Book Blogger Hop

With all your reading get more reading, understanding will follow. The connections made through the "book blogger hop" provide a new dimension in my reading life, so I participate and welcome those who share my love for reading and, perhaps, some of the books that I read and enjoy. More than ever I find that I am rereading books; currently The Brothers Karamazov, The Odyssey, Time Regained - the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, and Brideshead Revisited. That doesn't prevent me from reading books, new to me in the sense that I have not read them previously, including; Recapitulation by Wallace Stegner, Cakes and Ale by Maugham, and Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett. There is room for more books and reading the delightful literary blogs of others helps my not so limited imagination expand with wonder at the treasure trove available. Now, back to reading.

The Dance Begins

It has been about a decade since I read Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but I still remember the power of the novel and the discussions I had with the small group that read it with me in our University of Chicago Basic Program class.
This memory was rekindled by my recent reading of A Question of Upbringing, the beginning section of A Dance to the Music of Time.
Written by Anthony Dymoke Powell, CH, CBE (December 21, 1905–March 28, 2000) who was an English novelist best known for this twelve-volume work, published between 1951 and 1975. Powell was regarded by such writers as Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis as one of the greatest British novelists of the 20th century, and has been called the English equivalent of Marcel Proust. Powell's major work has remained in print continuously, and has been the subject of TV and radio dramatizations. He apparently wrote his lengthy novel, or series of novels, with Proust in mind; however his approach to memory and time is more analytical and classical than Proust. He said the following in his memoirs, "I had been turning over in my mind the possibility of writing a novel composed of a fairly large number of volumes, just how many could not be decided at the outset. A long sequence seemed to offer all sorts of advantages, among them release from the re-engagement every year or so of the same actors and extras hanging about for employment at the stagedoor of one's fantasy." (To Keep the Ball Rolling: Faces in My Time (Heinemann, 1980))


The opening section of the Dance introduces the reader to four young men at Eton on the verge of setting out in life which for the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, and one other, Stringham - though only briefly, will mean going up to Oxford. The narrator's other two friends, Templer and Widmerpool, go in different directions but you never doubt that they will meet again over the course of this lengthy series of novels.
Powell succeeds in taking you back to a time and place, Britain and France in the 1920s, that no longer exists, describing a class structure and culture that is unfamiliar to this reader who grew up in the Midwest. He does this with a prose style and a structure that, through episodes in the lives of four boys on the verge of adulthood, slowly builds a story that seems very true to life. These episodes, many of which are somewhat comic, proceed in a way that has a cumulative effect building your familiarity with, and ultimately your interest in, the lives of these young men, their families and friends, and the impact of history on those lives. The evolving nature of the story line can easily be seen as representing the "dance" of the series title. By the time the narrator says goodbye to his Uncle Giles at the end of A Question of Upbringing you have become engaged with these individuals, their loves and dreams for the future.


A Dance to the Music of Time - First Movement by Anthony Powell. University of Chicago Press, 1995 (1951-5)
Images: 1) The Dance to the Music of Time by Nicholas Poussin. Wallace Collection, London.
2) Aerial view of Oxford.

Evelyn Waugh

On this day in 1966 the English novelist Evelyn Waugh died at the age of sixty-three. Even those commentators who disagreed with Waugh's views and behavior thought him the best stylist of his day -- a writer, said Gore Vidal, of "prose so chaste that at times one longs for a violation of syntax to suggest that its creator is fallible, or at least part American." Many regard Waugh's earlier satires -- Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, Put Out More Flags -- as his greatest achievement; some prize the elegiac Brideshead Revisited; many prefer the less-filtered Waugh of the posthumously published letters and diaries. In different measure, all three categories combine the master stylist and the arch-conservative for our amusement and alarm: "Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable" and "The only human relationships I abide are intimacy, formality and servility." Personally, Decline and Fall is still my favorite of all even though I admire tremendously the beauty and achievement of Brideshead Revisited. My disagreement with the philosophical point of view expressed in that book outweighs the stylistic achievement in my mind. I plan to read the Sword of Honour trilogy and look forward to more pleasure from the pen of this master.

Brideshead Revisited

In his letter of 7 January 1945 Evelyn Waugh wrote to Nancy Mitford that (regarding Lady Marchmain) "no I am not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God." Nancy, in a subsequent letter (17 January 1945) commented that she was "immune from" the "subtle" Catholic propaganda supposedly in the novel. Well, I guess that I am in Nancy's camp, recognizing the excellence of this G.E.C. (Great English Classic) and in my own way fascinated by the role of God in it, I remain unmoved by any hidden proselytizing (perhaps too harsh a word). Brideshead Revisited is possibly Evelyn Waugh's greatest novel and certainly one of the best English novels of the twentieth century. The demonstration of the battle between the culture of a civilization dying in the aftermath of World War I and the modern "hollow" culture of the the twentieth century plays out in this drama of a family and their estate, Brideshead. The journey of Charles Ryder, who guides us through this story, from his first encounter with Sebastian Flyte and his first visit to Brideshead keeps the reader rapt until the final pages, when under the shadow of the Second World War Charles returns to Brideshead for a final visit. His growth through encounters with the Flyte children and their mother and father plays out against the background of the Brideshead and all that for which it stands. Waugh uses comic relief in a judicious manner to lighten the way for the reader in a way that keeps the serious themes of the novel from becoming overwhelming. This classic novel also provides a beautiful depiction of the experience of going up to Oxford during the 1920s.