Customer Reviews

A Glastonbury Romance

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Several attributes distinguish John Cowper Powys as a novelist, and the most prominent, as displayed by "A Glastonbury Romance," is his penchant for long, dense, erudite novels; he is fascinated with mythology and likes to instill his essentially mundane settings with the fantasy and mystique of ages long past; and he tends to be profoundly philosophical in regard to the First Cause. This "Romance" is not a typical heroic epic; the characters are common people who live in the town of Glastonbury, in Somerset County, England, but, like Thomas Hardy's aesthetic successor, Powys creates with his townspeople a vivid microcosm, imitating their peculiar dialect and manners with formidable accuracy.

Structurally, "A Glastonbury Romance" is in the nineteenth-century English tradition of long, labyrinthine novels of the kind composed by Dickens and Eliot, containing dozens of characters and several concurrent plot threads, but it is updated to the early twentieth century with contemporary political and sexual issues. Most of the action centers on a family called Crow who, at the beginning of the novel, have convened in Glastonbury for the funeral of, and to hear the will of, their recently deceased patriarch William. The most successful of William's grandsons is Philip Crow, an industrialist who owns a dye factory and a cave complex called Wookey Hole through which flows an underground river and from which tin is mined.

The novel's conflicts are political, romantic, and spiritual on a grand scale. The town's capitalism represented by Philip Crow is challenged by a small group of communists, led by the idealistic Dave Spear and a local churl named Red Robinson, who want to gain political control of Glastonbury and turn it into a worker-governed commune. "Bloody Johnny" Geard, William Crow's former secretary, is elected Mayor through the support of the communists and becomes Philip's nemesis; although in the novel's concluding flood, a passage of enormous lyrical power and intense drama, the two men agree in a climactic scene on a surprisingly chivalrous course of action that reveals they are more heroic than their personalities originally suggested.

This modern story is immersed in the aura of ancient legends -- Welsh, Celtic, and Biblical, from King Arthur to the Holy Grail to Stonehenge, mystical ingredients in Powys's pungent narrative stew. Perhaps reflecting Powys himself is a Welsh Arthurian antiquary named Owen Evans who has devoted his life to the study of local lore and is writing a history of Merlin the magician. Despite his enthusiastic attentions to the mysteries of the past, Powys is not as much of a misoneist here as he was in "Wolf Solent"; he ungrudgingly allows airplanes in his novel, granting us a brief but wonderful bird's-eye view of Somersetshire.

Although Powys's weighty style greatly appeals to me, this novel is not something I'd casually recommend to just anybody because it does require a considerable investment of the reader's time and concentration, being nearly as long as "War and Peace" and featuring verbose prose that pushes itself to, and often over, the limit. But readers who like to indulge themselves in the colorful and expansive potential of the English language will find "A Glastonbury Romance" a most enriching experience.

This book is not for the faint hearted.

It's a novel set in the small English town of Glastonbury during the early years of the 20th century. Glastonbury has long been associated with the Arthurian and Grail legends, and Powys draws heavily on this material. He explores the different ways in which his large cast of characters respond to the Glastonbury legends, and their different visions of what Glastonbury could become: a place of pilgrimage, an experimental socialist commune, or a modern industrial town. Roughly speaking the main characters in the novel can be divided between the communists, the mystics, the industrialists and the sensualists. There is a chorus of rustic grotesques to provide some light relief.

Behind all this is the author's own metaphysical system. This has two particularly striking features. One is its dualism. Everything in existence has both a good and an evil side, and this applies not only to all the human chacaters but also to God (usually referred to here as "the First Cause") and to the host of supernatural beings who are the "invisible watchers" observing Glastonbury. The second feature is that everything, animate or inanimate, has its own point of view and its own consciousness. For instance, we find out what the sun thinks of the Vicar of Glastonbury: it doesn't like him, because he's a Christian rather than a sun-worshipper.

The writing is at times completely over the top. If you read the first page (or even the notorious first sentence) you will see what I mean. And there are passages of rhapsodical nature mysticism that are very hard to take seriously if you have ever read "Cold Comfort Farm".

Is the book worth reading? If you like very long novels, have a speculative or mystical bent to your personality, and (especially) if you are interested in the Arthurian stories, then the answer could well be yes. If your taste in fiction is for realism rather than magical realism then give this one a miss.

For myself, although at times my patience was strained almost to breaking point, I found that the cumulative power of the book, and the tremendous set pieces at the end of each of its two parts, made it worth the effort.

