Customer Reviews

A Dance to the Music of Time

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I must confess that I write this review without the perspective of some of the other reviewers who have finished all twelve novels. But the first three novels each stand alone quite nicely. The first novel in this movement, A Question of Upbringing, is perhaps the most enjoyable of the lot, certainly the most humorous, and contains that sense of fun and nostalgia so prevalent in tales of schooldays. A Buyer's Market has its moments, particularly in the triumphant sequence involving Mrs. Andriadis' party, but somewhat pales in comparison to the novels that immediately precede and follow it. The third novel, The Acceptance World, is arguably the best of the three, certainly the richest in characterization and more interesting because of the first sense in the novels of the outside political world.

I think it is fair to point out that Powell's narrator seems, to some degree, modeled upon the narrator of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, even sharing the same first name, Nick. One irritating but perhaps essential element of the novels is the large number of coincidences that take place (something perhaps borrowed from Dickens; see Great Expectations et al). But these minor faults are not outweighed by the richness of these three novels.

I found this series to be a slow start but midway through the first of the three novels in the book, I was hooked. I couldn't put the book down and when I finished it, couldn't wait to get the next volume.

As the title probably suggests, a theme in the book is--I guess you could say-- the continual (random?) grouping and regrouping of people and events in life. At first, this can be a bit off-putting. You get interested in a certain set of characters, then suddenly, they're gone. Keep reading--they'll be back again in even more interesting/unlikely circumstances.

Powell's characters are memorable, vivid, and eerily real--through the course of the books, they undergo various transformations which are fascinating to observe. The narrator always remains a bit mysterious which I found added to the book's interest.

Powell creates a world of instability where relationships, morals, culture, even governments, are continually in flux. It's often sad, but very often hilarious, too.

These books offer hours and hours of enjoyment you won't soon forget.

The writing is undeniably good, although I found book II a bit dry (at one point I thought I was reading a Henry James novel. Not good!) The pace picks up again in book III. There are plenty of amusing comments about human nature, especially relationship between the sexes, in addition to "fine art" and the "literary world", etc, etc. Character development is an especially strong point. Reading volume I made me want to read volume II.

VOLUME ONE IS OUTSTANDING! I chose to read the Dance series over the summer of 2003 for a graduate level course. The first volume was immediately enchanting, and despite criticism from others, I found it easily readable and accessible. The characters, though numerous, are further defined as the series progresses. However, even by the second book "A Buyer's Market" there is abundant humor from the juxtaposition of the varied participants. Powell's first volume is a gift which illuminates the value and ephemeral nature of people in our lives. It is also a treasure chest of practical if arcane vocabulary. I have now added the useful words "adumbrate", "demiurgic", and "crepitation" to memory. DON'T MISS OUT on the pleasure of this series.

was to an REO Speedwagon song in 7th grade, but that is beside the point. This is an entertaining book: not half as good as Proust, which - if you have some time - will repay your investment tenfold. The difference, I think, is that in Proust the quest of the narrator was a unifying force across all the pages, and you felt that he was stumbling his way towards something worthwhile - which, after finishing the first volume, I still don't feel. Despite patches of excellent writing, it has an episodic feel that belongs neither to life nor art: he runs into people, things happen, generalizations are made about human behavior (sometimes the things seem to happen just so the generalization can be made) and the dance continues, but why isn't the music swelling, or at least changing tempo? And why don't I care when someone else gets divorced or married? I'll keep reading, certainly, but only for the little wonderful bits: for example, "Being in love is a complicated matter; although anyone who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests. In general, things are apt to turn out unsatisfactorily for at least one of the parties concerned; and in due course only its most determined devotees remain unwilling to admit that an intimate and affectionate relationship is not necessarily a simple one . . . " And it goes on. Nicely said. I'm not a determined devotee, but I'll keep reading.

