The Valley of Bones - Book VII of A Dance to the Music of Time

With book VII in the twelve-part series of A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell brings us into the beginning of the war years.  It is early 1940, and Nick Jenkins, our narrator, has joined the British army where he begins his service as a platoon leader.   

The trouble with an epic tale that attempts to kick off the shackles of traditional plot is that it’s very hard to feel the import of any particular occurrence.  In fact, the whole idea that happenings have import at all is challenged by Powell’s series.  In a traditional novel, there are arcs in both plot and theme that shape the events.  In this series, Powell replaces those arcs with the crossing of paths.  The unifying force of the novel is the cast of characters that dance in and out of the narrator’s life.  As I’ve said in my other blogs about this series, this makes for both very interesting reading as well as  what sometimes feels at least like pointless reading.  Will all this add up to anything?  Is it critical in the long run to remember who is who and who did what?

Naturally, some of the books in the series are more riveting than others.  The Valley of Bones is one of the less riveting books.  It feels like Act One of a larger drama about to unfold throughout the three books of the third “movement” of the series (the edition I have groups the series into four sets of three and calls each set a “movement”).  The stage has been set for army life and for a new group of characters to come in and out of Nick’s life.    As for actual doings, not much that is exciting transpires.  Nick meets Jimmy Brent and learns about why Jean left Nick those many years ago.  There is a military exercise.  Nick is set up in Aldershot at the Anti-Gas school.  His brother-in-law Robert Toland dies in the war.  Priscilla is hit on by one of Nick’s military acquaintances, Odo Stevens.  Charles Stringham’s mother has left Buster in favor of Norman Chandler.  Dicky Umfraville becomes engaged to Frederica Budd.  I feel like I’m spreading gossip more than summarizing events in a novel.

To me, the weight of each book exists in relation to each other.  I find it hard to imagine someone reading the books as they were individually published over the twenty-plus years it took to write them.  Each book can technically stand on its own, but I can’t imagine what an uninteresting read it was when read by itself.  The writing is admirable and intelligent, and Nick is a fun guide through the world, but each book on its own has only a few wow moments and very little narrative drive.

So what’s Powell doing in this seventh book?  I don’t know.  The title, The Valley of Bones, is taken from a sermon delivered at the end of the first chapter.  Ironically the titular valley is not about those fallen in battle, but about the breathing of life into men already dead who will come together and build up an army.  Both life and death are sewn together in the one title—but what that adds up to, I can’t tell you.  Are the men here given new life by the coming of the war?  I don’t think so.  Is this about the romanticism of war in the early years?  That seems more likely, especially since Nick does not find army life especially agreeable to him. 

Age seems to be a recurring theme in the novel.  Nick is older than he should ideally be to join the army, and he engages either with other men in the same boat where age is concerned, like Captain Gwatkin, or with youthful men full of energy and zealousness, like Kedward.  Why is this age stuff here, beyond the general demands of realism?  Just as the war thrusts Britain into a new age, are Nick and his generation transitioning into a new stage of life, the middle age?

The same issues of class seem to be at play, as the army elevates those business minded individuals like Widmerpool, Sunny Farebrother, and the staff of erstwhile bankers.  Those who were once miners are now foot soldiers, however, and do not seem to be flying up the ranks.  There is movement in some quarters then and stagnation in others.

I’m not even at all sure that Powell thinks in terms of themes, though he does seem to know how to milk symbols and meaningful moments, so I can’t help believing that he is “saying” something in the end.  But I’m afraid I won’t have a handle on that until, appropriately enough, the end.