Anthony Powell published twelve volumes of a wonderful novel from 1951 to 1975. He divided this continuing series into four musical movements depicted in a Nicolas Poussin 1639-40 painting. The painting and the novel are entitled, A Dance to the Music of Time. The first movement includes three volumes: A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market, and The Acceptance World. These volumes introduce and describe four male characters as they progress through British schools and university, enter the professional world of work, and accept a loss of illusions as they interact with others in the real world.
The first three parts of the story take place in the post World War I era of the 1920s and early 1930s. The characters are associated with British socioeconomic levels that include very wealthy (Templeton), wealthy (Stringham), upper middle class (Jenkins) and middle class (Widmerpool). After university, the characters go their separate ways determined by their economic classes but end up meeting in London while pursuing different individual goals.
Nicolas Jenkins, the narrator of the novel, gets a job at a firm that publishes "art books" and uses free time offered by his relatively unstructured job to write novels. Like Robert Musil's character in A Man Without Qualities, Nick is a keen observer who seems to be continually on the edge of the social dance, jumping in on occasion but content to ruminate about the motives and behaviors of others. As he focuses on his three school acquaintances, Nick's commentary becomes increasingly reliable as he compares current incidents to reinterpret collective experiences of the past. He learns to abandon simplistic rules for understanding of the choices of his friends and others. He also learns his station in life and the limits of his ability as observer to discover immutable standards of acceptable social actions. Life is just too complex and changeable to maintain superficial and immature interpretations of the dance of life.
Each volume of the first movement is self-contained as Powell gives readers descriptive reminders of characters and events that preceded the current action. The writing style is simple and direct and the pace is slow and deliberate. Powell presents many allusions to art, philosophy, and history like James Joyce in Ulysses with much less tangential writing. Using the Kindle dictionary and an iPhone, I enjoyed looking up each reference.
The tone of the first three works is humorous and satirical without being overly cynical (except for the spoof of John Galsworthy). Readers can visualize Poussin's painting and observe the dance of the four main characters. Economic, political and social parallels can be seen with our own turn of the century culture.
I highly recommend the first movement of Powell's omnibus work to readers who love to observe the dance of life. I have not encountered a contemporary writer who is such a good chronicler and analyst of the unfolding and interacting lives of realistic rather than stereotyped characters. I feel fortunate to have 9 more volumes in 3 more movements to read in the 4 paperback edition published by the University of Chicago press (1995). Though life is beautiful and upsetting, comical and tragic, expected and catastrophic, Powell shows readers the worst action they can take is to drop out of the dance. As in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, the social isolate is irrevocably self-centered forever missing the chances of a lifetime to listen to the music of time and in Powell's words move "hand in hand in intricate measure" with others.
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