A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement, Summer

Review of At Lady Molly's here:

http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/recent-reads-at-lady-mol... ( )

Onweerstaanbare humor,spitante dialogen, aangrijpende metaforen, meesterstukken van melancholische sfeerschepping en dit alles in het mooiste Engels dat ik ooit las... Maar het is vooral het soort werk dat je nooit meer loslaat. Het is hierbij heel moeilijk uit te leggen waarom precies: het is niet echt en spannend verhaal, er gebeurt soms tientallen bladzijden weinig of niets. En toch weet je dat Stringham, Widmerpool, Uncle Giles en vele anderen in je leven voor goed binnengedrongen zijn. Literatuur in zijn fijnste en meest verfijnde vorm. ( )

The "second movement" of A Dance to the Music of Time is a collection of three novellas: At Lady Molly's, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, and The Kindly Ones. Set in England during the years just before World War II, this dance includes many characters familiar to readers of the first movement. The protagonist, Nick Jenkins, is now an established writer working for a film company. In At Lady Molly's, Anthony Powell sets the stage by introducing readers to several new characters who will figure prominently in Nick's life. They include the Tolland family (several brothers & sisters, and their stepmother), and Chips Lovell, a professional colleague whose literary role is to introduce Nick to other people and situations. Social themes are introduced as well, particularly political developments in Germany, and society's preoccupation with psychoanalysis during this time period.

While the first novella has a seemingly endless cast, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant focuses on Nick, his new wife, and their close friends the Morelands. But the dance continues, with familiar characters moving in and out of their lives, including Nick's school friends Widmerpool, Templer, and Stringham. Finally in The Kindly Ones, Powell begins in Nick's childhood, providing a complete "back story" on certain characters and lending new context to their role in the dance.

There is very little "action" in these novels. Instead, there are a myriad of social situations where the dialogue moves the action along. For example, one character will tell a story about another, and in this way we learn of marriages, affairs, deaths, and so on. One of the intriguing aspects of this series is the way Powell conveys the passing of time. It's such a critical element, and yet is only expressed indirectly. Months and years are never mentioned, and rarely do we know someone's age. We get a sense of elapsed time primarily through historical or cultural cues (i.e.; the Abdication), and only occasionally by specific mention (i.e.; "several years passed ...").

I also love Powell's turns of phrase, like this bit:
She was immaculately free from any of the traditional blemishes of a mother-in-law; agreeable always; entertaining; even, in her own way, affectionate; but always a little alarming: an elegant, deeply experienced bird -- perhaps a bird of prey -- ready to sweep down and attack from the frozen mountain peaks upon which she preferred herself to live apart.

And, at the close of Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, this powerful paragraph:
I thought of his recent remark about the Ghost Railway. He loved these almost as much as he loved mechanical pianos. Once, at least, we had been on a Ghost Railway together at some fun fair or on a seaside pier; slowly climbing sheer gradients, sweeping with frenzied speed into inky depths, turning blind corners from which black, gibbering bogeys leapt to attack, rushing headlong towards iron-studded doors, threatened by imminent collision, fingered by spectral hands, moving at last with dreadful, ever increasing momentum towards a shape that lay across the line.

A Dance to the Music of Time is a unique work, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series. ( )

The "Second Movement" of Anthony Powell's novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, contains three volumes that continue the story of Nicholas Jenkins and his acquaintances and family. The period is between the two World Wars and the setting is London and some parts of the English countryside. At Lady Molly's (1957) focuses on Jenkins' memories of his early childhood and his present experiences with the Tollands, a wide-ranging family with some royal distinction. Like Proust's study of the Guermantes family in In Search of Lost Time, detailed destriptions of Tolland family events with their overt and covert rules of thought and behavior are given by Nick as a mostly passive observer.

The second volume, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960), focuses on relationships pre and post marriage and Jenkins' consideration of the nature of love. He begins to see love and marriage as unpredictable aspects of the dance of time. The one consistent factor in relationships is the cycling of interaction with intimates even if years go by between meetings. As time continues after separation, only residual aspects of love remain when people meet again. The memories, though, are still charged with strong time bound emotions.

The Kindly Ones (1962) is the final volume of the second movement. It concerns Nick's observations of the frequency of divorce among his friends and family members and how the formerly married individuals get out of step with him and other people. Unlike the feelings associated with relationships that do not lead to marriage, divorce seems to cause the characters to permanently spin out of their former social circles. They can return to the dance to the music of time, but only temporarily and with limited commitment.

Powell's epic work continues in the second movement with the same unhurried narrative, with his observer Nick becoming more reliable as he matures. As I indicated in my review of the three novels in the first movement, this is an excellent continuing series and I look forward (with regret for what I will lose) to reading the second half of the saga. ( )

I found it a bit of a slog. Some interesting happenings but I kept wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. ( )