As I believe
I’ve mentioned before, since I began this reading project, I get asked
regularly what book I am reading and what I think of it. Earlier this week, I met a friend for lunch,
and as we were leaving, she nodded to the book in my hand and asked what I was
reading. “The Kindly Ones, by
Anthony Powell,” I said, holding up the book.
“Hmm,” she replied, which I took to mean that she had never heard of it
(before this list, neither had I). “Is
it good?” And for a moment I was stuck
on what to answer, because as I was about to say “Excellent!” I realized that
she might take the recommendation seriously and seek out the book, which made
me consider whether I would recommend the book to her. I don’t know enough about her reading tastes
to be able to predict if she would enjoy the type of story that Powell is telling
in this novel and the series of which it is a part. My hesitance had to do with how unusual A
Dance to the Music of Time is as a series.
The twelve
books, published between 1951 and 1975, are an attempt at an unusual way to
escape the tyranny of “plot” in writing a novel. Here’s a passage from an interview with
Powell that I quoted before in which he explains the impetus for the series:
Well, this is rather a long story. You see I haven't any great talent for inventing plots, and indeed it seems to me that even the best writers are inclined to churn out the same stuff in eighty thousand words, although it's dressed up in a different way. And so I thought that there would be all sorts of advantages for a writer like myself to write a really long novel in which plots and characters could be developed, which would cover this question of not doing short-term plots—doing rather larger ones, in fact.
So when I
explained to my friend that the novel was the sixth novel in a series of twelve
that followed the narrator and the various people that come in and out of his
life over a 40 year period from college days, through World War II, to post war
Britain, she looked about as excited about the novel as she was about the
pickle left sitting on her sandwich plate after lunch. And who can blame her? It does sound rather dry and uninteresting,
and after I read the first book, A Question of Upbringing, I was not
exactly excited to pick up future volumes.
But what is
achieved over time is nothing short of mesmerizing for me. You never know which characters will crop up
in that particular novel, or which new characters will be coming back later. Characters you had long forgotten about
return in unexpected ways, and because Powell is playing the long game, the
characters can grow and evolve and have contradictions. In fact, Nick Jenkins, our narrator, is keen
to simultaneously attempt to sketch a character and to let you know that he may
not know what he’s talking about, because life and people are complicated. At one point, Moreland, Nick’s musician
friend, meets Templer, an old school friend of Nick’s, and Nick can read
Moreland’s attitude toward Templer: “Moreland could never get used to the fact
that most people – in this particular case, Templer – lead lives in which the
arts play no part whatsoever. That is
perhaps an exaggeration of Moreland’s attitude.
All the same, he always found difficulty in accustoming himself to
complete aesthetic indifference.” In a
300 page novel, an author can be in a hurry to define a character as quickly as possible, falling on stereotypes and characterization to do a lot of the work of
character-building. In the leisurely
storytelling that Powell adopts in this series, he has the time to admit that
his attempt at characterization “is perhaps an exaggeration.” In another case, he’ll follow up a brief
analysis with “at least those were the reasons attributed by his brothers and
sisters,” admitting that he doesn’t actually have any ability to look into the
soul of another human being. And human
beings are exactly what Powell seems to be able to create in his method. This series is as close as you can get to
watching life itself unfold under the illuminating light of art. It is as grand an epic as Lord of the Rings,
but it is the epic of life itself, common, everyday life.
Each
individual volume tries to capture a slightly different stage in life, and
Powell unifies the smaller stories through thematic concerns at that stage of
life. In The Kindly Ones, Nick is in his
early thirties, married, with a baby on the way and World War II looming like a
dark cloud threatening to let loose a torrent without a moment’s notice. Nick, who works as a writer, has a hard time
concentrating on art or his job with all the global concerns, and the novel
focuses on the dissolution of fragile peaces and uneasy allies. The analogies for Europe’s strife are found
in the marriages and love triangles that dot the stories unfolded in the four
chapters of the novel: Albert, Billson,
& Bracey; Templer, Stepney, & Betty; Donners, Matilda, & Moreland;
Nick, Jean, & Duport; Donners, Widmerpool, & Duport. With these shifting relationships running
parallel with Hitler’s signing a pact with Russia, there is also the theme of “the
man of action,” who can be either one looking for adventure or one not
unwilling to take an adventure presented to him. The question of whether or not there will be
war makes the United Kingdom a character in itself; will it be a man of action
who takes matters into its hands and accepts the “adventure” of war that is
thrust upon it?
Some volumes
in The Dance to the Music of Time are more gripping and more rewarding than
others, and The Kindly Ones is one of the most engaging so far. Powell has a gentle hand and finds humor and
pain in the subtlest places. The story
feels focused and unified, and the shadow of war is artfully portrayed so that the
simple doings of these disparate folks feel like the inhalation and exhalation
of life itself. I don’t know if I’d
recommend the series to any of my friends, but that's only because I imagine such a large undertaking would not appeal to many people. Nevertheless, wading through these novels is
an experience that I am very glad to have undergone.
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