A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement

"A Dance to the Music of Time" is one of the great glories of twentieth century English literature, a sharply observed, highly literate, disturbingly entertaining series, originally published in twelve volumes, by British author Anthony Powell. It has since been collected into four mega-volumes, called movements, by its publisher. The second movement consists of three of the original novels: "At Lady Molly's," "Casanova's Chinese Restaurant," and "The Kindly Ones." "At Lady Molly's" is set in the ferment that was pre World War II London. The war was noticeably casting its shadow forward: people were concerned about happenings in Germany and Spain, and were highly-politicized - never before or since has London seen so many self-proclaimed Communists. But Nick Jenkins, our narrator, is young and handsome, working as a screen writer in the nascent British film industry, and having a good time, as are most of his friends. Their lives are highly sexualized: in the frantic gaiety of the time, they're busy running off with other people's husbands, wives, and sheep, for all I know. Nick will meet the girl of his dreams at Lady Molly's. Widmerpool is continuing his irresistible climb to fame and power. It's one of the funniest of the books, and has some of its author's best-known witticisms, as when one character says to another, "Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody." "Casanova's Chinese Restaurant," finds Jenkins mingling with London's artistic and musical crowds, enjoying the life of a young married. People are off to fight in Spain and see firsthand what the Japanese are up to in China. And Widmerpool: well, in "Lady Molly's," Jenkins muses, "I had always felt an interest in what might be called the theoretical side of Widmerpool's life: the reaction of his own emotions to the severe rule of ambition that he had from the beginning imposed upon himself: the determination that existence must be governed by the will." He rises, still. In "The Kindly Ones," the war has begun, but is yet still phony, as they called it: people have hung blackout curtains, but are still arguing about the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. One character muses, "The Kaiser went to war for shame of his withered arm. Hitler will go to war because at official receptions the tails of his evening coat sweep the floor like a clown's." The book opens on a flashback to Jenkins' pre World War I army childhood, and a glance at the extraordinary number of British lives claimed by that particularly bloodthirsty war. It also gives us an often-quoted discussion of "the kindly ones:" "....the Greeks, because they so greatly feared the Furies, had named them the Eumenides - the Kindly Ones - flattery intended to appease their terrible wrath." The attentive reader must assume we will see the Furies - the Eumenides, if you prefer --at work in the third movement of the series, devoted to life during the very real war to come.

I shall begin this review with employing the caveat with which I embarked upon my review of the First Movement: This is only a review of this movement, not the entire opus. That's the way they were printed, and that's the way I shall review it.....Amen....Ahem, more to the point, I haven't read the other two yet. Thank whatever powers that be for the third book in this movement, The Kindly Ones---a translation of the Greek Eumenides, a euphemism, as related to us by Nicholas Jenkins in his recollections of Stonehurst, the home where he lived as a boy until the advent of WWI, used by the Greeks for The Furies, so terrified were they of naming them properly aloud. The significance of this particular book is not, to my mind, that the outer world starts to obtrude into the "hermetically sealed" life of the characters, as one reviewer has put it. It's rather that Nicholas Jenkins, our narrator, finally starts to display feelings of his own. He is no longer the detached cypher of the first movement. In retrospect, one can see that this "coming out" as it were of Jenkins has been slowly developing through all three books of this movement. But it is only in The Kindly Ones that he emerges from his chrysalis. Deeper themes abound, of course. Upon taking leave of General Conyers during a private tête-à-tête in which the General provides a quite rum venture into the psychoanalysis of Widmerpool, Jenkins describes it thus: "The change in his voice announced that our fantasy life together was over. We had returned to the world of everyday things. Perhaps it would be truer to say that our real life together was over, and we returned to the world of fantasy. Who can say?" Who indeed? I shall ponder such things as I begin to turn the pages of the third movement and The Furies descend across Europe.

Quite a nice series. If one desires to understand the English qualities of reserve, humor, and understatement this the book to read. They are embedded in the story and most importantly in the author's approach. It would be a bit Widmerpool of me to say much more. Please give it a try.

_A Dance to the Music of Time_ is an extremely absorbing and well-crafted novel (composed of 12 smaller novels). Its subject is the decline of the English upper classes from the First World War to about 1970, a decline seen is inevitable and probably necessary, but somehow also regrettable.Such a description might make the novel seem stuffy, but it is not. _A Dance to the Music of Time_ is at times very funny indeed, and always interesting. always involving. It features an enormous cast of characters, and Powell has the remarkable ability to make his characters memorable with the briefest of descriptions. In addition, Powell's prose is addictive: very characteristic, idiosyncratic, and elegant.The long novel follows the life of the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, from his time at Eton just after World War I to retirement in the English countryside in the late '60s. But Jenkins, though the narrator, is in many ways not the most important character. The comic villain Widmerpool, a creature of pure will, and awkward malevolence, is the other fulcrum around which the novel pivots.This second volume of the University of Chicago's beautiful trade paperback editions features books 4, 5 and 6 of the novel series. _At Lady Molly's_ is centered around the eccentric title character and her parties, as well as such other characters as her eccentric husband, Ted Jeavons, and even Nick Jenkins' wife-to-be, Isobel. _Casanova's Chinese Restaurant_ opens with a bravura prose set-piece of flashback within flashback, and deals with Jenkins' great friend the composer Hugh Moreland, and with the tragically unhappily married critic Maclintick. The subject of the novel is marriage. The last novel in this book is _The Kindly Ones_, which deals with the coming of World War II. It begins with a flashback to 1914, as the First World War breaks out and impinges on Jenkins' childhood, then continues in the late '30s as Europe heads again into war.

This volume contains the second three novels of Anthony Powell's masterpiece, A Dance to the Music of Time. Readers coming to this series for the first time should start with the first volume. Powell's work is social comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen and George Meredith. Contemporary writers with whom he is often compared include Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh. The 12 short novels of A Dance to the Music of Time give a panoramic picture of English upper-class social life from 1921 to 1971 that is both intensely realistic and amazingly funny. Readers either love Powell's work or can't understand what others see in it. My own opinion is that Dance is the best novel written in the twentieth century. Others share this view: A Dance to the Music of Time is #43 on the recently constructed Random House/Modern Library 100 Best Poll (of twentieth century fiction) and was made into a 4-part miniseries on British television just about a year ago.