This is the final novel in Anthony Powell’s twelve novel series, “A Dance to the Music of Time,” all narrated by the writer Nick Jenkins, now in his fifties and sixties, the novel opening with a chapter devoted to Nick and his wife Isobel hosting their niece Fiona and her three companions who are part of an apparent religious cult or commune, by the second chapter moving into Nick’s reflections about writing and narrative, considering specifically Poussin’s famous painting that lends its own title to that of this series, showing Time playing music to which the Seasons dance. As so often in these novels and in our own lives, literature conjures parallels to actual lived events, in this case including the concepts of Mage and the young man leading Fiona’s group, Scorpio Murtlock. This conjunction suggests to Nick memories of Dr. Trelawney, the now deceased cult leader of earlier novels, thus drawing the twelve-novel series together as might be expected in this, the ultimate volume. Powell repeatedly has employed a mesmerizing circularity in his vast work by reintroducing topics and characters as leitmotifs, creating a tapestry of interwoven threads, a fascinating achievement. An example of such reprises is the reappearance of Kenneth Widmerpool, whom Nick had lost track of for nearly a decade, only to now find that Widmerpool had been appointed chancellor at a rather new English university, having apparently fully recovered from the political cloud years before when there were allegations of his having been involved in espionage for an Eastern European country. Again and again names familiar from past volumes reappear, often to report their demise, lending a sense of vast temporal sweep to the series. Indeed, by the end of this book, Widmerpool himself has died in a manner no less odd than his whole life.And yet, how is one to begin an attempt to sum up this remarkable series of novels? Specific anecdotes and episodes cannot capture the whole, with its grand sweep of history and its subtle probing of human psychology, relationships, and foibles. In his final volume, Powell has tied together his story, a story not only of fifty or more years of the twentieth century but also of a writer and his times, his friends and acquaintances, all serving to fill in a vast canvas in such a way that his world has come alive and lingers long after the reader has closed the last book and sits musing in his chair. Powell’s achievement has become more than an entertaining and extended tale; he has created and reflected a world and a society that, over the months spent reading all twelve novels, have become a part of the reader and his own experience, transforming the reader himself in ways that will remain, the reader having as a consequence become other than when he began. Powell ends with a kind of valedictory, but not one with a tidy end or even any true kind of end at all, rather with the felt sense that life inevitable goes on in all its unpredictability and circularity, for better and for ill, a continuing minuet truly aptly characterized as “A Dance to the Music of Time.”
And so the 12 novel cycle, named after Poussin's painting "A Dance To The Music of Time" and written and published over a 24 year period (1951-75), comes to an end. The Empire has fallen, Britain is somewhere around the time of the 3 Day Week in 1973, values seem to have been trampled on and debased. Widmerpool is unsurprisingly the main focus of this last novel, although in a rather gaudy, unconvincing way, seeing as he gets mixed up in a rather cartoonish cult. While this can serve to resonate against Dr Trelawney's (read, Aleister Crowley's) bittersweet appearance in an earlier novel (The Kindly Ones, No. 6), it seems a bit sensationalist. And that's saying something given what Widmerpool has already been forced through in the last few novels…The cycle is certainly imperfect, with a number of weak entries, including this last one, but as a whole gives a wonderful elegiac patchwork of a fallen world. It builds up a (generally) plausible setting in which connections, which were what maintained class distinctions in earlier times, now have subtler and less immediate or predictable results. Characters wander in and out, known in some way to Nick, and the threads holding together each novel tend to relate to artistic works of some description.This 12th and last novel in the cycle strives to paint the chaos of the late 1960s/early 1970s, but while there was plenty of chaos on which to focus in those years, the choices of targets fall rather flat. Nick Jenkins remains a commenter-on-others, discreet in his conversations (except for an extraordinary faux pas when he suggests that his niece is to marry her ex-landlord) and a connector for the literary, academic and political worlds. It's still highly readable, of course, and anyone still here by now is going to be keen on news of certain characters. But they are all dwarfed, still, by the boorish Widmerpool. It's just that the humiliations meted out on Widmerpool here seem to be rather unbelievable and rather overwrought.But all that aside, Jenkins puts it thus: tThe 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.And that, true enough, is transposed onto the messy whirlpool of Britain's 20th century, where the well-to-do are chased down by certain "interlopers" (like go-getter Odo Stevens) and pitied by themselves and aesthetes. Why read it? Because Powell found the means, rather like Richard Linklater in his film Boyhood, to link the hands of farflung years and give them a shared motive and added resonance. The clumsy elements are far outweighed by the keen eye and dry wit.
Do You like book Hearing Secret Harmonies (1983)?
