A Helpful Critique
ABRAMS, ELLIOTT
A Helpful Critique The Novels of Anthony Powell By James Tucker Columbia. 192 pp. $12.00. Reviewed by Elliott Abrams Special Counsel to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan Since 1951, when the first...
...While the volumes generally unfold chronologically, they contain many excursions into the past...
...The point is psychological rather than sociological: Powell believes frantic efforts to modify the world can occasionally overshadow, perhaps even obliterate, the natural emotional life of the reformer...
...Ideas gradually acquire a cumulative impact, and characters almost acquire life...
...Although this view can be criticized as smug, it reflects Powell's conviction that those who seek vast social change are too often self-seekers...
...Still, throughout Dance the reader feels rather cut off from the everyday life of ordinary persons...
...But the novelist's attitude toward this overwhelming fact of life is ironic, not pessimistic...
...Reviewed by Elliott Abrams Special Counsel to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan Since 1951, when the first volume of his novel A Dance to the Music of Time appeared in England, Anthony Powell's critical and popular reputation have grown steadily...
...Yet Dance is not merely well-written and amusing, nor is it simply a collection of oharacter studies...
...A novel 12 volumes long, produced over a period of 24 years, inevitably presents obstacles for most readers: Some incidents and personae are certain to be forgotten...
...In short, though Tucker is a great admirer, he is a balanced and thoughtful one...
...Throughout Dance, too, there is a "flight from immediacy" when dealing with emotion: The narrator's undeviating aloofness and neutrality at times try our liking for him...
...The more complicated the web of relationships between the characters grows, the more we follow them through the decades, the more compelling the story becomes...
...Time does not move in a straight line, it embraces a complex network of developments, as Powell's technical mastery makes us keenly aware...
...This roman-fleuve, whose twelfth and final part appeared in 1975, has placed him firmly in the first rank of modern novelists...
...James Tucker's enthusiastic critique of Powell briefly discusses his five earlier works of fiction, but appropriately concentrates on the masterpiece...
...The study is therefore a timely evaluation and should also prove especially useful to the many new fans Powell is currently winning on this side of the Atlantic...
...As for the plot, Powell unquestionably pushes coincidence to the limits of credibility...
...Tucker sparks the memory, and simultaneously reminds us of the thousands of ways event and character are made to dance to the music of time in Anthony Powell's superb achievement...
...Tucker is best when explaining how the author's extraordinary command of technique reinforces his examination of time...
...Hailed in England as the finest comic novel since those of Dickens, Dance is a first-person narrative beginning in the 1920s and ending in the 1970s...
...That is not to say Powell is without failings...
...The length of the project offers—and he seizes—marvelous opportunities to develop character and theme slowly and convincingly...
...The proper reaction, we are shown, is one of moderation, of "tolerance, humanity, decency," as Tucker puts it...
...It is chiefly, as its title explains, a dissertation on time: how it changes us, and how much (or how little) we can forsee or evade its inexorable movement...
...A work the size of Dance—spanning half a century, involving hundreds of characters and thousands of pages—is exceptionally risky for an author...
...He does not counsel what would amount to a Sisyphean struggle against the forces of time, for they do not always destroy, though they continually transform...
...Tucker discusses some technical problems as well...
...The measure of Powell's art is that he succeeds in carrying it off...
...Tucker notes the narrow social range of the novel, which deals almost exclusively with what he calls the "well-born, well-off, and well-educated...
...It includes a short analysis of each of the 12 segments, individual chapters on such matters as style, narrative method and theme, and a handy 36-page "Who's Who" guide to the story's more than 250 characters...
...On the positive side, the brevity and conversational tone of Tucker's book will be precisely what many Powellites are looking for...
...And Powell's "elegantly deadpan" style, as Tucker rightly points out, is perfectly suited to his fine dissection of the political, moral and sexual foibles of the English upper class...
...Moreover, as Tucker cautions, Powell's stance contains an element of snobbery...
...Because the author knows this group most intimately, he produces a remarkable record of its tribulations .ind transformations in the 20th century...
...The novelist's elegant style is perfectly right for his ironic and somewhat detached stance, but occasionally it drifts into what Tucker calls "mandarin"—a form of overwriting that makes Powell seem like a man "on the run from a plain statement...
...For Powell there is no doubt that "Time rules...
...Sentence structure serves the same purpose: Powell frequently uses the colon as a bridge between a statement of fact and a comment upon it, a syntactical device that facilitates perspective and evaluation...
...Erdleigh, deserves more attention than it is given...
...Powell's use of the occult, for instance, manifested through people like the mysterious Mrs...
...Many points are touched upon too lightly...
...Yet The Novels of Anthony Powell is not destined to be the definitive criticism...
...Excluding Tucker's "Who's Who," there are just 115 pages on the Dance...
...Jenkins, the narrator, skips back and forth across the years in his observations and reflections, placing everything in focus and forcing us to do likewise...
...Strong efforts at individual advancement, and particularly Left-wing politics, are caricatured by the novelist, while a resignation to one's social position is consistently upheld as a favorable trait...
Vol. 60 • February 1977 • No. 5
