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A Dance to the Music of Time: Third Movement

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_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.

The third volume of the beautiful University of Chicago Press trade paper edition of _A Dance to the Music of Time_ consists of what is often called the "War Trilogy". These three novels ( _The Valley of Bones_, _The Soldier's Art_, and _The Military Philosophers_) cover Nick Jenkins' experiences in the war. As a consequence, many new characters are introduced, though old favorites still show up; and the tone is somewhat different. They are still remarkable, often very moving, and often very funny, novels.

This volume contains the third group of three novels of Anthony Powell's masterpiece, A Dance to the Music of Time. Readers coming to this series for the first time should start with the first volume. Powell's work is social comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen and George Meredith. Contemporary writers with whom he is often compared include Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh. The 12 short novels of A Dance to the Music of Time give a panoramic picture of English upper-class social life from 1921 to 1971 that is both intensely realistic and amazingly funny. Readers either love Powell's work or can't understand what others see in it. My own opinion is that Dance is the best novel written in the twentieth century. Others share this view: A Dance to the Music of Time is #43 on the recently constructed Random House/Modern Library 100 Best Poll (of twentieth century fiction) and was made into a 4-part miniseries on British television just about a year ago.

Powell's prose is elegantly uncorroded by the modern fast paced advertising style, as suggested by his fondness for commas and involved yet utterly precise sentences. He obliquely approaches a bleak war as it was experienced on the home front, and in the rear areas frequented by his narrator, Nick Jenkins, a remarkably incisive yet detached and circumspect character of whom we learn very little of the quotidian despite his ever presence. Powell is a master of underplayed scenes. WW II takes some familiar characters in casually shocking ways, invariably reported second-hand. It may be offputting that locations and outside events are frequently allusive, depending as they do on the state of the reader's prior knowledge for their significance, dating, and rationale. (This technique is not specifically intended to reproduce "the fog of war"-which it quite effectively does-but is generic to Powell's style.) Then again, this chronicle of the decline of a group of classmates, girlfriends, and relatives from rather upper-class Britain is not intended for Americans. It is an intensely observed and analysed view of people doing their none too good best at trivial jobs. The second novel here (each about 250 pages long and separately paginated), The Soldier's Art, features Widmerpool especially, one of the most socially awkward self-important incompetents ever to blunder through fine literature yet inexorably advancing, earlier in trade and now into ministerial levels. By this the third book in the handsome Chicago edition, I am beginning to appreciate the low-key but thorough humour of this masterpiece, although French is needed for several outright jokes here. The individual novels progress from one set of character studies to another, set pieces in social situations (often society parties, especially in the earlier novels), with three to five of these revealing episodes per novel. In sum, splendid writing, but not everyone's cup of tea.

This trilogy takes up the war years, and Nick Jenkins' experiences in the Army. The Army is portrayed not as a fighting machine, but as a giant bureaucracy. Of course, this is the experience that many of the millions of men who served in the Armed Forces for Britain and the US had. The frustrations Jenkins experiences are similar to those described in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honor trilogy. The emphasis on the bureaucratic aspects of war makes the success of Widmerpool -- in many ways the least military of men, and one who would be completely incompetent as a leader on a battlefield -- completely believable. Powell proves as adept as ever as a creater of characters. I would rate these three novels as quite good, but not as memorable as the earlier two trilogies. Even for Powell, the novels seem rather weak on plot, and to be more a series of character sketches. However, this weakness is overbalanced by the dry humor and the author's ability to create believable characters who are funny, and engaging. While obviously not the place to start, this trilogy is essential for anyone who has read Powell.

The so-called Third Movement of British author Anthony Powell's master twentieth-century opus, "A Dance to the Music of Time," comprises the three novels in which it was initially published:" The Valley of Bones," "The Soldier's Art," and "The Military Philosophers." It covers the military career of our narrator, Nick Jenkins, during the Second World War, opening during the period when hostilities had not yet completely begun, the period known as the "phony war," which Jenkins' friend and brother-in-law Chips Lovett, who will not survive, describes as a "tailors' war." Jenkins, whose father was a career military officer, has mused that his family has served in the military for centuries, always without distinction. He begins the war as a line officer, without distinction; he will finish it in a London staff position. The book is probably more easily read by those with a bit of military knowledge, particularly of pay grades and awards, but it will gift any reader with its undeniable lived experience of that great worldwide conflagration.

