Imagination must...select and arrange reality.

BOOK TEN ('Books Do Furnish A Room'):

"Imagination must, of course, select and arrange reality, but it must be for imaginative ends: all too often the role of imagination in this sequence is to funny-up events and people whose only significance . . . is that Powell has experienced them."
- Philip Larkins, in a review of 'Books Do Furnish a Room'

'Books Do Furnish a Room' starts with a discussion of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy* and this book (and themes of melancholy and love) reappear frequently throughout the novel.

The central plot thrust of book 10, or the first book of the final season/October (if you will) centers on X. Trapnel a novelist loosely based on Julian McLaren-Ross a writer described by his biographer as "mediocre caretaker of his own immense talent". This novel is the first of the post WWII novels. It takes place in the years immediately after WWII when England is dealing with the social and economic turmoil of the Post war years. Powell describes these changes by describing how the sea and tides will roll certain things back, lose certain things, and propel new things onto shore. I'm obviously paraphrasing because it is late and I haven't the energy right now to find the damn quote. Anyway, it was an interesting brick in this series, not my favorite, but rewarding for some of its dialogue and plot twists.

* An amazingly rich work that I'm almost done with myself (I've got two hundred pages left in the last of the three partitions. I've spent about 3 years worth of Sundays intermittently reading while sitting through church. I'm not sure of my wife is thrilled with me reading Burton in Church, but Burton's explorations of Melancholy seem to almost need an altar or some sacred space to read it near

BOOK ELEVEN ('Temporary Kings'):

"Reading Novels needs almost as much talent as writing them."
- Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

Temporary Kings opens at an international literary conference in Venice. The literary pot is beginning to boil. Who knew the literary world was such a Casino Royale of intrigue. I really think Powell set this novel's beginning in Venice to make the reader think of the Romantic era, but also of the Doges of Venice and all those dukes and kings that seemed to rise and fall during the period between Rome and the Romantics. Hell, I'm probably way off, but that's my wall and I'm going to lean against it.

More than almost any book, except the series itself (Dance to the Music of Time), Temporary Kings seems dominated and driven by a work of art. Art and music, like food and sex, are scattered in all of Powell's novels, but in this one, a painting of Candaules and Gyges by Tiepolo. In the myth Candaules, the Lydian (Sardis) king has a fatal enthusiasm to show his queen’s naked body to his lieutenant Gyges (without her knowledge or permission). She discovers her husband's peeping sin and invites Gyges to kill him and take his place on the throne. Powell practically beats the reader over the head with this idea. The myth itself is fairly melodramatic (characters in the book discuss the myth as a perfect Opera story), but also seems to parallel some of the activity of some major characters.

BOOK TWELVE ('Hearing Secret Harmonies'):

Hearing Secret Harmonies is the end, the final, the cap of this huge series. Powell reminds me of one of those extreme runners. Those masochists who seem to enjoy running 50, 100, or more miles. The amazing things about writing 12 novels that are together nearly 3000 pages and written over 24 years (1951 - 1971), is how uniform these books are. I'm not saying uniform in a boring way. I'm just saying there isn't a real weak link in them. They are beautifully constructed. I think of big canvasses like the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. Certainly, with such a big canvas the risk of a disappointing section or segment isn't linear. A big book, with more pieces and pages, comes with an exponentially growing level or risk. Powell just didn't have a shitty two years anywhere in that 24 years.

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A six month affair ends...

After around 6 months, and over 80 hours of listening, it is hard to say goodbye to Nick Jenkins, narrator of the 12 books that make up "A Dance..." and his 300 or so friends and acquaintances- although by the end, many of them have made their last live appearances, echoes of them continue to reverberate through the story after their deaths.
While the series has limited foreground dramatic incident, it is the development of, and evolving relationships between, the large cast of characters that makes the series so appealing. A portrait of upper middle and upper class English life, primarily between the wars, with a focus on the world of arts and letters, and lesserly politics, the books paint a portrait of a class, and a way of life, that the author and narrator clearly sees as changing, and sometimes disappearing, even as the lives are being led, often lending it a muted elegaic quality. It does, also, have a strong vein of (gentle) humor throughout, in its regard for the eccentricities and quirks of the characters and their behaviour.
Of the 12 novels comprising the 4 parts, I particularly enjoyed "Books do furnish a room" and "Temporary Kings" in this part, and "Casanova's Chinese Restaurant". But for me, it was the whole journey that made "A Dance to the Music of Time" special
Listeners who complete the series can test their retention of the minutiae of the plot and characters on the web site anthonypowell.org (Dance quiz). Were you really paying attention when Mr Deakin met his unfortunate end?
The reading is terrific, the main characters (especially the men) clearly delineated from each other, with their own endearing speech habits and accents, the tone very apt for a chronicle of a bygone era.

