Fortunately—with so much reading by the same author still in front of me—I am here to report that I am alive and well and very much enjoying reading the "Dance to the Music of Time" series by Anthony Powell! Here's a status update: I am through the first three of twelve books...which comprise the first one of four volumes or "movements." I like the writing, I like the characters, I like the storyline! *Phew*
Anthony Powell is masterful at capturing the seemingly lesser episodes in life that end up serving as microcosmic windows on the whole enchilada. There's much to identify with here, which makes the reading meaningful. The author isn't concerned with minutiae to the point of boredom but just explores far enough to expose the ubiquity of human experience found therein. A sampling from the first volume: How you can tell, in the asking, when someone has invited you to an event as their second choice because their first choice has already declined; how appearances can be deceiving, especially when it comes to picturing someone capable of physical passion; how sitting in utter silence next to a person actually betrays a deeper intimacy than chatting the entire time would; how much art there is in seizing a moment to make an exit because you're aware a better moment might not present itself.
The story—set to span several decades—is told in retrospect, making the narrator superomniscient! Additionally, as the main character, he's a person who actually thinks about things, offers some insight, & doesn't just report. We are so inside the head of this young man—who starts out an empathetically callow youth amongst his more socially advanced peers—that we don't even learn his name until book two: Nick Jenkins. Happily, oftentimes the vision in this book comes tied to a gentle but very real humor.
The reader of Powell's series recognizes "the dance" in the title to be that unforeseen (but for the benefit of hindsight) interplay of various people across one's life. Powell himself underscores this metaphor throughout. There is keen observation given to how certain characters (some unlikely!) appear and then reappear longitudinally. Powell executes this in an unforced manner—many many other authors could take a cue from his writing (everyone from E.M. Forster to James Michener should hear their phones ringing right about now). I find the long view of "the dance" to make for compelling reading to say the least. And there may be something more on the order of life lessons to be imparted from it. See if you can't hear the rhythm of the dance in some of my favorite passages from Anthony Powell's 1st Movement...
• "Being in love is a complicated matter; although who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests. In general, things are apt to turn out unsatisfactorily for at least one of the parties concerned; and in due course only its most determined devotees remain unwilling to admit that an intimate and affectionate relationship is not necessarily a simple one: while such persistent enthusiasts have usually brought their own meaning of the word to something far different from what it conveys to most people in early life."If any of these quotes draw you in, pick up volume one in the series & start reading!
The "Dance to the Music of Time" series by Anthony Powell continues to hold my interest & be at times charming reading! I am through the next three books, which comprise the second volume. Time continues to march largely forward for our young protagonist, but there are some vast retrospective swathes here as well. Nick Jenkins was a teenager at the series' outset, and at the second volume's conclusion he is in his early to mid thirties and moving headlong into World War II.
What else continues here is the sense of how life is woven with mysterious patterns (i.e., "The Dance"), universal human truths, and strata of meaning. Or as Powell himself would put it, "Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and sensational, played to an audience of one." That sense of unlikely yet somehow patterned fates keeps me chuckling & shaking my head (only mildly in disbelief) from book to book. Indeed, it is the thing that will keep you reading "A Dance to the Music of Time." Certain characters are so well drawn that you find yourself rooting for their reappearance across the years!
On a technical note, this series is marked by a long, intermarried, behemoth cast of characters. After all, it's England—everyone is either a cousin by blood or by marriage to someone. I only mention that as an attempt to explain to prospective readers why it would be a bad idea to go too long in between the time you last set this book down & the next time you pick it up to commence reading. Things are so interwoven that it is possible to lose the thread, as it were.
Looking forward to the next volume!
Here we find ourselves in the third volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, which is comprised of books 7, 8, & 9. This volume contains my least favorite book thus far, which is The Military Philosophers. The entire volume is set in the British military in WWII, but book 9 especially loses some of the more character-driven subtleties that have made most of the other books sing. Much of The Military Philosophers is in fact boring. I understand that this may be the point exactly: To be mired in war is to...well...be mired in war. The reader is as well.
Nine books-worth of the narrator being the least richly drawn character really sinks in here. The anonymity one gains within the military may underscore this as well. Very few lines of actual dialogue are ever ascribed to Nick Jenkins himself. Other characters are often put in positions of confiding loquaciously in him, and the reader is treated to their dialogue word for word. But Nick never reciprocates—or if he does, it is merely the gist of some laconic response of his that is recorded and not a direct quote. So, in a way, we are left knowing less of the narrator & main character than we know of many other characters (even though that perception of the others comes through the eyes of the protagonist himself)!
The upside, perhaps, for the author, of a story being set during wartime is that he is afforded the luxury of killing off characters believably. So we say goodbye to some figures in the 3rd Movement. I think I expected that fate of some of the male characters who ended up in the military here. But Powell has even more of an upper hand in this stretch, surprising us with deaths of civilian characters we've come to know & love. After all, Britain did get blitzed; no one was safe.
What Anthony Powell writes about death is: "As in musical chairs, the piano stops suddenly, someone is left without a seat, petrified for all time in their attitude of that particular moment. The balance-sheet is struck there and then, a matter of luck whether its calculations have much bearing, one way or the other, on the commerce conducted. The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal ending."
Other favorite lines of mine from the 3rd Movement of A Dance to the Music of Time:
• "[N]o pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demonstrate that you did it better than someone else. If it came to that, I thought, how few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts."
• "Moreland used to say love was like sea-sickness. For a time everything round you heaved about and you felt you were going to die—then you staggered down the gangway to dry land, and a minute or two later could hardly remember what you had suffered, why you had been feeling so ghastly."
• "Kedward dealt in realities. There is much to be said for persons who traffic in this corn, provided it is always borne in mind that so-called realities present, as a rule, only a small part of the picture."
• "[B]eing judicious about other people's love affairs is easy, often merely a sign one has not understood their force or complexity."
• "Few subjects are more fascinating than other people's sexual habits from the outside; the tangled strands of appetite, tenderness, convenience or some hope of gain."
Potsdam has just occurred at the end of the last book in this volume. So I look forward to getting back to Powell writing about civilian life again.