Once in a while you get the foolish idea to embark on a vast reading experience (Remembrance of Thing Past sits on my shelf unread and unreadable--by me, anyway). Well, recently I ordered the four-volume, twelve novel elegant U. of Chicago edition of this Powell classic and have spent the past five weeks luxuriating in the music wafting from its nearly 3,000 pages of polished prose, intricate and elaborate plotting and acute psychological appreciation of the human character. And what a cast of characters. Powell must rival Dickens in his capacity to invent delightfully eccentric and scene-stealing minor characters---Uncle Giles, Trewalney, Umfraville, Erridge and his besotted butler among so many others. My own favorites are Mrs. Erdleigh ("hearing secret harmonies" in both this life and the next), Teddy Jeavons, and the heartbreaking Gwatkin. And looming over all the megomaniacal Widmerpool (ably assisted by his horror of a wife in the latter novels), as morbidly fascinating as a car wreck, who gives the magnum opus its unity. And don't believe any nonsense about the epic losing its power in the post-WWII novels. Powell may have the conservative's disdain for the radicalism of the sixties, but Scorpio is delineated with fairness and vigor, and the Quiggen twins are a hoot. I did not think I would ever ever again encounter a serial reading experience as delightful as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels but "Dance"-- for sheer enjoyment, delight, and intelligence---has been the reading pleasure of a lifetime. "The Vision of visions heals the blindness of sight." Yes.

If you ever wondered what England was like in the 20's & 30's, this is the series that will answer most of your questions. Beautifully written, it may also engage your curiousity to see what next happens to the characters. After you've read the series, you can read Powell's memoirs and find out who the characters in the novel are modelled on. After Proust and Durrell, one of the great fictional series of the age.

This series--of which this is the first of four books--will appeal to readers who like carefully judged writing and feeling, an English saga, the British upper classes, the years between the world wars, a close but exterior study of changing relationships between young men, and English humor so reticent as to be easily missed by those not already steeped in the foregoing. The fact these are published by a universty press suggests the limited audience. IMO, the reader needs to be English or Anglophilic to really appreciate, let alone understand, the social structure, the character types, the allusive situations, and the literary-artistic allusions. I think I miss most of the entendres, let alone the doubles, and I was well into the second novel before I began to recognize the alleged "comic" (not "funny") quality of this masterpiece, as distinguished from a slow story about a mob of wealthy and decadent young Englishmen with odd habits and quaint preoccupations.

What happens in these novels? Not much in view, yet a very great deal in review, in scenes of meetings, planned or unexpected, over a meal or at a soirée, with epigraphic discussions of people, present and absent, and insightful comments brilliantly expressed, in sentences full of commas--somewhat like this one. Characters are numerous and brilliantly developed over many decades, their lives intertwining in a seemingly accidental way as they float through the life of the marginal narrator, Nicholas Jenkins. Upon repeated readings an actual deep form like Bachian musical counterpoint might emerge, each character a melodic line; certainly many exquisite nuances must be missed by an American reader.

Critics are right to describe Powell's writing as wonderfully apt, deft, verbally precise, delicate, subtle, and tasteful. While progressive in time, the novels are unconcerned with dates, wholly undidactic, and on occasion you won't know of momentous contemporary world events unless you understand overheard French, for such an interiorly self-referential world is created here. The cast of characters slowly builds, ever altering, in varied combinations. What I find really fascinating is the surprising re-entry of characters long absent, when we see them anew through the now more experienced eyes of other characters. Each novel (of the three in each book) is separately paginated, but this is definitely a series to read from the beginning or not at all.

"Dance" is a monster of a project; 12 novels that feature a small core of characters that appear in each book and approximately 400 lessor characters that appear and disappear and sometimes reappear years (and books) later.

The first movement consists of three social novels and tells the story of Nicholas (Nick) Jenkins' life from his last year at school in the early 1920s (probably Eaton) to his life as a writer living in London and working in the art publishing industry around 1930.

Powell's style is very dated and ponderous, major world events get a sentence or two while a particular dinner or party might get three chapters. The really amazing thing is that if you stick with him, the series starts to work. The characters become very real, and despite the highly stratified nature of upper class English society he describes, you find them sympathetic and interesting.

A major plus point here is the wonderful true-life ambiguity of everyone. There no black and white heroes or villains in these novels, even the dreaded Kennith Windmerpool emerges as a real human being, with real concerns and triumphs and failures. Nick starts disliking him, never really warms to him, but like us, grows to respect his drive and ambition. Nick, like many a narrator, emerges as a somewhat passive observant young man although not without resources and a strong sex drive!

No way is this series of novels for everyone, but if you like good description, some very sly English humour, and believable developed characters in your books, then give it a shot. There are also some excellent resources on the Net that identify the "real" people the characters are based upon. Be warned, if you complete the first movement of the dance, you're committed to read the next three.

This very, very British novel is highly entertaining and quite amusing. I was so absorbed that I read it in it's entirety in just under two weeks. I must warn prospective readers, however, that the last three books in the series suffer from a sharp decline in quality. This is not enough, though, to effect the overall quality of the work, which is indeed outstanding.A must for Anglophiles everywhere.