This work simply comprises too much to be encapsulated in any sort of review I might proffer here.-Realising this essential fact, I'll just confine myself to what makes this work one of the greatest achievements in 20th Century literature.

Powys has a unique depth of insight - and poetic way of expressing this insight - into what makes people who they are and do what they do. He has the rare gift of being able to express this extra dimension to each personality in lovely (almost dancing, I would say)language. This is Powys major accomplishment, and the reason anyone interested in deep, powerful literature should read this deliciously meandering tome.

A couple other footnotes here:

1)The Russian writer Powys resembles most is not Tolstoy, but Dostoyevsky, with his insights into the twisted and sinuous dreamworld behind human personality-Only Powys easily betters him.

2) When I looked Powys up in an encyclopaedia of authors, the article on Powys concluded that "his admirers have largely been confined to those readers who share his interest in the esoteric."-This is rubbish. The Arthurian legends, The Grail, The Passion Play and all other "esoterica" here are important only because they represent motives and psychic depths in the characters--One can read this book quite easily and with great appreciation, as I did, and complete it having no further interest whatsoever in the arcana of the Holy Grail legend.

Well, let's let Powys have the last word here:

The composers of fiction aim at a verisimilitude which seldom corresponds to the much more eccentric and chaotic dispositions of Nature. Only rarely are such writers so torn and rent that they can add their own touch to the wave crests of real actuality as these foam up, bringing wreckage and sea-tangle and living and dead ocean monsters and bloody spume and bottom silt into the rainbow spray! p.666

Quite. Powys does. Read it!

This is one of those books (and Powys one of those writers) that--by being so large and encompassing--escapes any common measure of criticism. Which is a way of saying that "A Glastonbury Romance" is a true act of genius, the work of an incredibly gifted personality (as much as writer) who, in this book, upends the established line of English novel-writing. As noted in these reviews, the flaws in the book are obvious, including the fact that several of the characters are less specific and "round" than they are stand-ins for types. And the writing can be vague on key points: for instance, I never really understood what the blasphemous book was that Mr. Evans couldn't resist succumbing to in the cellar of the bookstore (which, admittedly, may have been because of poor reading or comprehension on my part). Moreover, in my own artistic practice (which is photography), I'm scrupulous about employing utter descriptive clarity as my means to achieve meaning, so the odds of my responding to Powys--whose often inflated invocations to the First Cause and other invisible entities fill a number of pages in this novel--would seem unlikely at best. But, but, but...

there's simply nothing else like it in English: for example (among other things), the great tumble of characters and events and place and history so strenuously thrown together under the touch and light of a constantly changing (and telling) weather; the brilliance of the landscape description (though perhaps even stronger, if such were possible, in Powys' "Wolf Solent"), which honors and expands that found in the major English poets; and the frank directness of Powys' examination of sexuality, are a few of "Glastonbury's" qualities that contribute to a reading experience that, as confusing and exhausting as it can be, re-vaildates, in an artistically inglorious time, the "old dispensation," where wanting and attempting TOO much was a road that could lead to the most exalted end.

P. S. If there IS anything else like this book in English, it would be that other wondrous (19th-century) novel-examination of a small English village, George Eliot's "Middlemarch."

P. P. S. For those interested in such things, "The Glastonbury Romance" was a literary touchstone for the young John Boorman, who later invoked its Authurian mysteries in his beautiful film, "Excalibur."

Powys is a unique literary genius, capable of writing at times with remarkable strength, vision and beauty. Some of this book (please read past the first page) is full of his bizarre nature-religion (the "First Cause"), but the descriptions of people, landscapes and situations are among the greatest the English language has produced. I was completely bowled over by several scenes (Sam Dekker's solo visit to Nell, the pageant play at the end of Part I, and the long scene in Part II at Zoyland's house in particular). Powys has a unique and powerful insight into the human soul and human sensation. I read avidly through all 1120 pages (!), enjoying all of it. His characters all live intensely, and came to life on his pages.

I've visited Glastonbury a couple of times, and found much of the description, particularly the unusual atmospheric effects in that place, to be accurate. I ordered a map of Glastonbuy in 1902 from a website in England, which was very helpful in terms of figuring out where everything was.

I've been perusing Powys' "Autobiography" and my view of the book has been changing slightly, particularly of the character of Owen Evans and Powys' obsession with sadism. Many of Powys' figures seem to be various reflections of his own personality or people he has encountered in his life, which I suppose is true of any writer, only moreso here.