Powell comes on with full force in 'Hearing Secret Harmonies,' letting the reader run into nearly all the characters from the twelve novels of 'Dance' who are still alive, while introducing strong new ones representing the youth movement of the 70s. The nefarious Scorpio Murtlock, leader of a wiccan and satanic cult stands out. Just as 'A Dance to the Music of Time' opens with the indelible image of Widmerpool, clumsy, overbearing, yet a force of life that can't be stopped, trudging up a road, it ends half a century and twelve books later with a vision of him, literally stripped down to no more than his cumbersome body, trudging up a road: 'I'm running, I'm running, I've got to keep it up.' The fact that he then collapses and dies doesn't diminish the persistence of that life-force, or lessen the absurd comedy of the moment. The reader is also allowed, now that narrator Nick Jenkins's presumed children are presumbably grown, glimpses of his marriage and home, perhaps a last gift in gratitude for the persistence of that reader. 'A Dance to the Music of Time' is a masterpiece of fiction that gives a picture of history more revealing than the history. To quote another unforgettable character, the profligate and Bohemian author X. Trapnel:'People think because a novel is invented, it isn’t true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel is invented, it is true. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they can’t include every single circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it down. His decision is binding. The biographer, even at his best, can be only tentative, empirical. The autobiographer, for his part, is imprisoned by his own egotism. He must always be suspect. In contrast with the other two, the novelist is god, creating his man, making him breathe and walk. The man, created in his own image, provides information about the god. In a sense you know more about Balzac and Dickens from their novels, then Rousseau and Casanova from their Confessions.'Highly recommended.
—Lars Guthrie
This book brings Anthony Powell's majestic twelve volume sequence, 'A Dance to the Music of Time' to a triumphant close.The sequence is clearly largely autobiographical, with narrator Nick Jenkins's life closely mirroring Powell's own, though, once again, despite the first person narration we learn precious little about the writer. His observations of his friends and acquaintances remain as acute and diverting as ever, though Jenkins himself remains an enigma.Kenneth (now Lord) Widmerpool is as odious as ever, though his immersion within a pseudo-religious cult definitely comes as a surprise. Newly introduced in this volume is the sinister Scorpio Murtlock who has an unbridled capacity to wreak havoc wherever he goes, and who is determined to become acquainted with Widmerpool for his own nefarious purposes.All the old favourites are here: J G Quiggin, Mark Members, Matilda Donners, Norman Chandler and even, fleetingly, Bithel, who had featured so humorously in "The Valley of Bones". This is not the strongest novel in the sequence, though that still leaves considerable scope for it to be a fine novel. It must, anyway, be difficult to bring such a magnum opus to a satisfying conclusion. Powell maintains his mastery of the plot, tying up a huge selection of long-running loose ends. I enjoyed re-reading this novel, and indeed the whole sequence, for the umpteenth time, though, as always, I felt saddened to have completed it.
—Ian Brydon
Certain books are age specific: not in a "Suitable for ages 7 and up" way; they just have to be read at the right time in life to truly resonate. Catcher in the Rye has, I think, to be read in one's adolesence; any older and the angst would just grate. On the other hand, I would say that Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time can't be read any younger than one's middle years. I don't think the way it captures so perfectly the unexpectedness of life's trajectories would make any sense to anyone younger. I look at where I am now, and where my peers in university are now, and I don't think any of us could have thought that we'd be where we are. I've seen people who were written off as mediocre go on to have exciting careers in New York. The wild child settled down to a very respectable conservative Christian marriage. On the other hand, the star student from a respectable family ended up embezzling money from his clients and after several years on the run is now in jail. A few people came out; childhood sweethearts got divorced; the boy-next-door best-possible catch had an affair and then moved on to sleeping with the interns. It's not as if I even followed any of these people's lives or that they were my closest friends. Some I read about in the papers (the embezzler), others were of the Foot-in-Mouth variety chance meeting (So, how are you and S doing? Oh, right, I'm so sorry to hear about the divorce. Er, so, nice weather we're having.), and others of course were the, OMG, did you hear about D? But that's how life is. We lead our own lives, hang out with our friends, go through our life changes and end up in places we never thought we would, see friends go through their own peculiar journeys, and hear about the many many others we never really kept in touch with. A Dance to the Music of Time captures that ebb and flow perfectly. At 20, you think you got it all worked out. At 40, you realise that nothing is ever truly worked out, and the best you can do is just keep up with the changes. I can't think of a better work to have read at this juncture of my life. I would truly love to have thrust it into my sweaty eager 20-year old hands with the urgent injunction to "Read it, just read it. This is what living is going to be like. Not all of it is going to be fun, and it isn't going to work out the way you think it will, but I promise you, the experience is all worth it." But the truth is, at 20 I wouldn't have got it. Now in my 40's, with some wryness and recognition, I do. I can't wait to see how I'll react when I read it again in my 50's and in my 60's.
—Whitaker
