A Dance to the Music of Time (2 of 12)

Anthony Powell’s second novel in the dozen-volume sequence, A Buyer’s Market was published in 1952.  It’s set in the late 1920s and is again narrated by Nick Jenkins, who stumbles upon some of the work of the artist Mr Deacon in an auction showroom for sale. Deacon was a family acquaintance. Powell’s description of the assorted oddments up for sale is highly visual.

 

Nick is working in London for a publisher and attends various debutante balls with Barbara Goring. ‘This affair with Barbara, although taking up less than a year, seemed already to have occupied a substantial proportion of my life; because nothing establishes the timelessness of Time like those episodes of early experience seen, on re-examination at a later period, to have been crowded together with such unbelievable closeness in the course of a few years; yet equally giving the illusion of being so infinitely extended during the months when actually taking place.’ (p28)

Barbara never ‘touched strong drink, in spite of behaviour that often suggested the contrary.’ (p73) This is evinced at one outing when she pours the contents of a sugar dispenser over Widmerpool!

As Nick is very much a cypher, it’s not surprising he says ‘… for love of that sort – the sort where the sensual element has been reduced to a minimum – must after all, largely if not entirely, resolve itself to the exercise of power: a fact of which Barbara was, of course, more aware than I.’ (p29)

We are not privy in any depth to Nick’s inner feelings regarding any women in his life and any sexual encounter he might endure is not seen but inferred, if at all, behind closed doors.

Nick again encounters Widmerpool: ‘… while he retained that curiously piscine cast of countenance, projecting the impression that he swam, rather than walked, through the rooms he haunted.’ (p34)

Powell has plenty of telling moments: ‘Across the road the coffee-stall came into sight, a spot of light round which the scarlet tunics and white equipment of one or two Guardsmen still flickered like the bright wings of moths attracted from nocturnal shadows by a flame.’ (p97) Though the reader might question why ‘one or two’ – couldn’t Nick count them? Was it one or was it two?

Stringham also makes an appearance: ‘… you know parents – especially step-parents – are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children,’ (p110) he says of his mother’s current husband, Buster. Stringham seemed in some way entangled with a Mrs Andriadis, who gave popular parties. At her party is Mr Deacon, the artist, and Gypsy Jones, who has a strange attraction for both Nick and Widmerpool. By now, we appreciate that we’re going to see certain characters often as the narrative progresses over several books: ‘… was sufficient to draw attention once again to that extraordinary process that causes certain figures to appear and reappear in the performance of one or another sequence of a ritual dance.’ (p183)

Nick spent weekends in the country and lunched at Stourwater, home of magnate Sir Magnus Donners, where he again met Jean Templer; she was now married; his earlier feelings for her have dematerialised. Widmerpool, employed by Donners, make an amusing appearance during a tour of the Stourwater dungeons, though he wasn’t a captive, as Nick briefly surmised. Nick later managed to wreck one of his master's ornamental urns with his car (after it is rejuvenated following a flat battery). In the autumn Stringham eschewed the company of Mrs Andriadis and married Lady Peggy Stepney; the artist Mr Deacon died after his birthday party, and Nick apparently had his wicked way with Gypsy after Deacon's funeral in the back room of a shop, though the emotional and physical content leaves a lot to be desired, no pun intended: ‘The lack of demur on her part seemed quite in accordance with the almost somnambulistic force that had brought me into that place… such protests as she put forward were of so formal and artificial an order that they increased, rather than diminished, the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figures and papier-maché trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare…’ (p268)

Several characters who appear here we will meet again in the next book, among them J.G. Quiggin and the author St. John Clarke…

Not a lot happens that is dramatic or pertains to the real life of the majority of the denizens of Great Britain; perhaps it’s because we’re viewing a microcosm, a certain bohemian section of upper-class English society, entirely bereft of emotion and sentiment. Yet there’s a fascination with the characters, their descriptions and their interactions that compels me to read on.

Note: The cover art for the series (1980s) by Mark Boxer caricatures individuals from the books. This one (on the left) is Sillery, who we met in the first book and appears here hobnobbing with names he can later drop into a conversation; he has a passing resemblance to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan!

Next: 3: The Acceptance World

Editorial comment

Again, there’s a dearth of chapters; four only. While I’m getting used to the lengthy paragraphs and long complex paragraphs, they really could have been improved by an editor.

In more than one book Powell uses the expression ‘Once in a way’ when he probably means ‘once in a while’. I can live with it.

