Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 731 pages
- Published by: University Of Chicago Press May 31, 1995
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0226677176
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0226677170
-
Book Dimensions:
7.9 x 5.3 x 1.6 inches
- Weighs: 1.7 pounds
From Library Journal
Powell's epic of 20th-century England is actually composed of 12 novels divided into four "movements," although they can be read individually as separate works. The novels were originally published from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses.
In this third volume of
A Dance to the Music of Time, we again meet Widmerpool, doggedly rising in rank; Jenkins, shifted from one dismal army post to another; Stringham, heroically emerging from alcoholism; Templer, still on his eternal sexual quest. Here, too, we are introduced to Pamela Flitton, one of the most gorgeous and dangerous women in modern fiction. Wickedly barbed in its wit, uncanny in its seismographic recording of human emotions and social currents, this saga stands as an unsurpassed rendering of England's finest yet most costly hour.
Includes these novels:
The Valley of Bones The Soldier's Art The Military Philosophers "Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."—
Chicago Tribune"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."—Elizabeth Janeway,
New York Times"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."—Naomi Bliven,
New Yorker
Reader Reviews
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.
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