Regardless, I found this book very meaningful and important on a personal level, which is an unusual reaction for a jaded reader like myself. I wouldn't call the book life-changing as much as life-explaining. It was such a refreshing read after so much shallow, empty contemporary garbage that I recommend it especially for those who are sick of modern literature, particularly that written in the past 20 years. This book may not change your life, but it may reaffirm it in ways you had forgotten.

The works of J.C. Powys are not everyone's cup of tea. They will be particularly distasteful to those who favor easy prose and slim volumes. However, Powys provides a depth of philosophical and psychological analysis that simply cannot be contained in a smaller work. No other English speaking writer of this century writes on such a grand scale, yet with such a capacity for detailed and intimate description.

The clear pratagonists of the novel are John Geard, a candidate for the mayor of Glastonbury, and John and Philip Crow; the latter an industrialist with big plans for Glastonbury. The plot develops around the activies of John Geard and Philip Crow as each tries to realize his vision of Glastonbury; a vision based ultimately upon each man's understanding of all life. However, there are a host of other important characters. Each is caught up in some spiritual or philosophical dilemma which Powys explores in detail. All of which spiritual and philosophical upheaval is, however, grounded firmly in the everyday life of a provincial English town. Indeed, this joining of the quotidian and the cosmic is one of themes of the novel.

Readers of Dostoyesky, Milton, Dickens, and Miss Read will all find something to like in this novel.

A Glastonbury Romance is set in the early 1900s. It begins with a family funeral in eastern England with young childhood friends renewing their relationship. It then moves to Glastonbury in south west England via Stonehenge. It covers all of the Glastonbury society, from the local trades people, upper classes, to the brothel in Paradise district.

A Glastonbury Romance is romantic, it is spiritual, it is mystical, it describes the people, the countryside, the town and the their interactions beautifully.

Definitely one of the most important, most profound novels of the modern age, A Glastonbury Romance shows us with mystic lucidity the power of Nature and humankind's need to find balance with the cosmos instead of trying to conquer it. A novel of monumental power, a grand tale of epic proportions - deep, wise, and transformative. .. as close to scripture as a modern narrative can come. Powys is a genius and a visionary.

Some critics believe that John Cowper Powys's "A Glastonbury Romance" is the only novel written in English that can be ranked with the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, which is especially interesting since Powys is a 20th century novelist.

First published in 1931, "Glastonbury" is set in the 1920s in the eponymous English town and leans heavily on its history and legend, at the same time presenting an unflinching view of the upheavals caused by leftist politics and industrialization. While some characters are communist agitators and others are factory owners, still others are lovers Jesus or worshippers of the ancient rocks of Stonehenge. Without a hint of condescension, Powys manages to create a complex community in which the legends of King Arthur and the Grail, St. John of Arimathea and Jesus Christ are as real as the activities of the everyday residents. For Powys, the Druid, the Christian, the Celt, the Saxon, and the Norman are forces that live on in the British soul.

Powys writes about mythology like a good British realist, with an acute understanding of the individual in relation to society. His depictions of the poor and downtrodden are as apt and surgically precise as those of the wealthy and upper class, and he treats every character with equal delicacy and an objectivity that is never cold. He doesn't seem to play favorites among his characters, and he doesn't seem especially hostile to even the worst of them. Powys's approach to sexuality is frank, earthy, and unflinching. And he has such a deep love of the English countryside that it becomes a character in its own right. But he seems to believe his characters are linked by more than social custom, geography, and heredity. They share bonds that are partly conscious and sometimes even mostly unconscious, and he's as lyrical and lush in his descriptions of the characters' subterranean connections, needs, and drives as he is in his depictions of the natural world.

He even manages, amid many forays into the natural and the supernatural, to weave together the tangled lives of his characters in a way that is suspenseful and interesting purely at the level of story. However, this novel weighs in at 1,120 pages, so be aware that you won't be getting anywhere fast. "Glastonbury" is a commitment, but it is worth the effort. It will take you to a place, like the mystical isle of Avalon, that inhabits the same bit of geography as an actual place, but that is part of a richer, more ancient world.

You will find one of the most exquisite and sensitive renderings of a wedding night in all of literature...this chapter stands on its own and equals or surpasses D.H. Lawrence (of whose style it is startlingly reminiscent) in its remarkable portrayal of male-female relations at their utmost quick...your interest may be piqued and you may feel challenged to attempt the entire novel which features, in "The Pageant" and "The Flood," two of the greatest fictional set pieces ever committed to paper.