"The Valley of Bones" opens with Jenkins, who has managed to get into the army, as a mediocre, older than usual, regimental line officer, during the phony war. It mentions the British evacuation at Dunkirk and the fall of Norway, and closes with the Germans about to take Paris. It introduces us to characters we'll see more of later, Odo Stevens, David Pennistone, and Bithel: Widmerpool's not around. Pennistone's a literary type - he and Jenkins discuss the views of war of French philosopher Descartes and poet-soldier Alfred de Vigny, and the doings of English poet Lord Byron, and his friend Caroline Lamb. It's pretty strictly about army life: it's quite funny in spots, but some readers may find it dry.

"The Soldier's Art" opens as Jenkins has been called to a staff position, serving under his old nemesis from school days, Kenneth Widmerpool,while that former schoolmate continues his irresistible rise to money and power, fueled, Jenkins is now in a position to see, by his prodigious ability to work. The story also centers on the character arcs of two more former schoolmates, Charles Stringham and Peter Templer, Jenkins's closest friends from that time. We are kept in suspense as to their fates, but we come to see that Widmerpool does not mean them well. Stringham remarks early on that "it's awfully chic to be killed," and several relatives of Jenkins's wife will die: brothers at the front, others in the London bombing blitz. Jenkins will lose several more old friends and acquaintances. The book gives the impression of having been written in a white heat.

"The Military Philosophers" opens with Jenkins at London's Whitehall, in his final posting of the war, a staff position providing liaison to England's allies. We see the fates Widmerpool has arranged for Stringham and Templer, as we meet Stringham's niece Pamela Flitton. She's introduced while working as a military driver; a beautiful girl, but considered difficult from childhood. She fascinates many men, Widmerpool among them. Surprisingly, to me, at least, the author mentions the findings at Katyn, where evidence emerges of a massacre of Polish military officers by the Soviet, thus predicting the shape of the postwar world. This volume ends with the war; it certainly has its funny bits, but is sometimes written in a more difficult style.

The vast majority of people who read this volume can have had no first hand experience of England at war at this time, nor will any future readers. It's an invaluable telling of the way it was, well worth reading despite its sometimes somber tone.

I chose to read the Dance series for a graduate school course over the summer of 2003. This third volume is delicious. It logically ends the most important story lines. The volume also contains perhaps the two best loved books in the series, "The Valley of Bones" and "The Military Philospohers". I have studied military history for over the past 25 years. In my opinion these three volumes provide one of the best insights to the bureaucratic dimension of war. They are an opposite yet complementary view of World War II as compared with a more corporeal work such as Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead". Powell the penultimate characterist becomes an expert narrator in this volume. As usual he continues to dazzle thorugh his use of the English language. Practical yet esoteric words that I added to my vocabulary from this volume include "palimpsest", "aperient" and "anent". Beware, exemplary writing ends with book nine. Volume IV, written in the novelist's dotage, is perhaps the very reason many view this series as dull and plodding. END YOUR PLEASURABLE EXPERIENCE of this series WITH VOLUME III.

The third season into Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time" series, and I finally feel that I'm understanding what's going on. Powell's series is very British, and early on I missed a lot of action because it was hidden amongst the understatements and other polite forms of communication. I read this group of three much more closely, and I feel that I got much more out of it. "Autumn" (as my three in one volume calls this group of three) is the World War II years for Jenkins and his life comrades, although in the first volume, The Valley of Bones, we don't get to see too many of his schoolmates until the very end. Jenkins, who waited too long to join the British army and slightly too old for the rank and file, is assigned to a Welsh regiment made up mostly of the men of one small town. The lieutenant is an ex-bank clerk with delusions of grandeur, who is frustrated by the abilities of the men assigned to him as well as his own ambition. In some ways, this lieutenant resembles Widmerpool; both men are driven by their desire for acceptance by society. Jenkins, the bobbing buoy in the storm of all this ambition, seems almost goal-less. Even his previous occupation as a writer seems worthless in the light of war, and he flounders, searching for a place to fit in and make something of himself. The Welsh regiment is not it, and at the end of The Valley of Bones, Jenkins finds himself becoming an aide de camp of Widmerpool, who has become the Q&A (roughly, the military police) of a division. At the end of the book, this prospect seems quite despairing to Jenkins, although he is resigned to his fate, which could be worse, he surmises, but not much.

