Afternoon Men

Powell is one of the truly great writers of the second half of the 20th century. His 12 volume Dance to the Music of Time is a monument of British literature.This is a lesser book, but still great. No one writes what the English like to call Comedy of Manners like Powell.His command of the language makes anything he writes a joy to read.

It is regrettable that Anthony Powell's splendid satire "Afternoon Men" is out of print. I learned of Anthony Powell's work through his obituary in The New York Times in March, 2000. Mr. Powell (the name rhymes with "Lowell") had been highly regarded as a brilliant author by such literary giants as Evelyn Waugh, a fastidious and snobbish critic who seldom had a kind word for any writer. Since I admire Waugh's work, and since he had read and enjoyed Mr. Powell's novels, I immediately read "Afternoon Men," a shorter work and, I might add, an excellent introduction to his vast literary output. "Afternoon Men" deals with a group of rather seedy eccentrics in Bohemian London during the time between the World Wars. It is peopled with those characters so beloved by readers of Waugh and Kingsley Amis: the bored, intellectually witty survivors in a new society, surviving through alcohol and shakey friendships with often disreputable people. Mr. Powell's satire is razor sharp, but not cruel, particularly when he chronicles the pathetic and disastrous love affairs of these vulnerable people. His dialogue is beautifully developed, especially in the several alcoholic party scenes that were a major part of this generation. The character of Fotheringham, for example, is a beautifully delineated eccentric who appears throughout the book and whose dialogue is tight, witty, and hysterically funny.(Fotheringham's dialogue was quoted by The New York Times in Powell's obituary.) Yet Mr. Powell captures, with a few literary strokes, the inner pathos of Fotheringham's character. The story is told through the person of William Atwater; the book is more of a character study of Atwater's friends and their foibles, eccentricities, amorous needs, and survival instincts. Anglophiles who read 20th century British satire will probably want to search for this out-of-print book in second-hand book stores or in libraries. I found a dusty copy on the top shelf of my local library that had not been checked out since 1949. Perhaps Little, Brown and Company will sense a renaissance of Powell's work and reissue this book. At any rate, I am about to embark on the adventure of reading Anthony Powell's masterpiece, "A Dance to the Music of Time," a six-novel, satirical saga of British life in the 20th century.