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A Dance to the Music of Time First Movement Anthony Powell 9780226677149 Books

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A Dance to the Music of Time First Movement Anthony Powell 9780226677149 Books

I'm almost finished with the First Movement, and I'm absolutely impressed and amazed at Anthony Powell's ability to write what amounts to gossip in such an intelligent and thoughtful way. He just keeps on writing in a way that makes me just keep on reading, until I tire (I'm old). I have to presume that the next 3 books are as good as this one. I tried to complete Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but though his ability to hold complex thoughts in a sentence are impressive, he can be boring. Anthony Powell has yet to be boring. And he continues to come up with intelligent, spot-on insights into people and relationships and life. I don't know how he does it.


Tags : A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement [Anthony Powell] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV>Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by <I>Time</I> as brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times,Anthony Powell,A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement,University of Chicago Press,0226677141,Historical,Autobiographical fiction, English,Autobiographical fiction, English.,England - Social life and customs - 20th century - Fiction,England;Social life and customs;20th century;Fiction.,England;Social life and customs;Fiction.,20th century,England,FICTION General,FICTION Historical General,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Literary,Literature - Classics Criticism,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Modern fiction,POWELL, ANTHONY - PROSE & CRITICISM,ScholarlyUndergraduate,Sets, 1st only,Social life and customs,UNIVERSITY PRESS,United States,Autobiographical fiction, Engl

A Dance to the Music of Time First Movement Anthony Powell 9780226677149 Books Reviews

It took me about a year to read the twelve novels that make up A Dance to the Music of Time. I stopped between each novel in the series to read other authors. Each time I switched to someone else, the prose seem ragged and imprecise compared to Powell's. The Dance kept calling me back.

A Dance to the Music of time follows the lives of numerous upper-class English men and women as they emerge from college, get married, get divorced, establish careers, lose careers, grow old, and die. The narrator is Nick Jenkins, a keen observer and minor participant in the comings and goings of what must be by the end forty or fifty developed characters. The people in Powell's tome are educated, erudite, and mostly engaged in artistic and academic professions. These are not the kind of people I would ordinarily find interesting, but Powell hooked me and never let me go.

It is hard, considering the similarities in length, in subject matter, and title not to compare Powell to Proust's, In Search of Lost Time. Both Proust and Powell can write pages describing conversations that took place at an afternoon tea, and, at the close of the scene, leave the reader saddened that it has come to an end so soon. Proust's long novel, however, was an epic dissection of the human need for love and belonging; a work of genius. The social interactions that delight us in his writing are lenses by which we examine our most inner selves. Nick Jenkins, Powell's narrator, is a distanced social observer--a wry, polite and ever forgiving chronicler of the human condition. Powell's heroes are flawed and his villains, are oddly likable. Even the ever-present Widmerpool--a Uriah Heep who gets squeezed by society into the upper realms of financial and political power by his sheer inability to assimilate anywhere else--is easier to pity than to hate.

Characters in A Dance to the Music of Time come and go, disappear and reappear, die and live again through their progeny. You meet the neer-do-well Uncle Giles, the cult leading Dr. Trelawany, the alcoholic Stringham, the beautiful enchantress Pamela Flitton, the Marxist J.G. Quiggin, and so many more. Whenever the action--to the extent that there is any action in the traditional sense--flags, we hear a knock at the door or turn a street corner, and there stands a character from the past ready to fill us in on the remarkable turns of fate that have brought the person back to the fold. A Dance to the Music of Time is filled with happenstance meetings and homecomings. The motif is used so often that it becomes humorous and then delightfully comfortable.

The books are funny and quotable. Powell's easy precise prose is always a comfort. I finished Proust and was ready for it to be over. I finished the last book in A Dance to the Music of Time and wished there was one more.
Anthony Powell (1905-2000) has been much in the literary news of late with the publication of a new biography of his long life. I am an old English major who had never read Powell and decided to give him a read! I am glad I did! Powell wrote many novels but is best known for the 12 short novels he wrote in the A Dance To the Music of Time series. The books explore life among wealthy and upper middle class English people in the twentieth century. In the first volume we meet Nick Jenkins at his prep school (probably Eton), Oxford and the world of business and art in London in the 1920s. We meet many eccentric characters. The books are written in an erudite literary style that takes some getting used to by the reader. The book traces the career of four school chums. Templar the womanizing playboy, Stringham a rich lad who spends time with his father in Kenya, Widmerpool the narrator Nick Jenkins who work at a publishing house which publishes art books. The first three novels in the series are A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market and The Acceptance World. The novels are chock full of gossip, love affairs, witty chat and dealings in the business and art world,. Not everyone's cup of tea. The novels remind me of works by Evelyn Waugh in their humor and lightness. Anthony Powell is a great writer and these books are well worth your money and time if you want to learn more about British society between the wars.
I'm almost finished with the First Movement, and I'm absolutely impressed and amazed at Anthony Powell's ability to write what amounts to gossip in such an intelligent and thoughtful way. He just keeps on writing in a way that makes me just keep on reading, until I tire (I'm old). I have to presume that the next 3 books are as good as this one. I tried to complete Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but though his ability to hold complex thoughts in a sentence are impressive, he can be boring. Anthony Powell has yet to be boring. And he continues to come up with intelligent, spot-on insights into people and relationships and life. I don't know how he does it.