He describes the car’s flat battery thus: ‘It was clear that the battery had run out.’ Maybe it’s typical of that time, but it’s odd.

A Dance to the Music of Time (1 of 12)

I blame Anthony Burgess. In 1984 he produced a book (written in two weeks) titled Ninety-Nine Novels: The best in English since 1939. He chose 99, allowing the reader to choose one of their own to make up the hundred. There seemed a paucity of female authors listed and, of course, as with any list of ‘the best’ it was bound to be controversial. He declared it was his personal choice, which he was entitled to make (in the days before a growing phalanx of people feel obliged to be offended by any statement of personal viewpoint).

I’ve read a good number of books from his selection; others are still on my bookshelves, waiting for me to read eventually. Only now, some thirty-four years later am I tackling the sequence A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, a 12-book novel, dauntingly amounting to just under 3,000 pages! All in the first person viewpoint narrated by the character Nick Jenkins.

The back covers don’t provide a blurb telling the prospective reader about the book; instead, they’re filled with reviewers’ comments:

‘I would rather read Mr Powell than any English novelist now writing.’ – Kingsley Amis.

‘One of the fictional landmarks of our time.’ – Times Literary Supplement.

‘A Question of Upbringing is a witty and shapely account of conventional English education.’ – Francis Wyndham, Observer.

Powell’s first book, A Question of Upbringing (1951) in the sequence is set in the period 1921-1924. It starts, however, with our narrator Nick viewing men at work gathered round a bucket of coke in winter. This two paragraph passage is highly visual and conjures up a distant memory – a Proustian madeleine moment in time – of winter at school in 1921 when Nick first takes much notice of fellow student Kenneth Widmerpool. And so the long novel begins…  

At the time Widmerpool was ‘fairly heavily built, thick lips and metal rimmed spectacles.’ Widmerpool was not highly thought of at school and was the butt of jokes, yet he seemed to possess a thick skin.

Nick shares a room with Charles Stringham and Peter Templer.

The fact that Templer had declared ‘he had never read a book for pleasure in his life did not predispose me in his favour: though he knew far more than I of the things about which books are written. He was also an adept at breaking rules, or diverting them to ends not intended by those who had framed them.’ 

Stringham was ‘tall and dark, and looked a little like one of those stiff, sad young men in ruffs, whose long legs take up so much room in sixteenth-century portraits…’ (p12) He was an excellent mimic, and used this to good effect to get their housemaster Le Bas arrested! (pp 48-52) As you will gather from this, the novel is at times comical – never laugh-out-loud, but it possesses amusing scenes and dialogue. For example, Stringham’s attractive mother observes, ‘Still, you weren’t expelled, darling. That was clever of you.’ And Stringham replied, ‘It took some doing.’

Sillery is a manipulative Oxford don who hosts students with tea and cake, and while he inclined ‘to the Right socially, politically he veered increasingly to the Left’ (p165). He is a name-dropper and maintains contact with ex-students who might prove useful. ‘Sillery was a keen propagandist for the League of Nations, Czechoslovakia, and Mr Gandhi... and had been somewhat diverted from earlier Gladstonian enthusiasms by the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917.’ (164)

Nick spends a summer in France, where he stays at a large house, La Grenadiere, run by a Madame Leroy. The time-worn taxi ride from the train station has its moments: ‘Even when stationary, his taxi was afflicted with a kind of vehicular counterpart of St Vitus’ dance, and its quaverings and seismic disturbances must have threatened nausea to its occupants at the best of times.’ (p108)  On arrival, Madame Leroy ‘led the way through the door in the wall in the manner of a sorceress introducing a neophyte into the land of faerie…’ (p109)

Throughout there are apt references to classical paintings, which isn’t surprising since Powell studied art in the early 1920s. What appears impressive is the forward planning in the early novels: ‘He piled his luggage, bit by bit, on to a taxi; and passed out of my life for some twenty years.’ And ‘This was the last I should see of Stringham for a long time. The path had suddenly forked. With regret, I accepted the inevitability of circumstance. Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.’ (p222)

Clearly, much of the book has an autobiographical feel about it, reinforced by the first person narration. The writing is measured, considered, and coldly precise. There is much to admire in that regard. Yet, not a lot happens. The colours and hedonism of the 1920s do not seem in much evidence; the depiction, despite the paintings, appears colourless. There is no depth of feeling, only good observation. It’s a book of quite engaging characters; a slice of life and manners, perhaps, in a moment in time long gone by.