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Wonderful

This is an engrossing, immersive narrative over 12 volumes. Narrator Simon Vance gives rich, thoughtful performances for the dozens of characters (300 or so according to the afterword) and brings them to life over the decades. I loved it.

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Vance is the perfect narrator..

Simon Vance delivers completely the comedy and the ironic distances of Powell's Nick Jenkins, not an easy thing to do. All 200 plus characters are sufficiently distinct.

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Was England ever thus?

Originally encountered this book at a Barnes and Noble looking for a present to give to a friend who loves English lit from the post WWI era. I gave her the first volume as a non committed way of letting her know that if she liked it, she could make a comment of any kind and I would buy the rest for her. She never made a comment. This had the curious effect of heightening my interest.
To make a long story short, I listened to the whole thing on audiobook while traveling on my car. It split my life in two. On the one hand, real life, on the other, Nick's life. Although not as "deep" as say, Henry James, the cumulative impact is substantial. One truly gets a feel for a country in transition from a limited and somewhat detached person's point of view. More than that, I feel like I understand a little better how an englishman of a certain class and era thought.
Not a great thought, or earth shattering revelation, but of such small details a life is made, which I think is the point of the author's summation at the end of the book.

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A marathon of an historical microcosm

After investing 84 hours in completing this four volume, 12 novel epic focused on a small segment of a diminishing English upper class (and dozens of additional hours re-listening to segments for contextual reasons), I can't honestly say it was worth the time investment, but I'm not sorry that I made that investment.

The work begins on the heels of World I and continues into the early 70's. The Fourth Movement covers the period after World War II as narrator Nick Jenkins advances the story of aging characters confronting a less relevant England over three novels, Books Do Furnish A Room, Temporary Kings, and Hearing Secret Harmonies.

In Books, England is gripped in a period of austerity at the same time it is undergoing a literary transformation as Nick and other principles launch publishing efforts.

Temporary Kings advances the story into the late 50's as the political and economic prospect advances for Nick and his cohort and the introduction of their children as England undergoes a cultural transition with the advent and growing influence of television.

The final novel, Hearing Secret Harmonies, maps the cultural and economic revolution as cults and hippies transform the nation and impact the upper class English countryside.

it took almost a year to get through all four movements. And while the series will be kept in my Audible library, I will likely only reference them when I require endless hours of background audio.

Or when I am trying to sleep.

Narrator Simon Vance is to be commended for his diligence in this epic voice project, but his art is in his monotony of tone not in dynamism. His voice perfectly fits the nonchalance of Powell's story.

Beautifully read

I normally think that the less you think about the reading performance then the better it is. But looking back at this one I am almost as much in awe of Simon Vance as I am of Anthony Powell.

Powell in his 12th book wrote about wrote about...

Apologies for the Monty Python reference but they once did a sketch of a game show where contestants had one minute to summarise Proust, and one guy did it as a madrigal which after a lot of repetition of the above phrase was cut off just as he got to the line "he wrote about the...". Summarising Powell is a similarly risible exercise that might just as well be done in song for all the insight I can bring to it. Suffice it to say this volume is not unlike the previous three in its even, low-on-incident narrative, but it lacks the geopolitical / historical edge that gave the first three more poignancy. We are now in the Britain-as-a-small-nation phase of history and the concerns of the characters are just not as engaging as they once were, and many of the most compelling ones did not survive the war anyway. Pamela Flitton causes a mild stir as an Olympic-standard man-eater, and Widmerpool has his apotheosis, but when the end finally came, I was not overly sorry to finally put down a series that has given immense pleasure. One final rap to Simon Vance, he just kept on delivering the narrative goods.

Disappointing..

I’m totally a Simon Vance fan, so when he highly recommended this series on a you tube tape, I purchased all 4 volumes. Of the four volumes, this was the least enjoyable. So much focus on a commune, orgies and occultism, it was distracting.

Beautiful treatment of a great work

Any additional comments?

This is one of the great novels of the 20th century, and this audio version does full justice to Powell's writing.