Treading a measure

 

  "The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle; unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance."

So begins Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing, the first novel in his twelve-volume series, "A Dance to the Music of Time". I read this book many years ago, and it failed to make any impression on me other than that it was sub-Waugh - which undoubtedly says more about me than the book. I scarcely remember it and didn't go on to read any more Powell, feeling I just didn't 'get' him. However, having a friend who reads the entire "Dance" every year and says he constantly finds new delights in it, I thought I'd have another go.

     I'm still not sure I'm getting it. To stretch the terpsichorean metaphor a bit, the book seemed to me like a dance being walked through, the steps essayed, rather than truly danced and interpreted. Anyone who has ever been in the thick of a reel will appreciate the difference between the dry run and the energetic, enthusiastic abandonment of the real thing. Imagine Stripping the Willow or weaving your way through an Eightsome but at walking pace and without music - tame and disappointing. That's what I felt about this book: it is precisely circumlocutional, drily, formally unemotional, at times archly attenuated. Following Jenkins, Widmerpool ("so wet you could shoot snipe off him" - yes, the line is there) Stringham and Templer from Eton to a spell in France and on to Oxford and beyond, the book reads as what it is, in effect: a long chapter of a much longer work, and I got the distinct feeling that as such, it hadn't really got going. Perhaps the afficionados out there will point out where I've gone wrong.

     One character says, "I like Kipling. That is, I like him up to a point", and I'd say the same about Powell after this reading. There were many elegant and eminently quotable passages, there was the sense of this being just a small part of the pattern of a very carefully and cleverly worked larger design which needs the scope of further volumes to reveal itself, but was there any emotional engagement (other than a slightly embarrassed acknowledgement) between the writer and his characters, and by extension, the reader? Is there more to it than social posturing? If so, please persuade me otherwise, and if one ought not to read this book in isolation but as part of the whole, then tell me when the tempo begins to pick up and things really start to swing.

    

Comments

[Helen]

I can't remember in which volume the tempo picks up, but it does. I had to have two goes at the first one, but when I tried the second time it definitely 'took' and I read them all. I would still rather read Waugh, but then he wasn't obliging enough to write a twelvogy.

The thing that impresses with the Dance as it speeds up is how much he can say with how little, and how when you glimpse a character at a later date you catch up again, sometimes with a sense of delight and sometimes with a sense of doom. You really do find yourself wanting to phone somebody and say, 'Have you heard about Stringham?'

I think the emotional engagement becomes clearer later on; he just doesn't wear it on his sleeve, and in that he captures exactly the people and the class he is writing about. I think you should keep going and I think you'll like them. If I could remember which box mine are in, I would be getting the first one out now...

[carole bruce]

Like you I had a friend to whom it was The Holy Bible, The I Ching, to me, it sounded as though it was being spoken with a large plum stuck in the mouth of the author. Should I pursue it? I don't think I have enough years left, and so much I really do want to read. By the way, referring to your recent post on 'Who am I?'. I personally think that is a metaphysical question to which the answer is usually more of 'a work in progress' than a cut and dried event. I do however think, that reading your honest opinions of books,and happenings in your life, answers the question most satisfactorily. Who I am, is, I know, a lousy speller, so forgive please any displays here!!!!

[adele geras]

Yes, I'm with you on this one. I have tried and failed twice. Watched the serial on tv which was okay but not brilliant and have always harboured a vague sense of guilt because I feel that I ought to like these books...they're so much my kind of thing. Or not, it seems. Perhaps I will try again but don't feel such an urgent need now I know the story. His autobiographical writings on the other hand are UNPUTDOWNABLE! Full of gossip and clever insights. I'd recommend those unreservedly.

[Barbara]

I have read the whole series through twice and I think the charm of it is in just that: the series factor. It is well sustained: the image one first gets of Widmerpool is arresting and he doesn't change. The earlier books are the best, when Powell was writing about the world he knew. By the 1960s he's already out of touch.

There are some memorable characters but the books are shallow compared with Waugh's. I know I go on about Waugh a lot but to me he is incomparable.

Adele (I loved Facing the Light!) said the autobiographies are unputdownable. Probably because Powell was one of the most crashing snobs who ever existed. There was a wonderful Craig Brown piece once, purporting to be part of a Powell diary, in which everyone they met was a county: tea with the Devonshires, Kents to lunch etc. Hee! I really admire Craig Brown.

[Lindsay]

I am still reeling with horror, my lares et penates mud-spattered and disdained! I will collect my thoughts and post some time, but just a couple of points:
I think Helen is right about how so few words convey so much - and a huge amount happens, but its offstage; the drama, as with Austen, is in the minds of his characters. The Dance is, I feel, twelve wonderful novels, each self sufficient, but all making much more than the sum - which are your favourites at any time varies in my experience, but now I love the war novels most, but sometimes its the early novels - Casanova's Chinese restaurant for example.
I can hardly agree with Barbara - he's not out of touch in the later novels, he's just got the point of view of a gradually older man - how we would complain if Jenkins remained a young man without maturing for sixty years - the whole point of the series is the increasing understanding of life as you know more about it - in the end he says most things turn out to be appropriate. And finally, he's a far, far better writer than Waugh (as, I think Waugh would have acknowledged) - he is subtler, better technically, and much more varied; Waugh is a slapstick vulgarian by comparison.
So do read on, its a flavour which which will develop and enrich you.