become real people that you actually know, and their triumphial, absurd or tragic progression through this series is the most compelling and moving reading that I have experiencened in modern literature. Anybody interested in post-war fiction must read this magnificent series of novels.

I have read this series several times since I first saw it by accident in the late 1970s on university library bookshelves. I was first struck by the serpentine sentences, the erudition of the protagonist, and his elite circle in society and acquaintance with the arts. It is a relatively light approach to the world in which characters intertwine to a comic degree over time, and the protagonist is mysterious and impassive, and never really in any physical, psychological or financial danger. These are novels in which it is very easy to become engrossed in the wonderful detail, the vivid characterizations of the arts and publishing demi-monde, the quirks of military life, the naifs of left-wing politics, and the amazing eccentricities of practically everyone with whom the unknowable protagonist and narrator meets.

Anyone who loves these books would also cherish the eleven volume series, "Strangers and Brothers" by C.P. Snow - which covers the same period of time, is also told in the first person, but is a more serious series in which faux pas cause lost jobs or spouses, rather than pots of sugar dumped on one's head at a dinner party!

These four novels aren't for everyone, obviously. I teach high school English, and most of my students would NOT appreciate them. But if you are a mature reader, and you love books, this set of 12 novels is a feast. The novels are delectable. I can't remember when I've enjoyed a reading experience this much- partly because there is so much to enjoy. My primary problem with good books is that they don't last long enough, so this is like an everlasting gobstopper (to steal from Willy Wonka). I love Proust, but this set of novels was a lot more fun. It's a set that is brilliant, and entertaining, and long lasting- I really don't think you could ask for anything more. Enjoy.