The cover features a quote from the Sunday Times: ‘A remarkable picture of the history of our times.’ This must relate to the entire sequence rather than this single book.

I’m determined to read all twelve books to see what happens to Stringham, Templer and Widmerpool.

Editorial comment

My copy was published in 1983 (after 14 prior impressions) and yet there were two glaring typographical errors at the outset; ‘street had made a a kind of camp…’ (p5) and ‘he was found to posses an overcoat…’ (p10).

There are only four chapters.

There’s a tendency to write long paragraphs – sometimes only one or two per page.

An over-indulgence with colons in these lengthy paragraphs gives the impression that the pages have succumbed to a contagion of sorts.

Sentences should certainly vary in length, to provide diversity and change pace; however, Powell employs too many complex and lengthy sentences for the modern taste.

Book review – Doctor on the Ball

If you want an amusing gloriously politically incorrect comic novel, you could do a lot worse than read one of Dr Richard Gordon’s doctor series of books.

Gordon Ostlere was born in 1921, so he was sixty-four when he wrote his penultimate Doctor novel, Doctor on the Ball (1985).  He left the medical profession to concentrate on writing in 1952 and has produced many novels, screenplays as well as non-fiction. He’s now 95.

When we encounter his fictional doctor Gordon in this tome, he has been a GP in the market town of Churchford, Kent for twenty-five years and is probably ready for retirement and spending his time trying to catch fish. His first person narrative, delivered tongue in cheek, relates several hilarious or touching medical cases.

Mr Farthingale, the shop steward at the General hospital is one of his regulars. He was ‘shop steward for the Association of Confederated Health Employees (ACHE), whose complicated disagreement with his rival shop stewards for General Ancillary Services Personnel (GASP) and the Organisation for Unqualified Cooperatives in Health (OUCH) over deploying the new electrical floor cleaners had earlier kept the General’s brand-new Elizabeth Wing empty and idle for months.’ (pp80-81) It transpires that Farthingale has stolen a new bodyscanner – it’s in his front room at home, and now he wants to return it, without being caught…

This is not so unusual, as we all know. The parlous state of the hospital system is perhaps not helped by misappropriation of commodities: ‘Is there much thieving at the hospital?’ He guffawed. ‘You must be joking. Don’t you know, the National Health Service is Britain’s Sin City? Makes Chicago look like Lourdes.’ Items stolen include X-ray films for the silver, oxygen cylinders for the steel, for example, he relates.

Gordon’s targets are not only the NHS management, either. ‘The Foreign Office is for ever leaving top secret papers in bistros, the Army litters Dorset with unexploded shells, and the Exchequer loses millions of quid every time it tries to add up.’ (p90)

In the doctor’s rare spare time, he grows things: ‘In June the greenhouse became as rewarding as the end of a multiple pregnancy, cucumbers dangling as plump as green salami, aubergines as burstingly purple as nasty bruises, tomatoes pressing against the panes like commuters crammed into rush-hour trains.’ (p93) Unfortunately, it’s been a bumper year and he has too many tomatoes, and his wife Sandra has to be very inventive to use them all (which raises a chuckle or two).

The good doctor doesn’t like the women’s liberation movement or lawyers; concerning the latter, he says, ‘Perhaps because they are trained to be nasty to people and we are trained to be nice to people. And doctors are spared from growing pompous. We have to look up too many fundamental orifices.’ (p98)

There are plenty of amusing one-liners, too: ‘I’m a pathologist. All my patients have to be dead first.’ (p100).

And bearing in mind this was published in 1985, times haven’t changed much: ‘Everyone knows the NHS is tighter for cash than the Church of England.’ (p151)

Inevitably, many asides on once current personalities are no longer relevant – whether that’s mentioning politicians, TV personalities or sports people.

I imagine there will be a few PC individuals who could finds these books offensive; if you can’t appreciate a joke, then please leave the human race.

The doctor books are:

Doctor in the House. 1952.

Doctor at Sea. 1953.

Doctor at Large. 1955.

Doctor in Clover. 1960.

Doctor on Toast. 1961.

Love and Sir Lancelot. 1965.

Doctor on the Boil. 1970.

Doctor on the Brain. 1972.

Doctor in the Nude. 1973.

The Sleep of Life. 1975.

Doctor on the Job. 1976.

Doctor in the Nest. 1979.

Doctor's Daughters. 1981.

Doctor on the Ball. 1985.

Doctor in the Soup. 1986.