We learn much more about Widmerpool and his ambition in The Soldier's Art. Jenkins, acting as his lackey, gets first hand knowledge of both Widmerpool's strengths (hard-working, detailed, thorough) as well as his weaknesses (vain, petty, unscrupulous). One of the strongest scenes yet in the series is a segment herein where Jenkins attempts to help Stringham, who has recovered from his alcoholism, but only managed to achieve a position as a waiter in the Army. Jenkins wants Widmerpool to find Stringham a better position, but Widmerpool at first will have none of it. Widmerpool feels that a man must achieve his own positions, without any string-pulling from his friends. Of course, this is totally hypocritical--he is quite willing to let people pull strings to help his fortunes, and is willing to manipulate the course of actions if they are beneficial to himself (such as having Jenkins assigned to him). Jenkins goes on R&R, and when he returns, he finds that Stringham's been reassigned to the laundry on Widmerpool's suggestion. Thinking Widmerpool has turned a new leaf, he thanks him, then learns that the laundry is due to be shipped out to a nasty portion of the war. The strength of this series by Powell is that all the action above takes place in amongst three of four other developing storylines, including a rivalry between Widmerpool and a office at the same rank, a chance for Jenkins to get out from under Widmerpool's office, and the ongoing blitz of London. Keeping it all straight is difficult at times. Of the books in the series, this is probably my favorite or next favorite so far.

The "Autumn" trilogy ends with The Military Philosophers. Jenkins and Widmerpool separate, each into different parts of the military governance--Widmerpool into intelligence, Jenkins into foreign liaisons. Now that he's back in the city, Jenkins is reunited with his wife and many of the parts of society that being assigned to a country regiment had denied him. Even though the war goes on, and some of Jenkins' in-laws are killed by German bombing raids, the book is concerned as much with the love affairs of the characters as the affairs of the war. Most prominently, Templar's sister, Pamela Flitton, is introduced herein, and the information regarding her dealings with characters that we have met in the preceding eight volumes provides much of the plot. In fact, at one point, where Jenkins is grilling another character regarding Pamela, the character says, "Why do I need to tell you this? Are you from MI5?" because Jenkins, and the reader, has already tied much of what has happened together through the grapevine of other friends and relatives.

I don't think of "The Dance" as a gossip novel, but in many ways, that is how it seems. Action often takes a back seat to the machinations of talk, and the most interesting bits are the surprises that spring from how characters do not relate to one another as seen through Jenkins' eyes. Things do happen--bombs burst, sugar gets poured over heads, intercourse happens--but they become stronger by how they are perceived by the characters than their actual effect. I'm looking forward to the next few books, anticipating Widmerpool's fall from grace and some truth and reconciliation that ties up a lot of what has gone before.

This third "movement" of Anthony Powell's long sequence A Dance to the Music of Time covers narrator Nicholas Jenkins' service in World War II, going from early 1940 at the beginning of THE VALLEY OF BONES to late summer 1945 in THE MILITARY PHILOSOPHERS.

Soon after the war begins, Nicholas Jenkins is assigned as a subaltern in a Welsh infantry unit, which is immediately posted to Northern Ireland. The Dance perennially exhibits to the reader comical and grotesque personalities, and anyone who has ever done military service knows that nowhere else do you meet such a variety of odd people in such a short time. Thus we meet Gwatkin, a banker who sees being called up as a path to glory; Bithel the officer and Sayce the private who someone persist in the army in spite of poor turnout and criminal incompetency; Gittins who mans the company store as if it were the world's most valuable treasure, and many more. Indeed, so absorbing are these new figures that the usual cast of characters sit out most of the novel, visited only in one portion where Jenkins is on leave. Widmerpool appears at the close of the novel, again performing his role as the antagonist of the series.

In spite of some tragedies -- many characters we have followed to date are to perish in the War -- this is one of the most uproariously funny volumes so far. The mysterious commander of their division is ultimately revealed to be a eccentric old man obsessed with eating a proper breakfast. Incidental matters of military routine descend into farce. And then there is an apocryphal quotation from Lord Byron that, like the earlier parody of Pepys, shows Powell's keen familiarity with the English canon.

THE SOLDIER'S ART opens several months later, as Jenkins is now working in Division headquarters. No longer, however, is the war a distant rumour. The narrator's companions are sent off to battlefields across Europe and Asia, English civilians are suffering daily bombings, and Jenkins himself is tasked with overseeing anti-aircraft batteries.

Indeed, characters start dying in earnest. Powell is at his most effective in conveying the tragedy of these deaths when they are mentioned in passing. After a vivid sketch of some character's colourful personality, Powell concludes with the aside like "But then he was killed by a landmine a week before the German surrender." When Powell does depict deaths right "on screen" as it were, he does so in a flat and unconvincing fashion. THE SOLDIER'S ART became for me the least satisfying volume of the Dance because of the middle section where Jenkins sees several people dear to him die on one London night.

Things look up again, though, with THE MILITARY PHILOSOPHERS. It opens early 1942 with Nicholas Jenkins working in Whitehall, having left his provincial regiment behind and now acting as liaison with other Allied forces. The social comedy and grotesque personalities that Powell excels at now take place among a motley assortment of Polish, Belgian and Czech officers, as well as some British high-ups. Perhaps the most shocking of these new characters is the sex-crazed Pamela Flitton, more force of nature than human woman, who brings disaster on half of the men in the novel.

Though better than the novel immediately before it, THE MILITARY PHILOSOPHERS is somewhat weaker than the best novels of the series in that Powell is too obviously writing from his own wartime experience, but just changing the names, instead of making the necessary abstraction that Art requires. Also, the amount of literary references here is gratuitous. Powell quotes over a full page of Proust, fills up one scene with hymn texts, and has Jenkins make obscure jokes to characters we shouldn't expect to understand them.

But even with its weaknesses, the novel turns very memorable in the latter half, once the end of war is on the horizon. There is a poignant reunion with figures we haven't seen since the 1930s, and Jenkins' own emotions make a rare appearance from behind his stoic narrator's mask. Some characters don't survive World War II, but of those who make it through the war, we feel something of a gigantic summing up before the last three books of the series.

I like this series very much and look forward to moving on to the final movement.

The Third Movement of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time contains three volumes in which the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins has just joined the British Army `territorials' during World War II. This part of the Army is similar to today's US Army National Guard. The three volumes, The Valley of Bones, The Soldier's Art, and The Military Philosophers describe Nick's adventures in the military from enlistment to demobilization.

The three volumes are very interesting accounts of the unexpectedly hard work, arbitrary discipline, and desultory intrigue of the home bound officers in Great Britain during the War. The paper trail of all military activities is gruesome and there is very little room for error. There is opportunity for advancement, but only to more paper drudgery responsibility. Mistakes in conduct are often punished by personal humiliation and transfer to far off theaters of the War. As with any closed system, intrigue abounds with typical inane one-upmanship in the name of achievement of rank, pips on non-combat uniforms.

Powell captures the utter boredom of jobs in the Army, very limited opportunities for social life, and the physical fear related to the apparently random buzz bombing of London and the foreign assignments of some of Nick's acquaintances. Although generations apart, the experiences in the Third Movement remind me closely of my US Army experience in Berlin during the Vietnam War.

This Movement adds to the rich reading dance that spans so much time and area of Powell's great work. I look forward to reading the Fourth and final Movement of his grand novel, but I am already mourning the end of this wonderful living experience.

Part 3 continues a story I've been reading to please a dear friend enmeshed in all things British! As critic
I still don't feel particularly confident or competent, though the rewards of patient and concentrated reading
have been considerable. Taken altogether, it is a kind of history of the British upper-class from World War I up

to 1970 (I'm told), and this is the World War II section, where we begin to feel the decline of that class. It
is nostalgic in the way that Chekhov and even Gone With the Wind are nostalgic, and we feel for these people
even as we know their day is--rightly--over. I've often wished it were not S0 understated or so VERY British or
that the author were just a bit interested in illuminating us outsiders about his own cultural milieu. His most
slippery character, a man called Widmerpool, is also his most memorable.

To lessen confusion, the reader should by all means begin with Part I ("First Movement").