At The Millions, Marjorie Hakala gives seven goof reasons why you should read Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. (Our friend Levi pops up in the comments, and notes that narrator Nick Jenkins's oeuvre appears in the Invisible Library.)

Powell’s portrayal of servants is quite funny, actually. At the time when these books were being written, P.G. Wodehouse was already making virtuosic use of the comic possibilities of the English serving class, most famously in the form of the hyper-competent Jeeves. Powell cut against the Wodehouse grain by making his servant characters only middling in competence and by having them intrude in the life of the household at the most inconvenient times, highlighting the strangeness of two entirely different categories of person living in a house together. The aforementioned butler works for an upper-class Communist, who doesn’t want a butler or really believe in having butlers, but can’t manage his enormous house without one, and there’s a sadly droll tone to their interactions.

(Image from the Telegraph.)

Lazy Literary Gleanings™

Levi comes right out and says it: "There's a reason this is my favorite book in the world, folks; I'll be reading and re-reading it for a long, long time to come."

Read his two posts on re-reading Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time.

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Two excellent things from the new issue of Triple Canopy: David Levine's "Matter of Rothko" and Claire Barliant's "The Hanging at Mankato."

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Wow: Stephen Burt has a great review of my old teacher Bruce Smith's latest book of poems, Devotions, in the NYT.

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Not done with this yet, but Douglas Wolk's "Comic-Con Strikes Again" is really good. It's an Amazon Single. (Has anyone read the Vollmann Amazon Single?)(Does anyone read this blog anymore?)

Notes

1. There's an octopus that will stuff six of its tentacles into a hole in the ground and extend the two remaining tentacles as far as they will go, giving the illusion that it's a poisonous banded sea snake.

2. I never read Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, but I clipped a review from the TLS. I uncovered this review last night, while looking for something else. I realized I never read the review, either. (This was about three years ago.) Should I just throw it out? Or is it telling me something?

3. Andrew Leland, member of a Dance to the Music of Time book club (!), has some thoughts on Powell and Powellians:

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.

“But,” our narrator adds, “surely the pointed wit was just what did survive?” And who now reads Powell? A weirdly vocal and large group, it seems. The pleasure of Powell is in his humor, and his humor is entirely social. “Wit was just the quality he brought to bear with such remarkable effect.”

4. Paul Collins on Barbara Follett, in Lapham's Quarterly. This is how you write a lede!:

In a New Hampshire apartment during the winter of 1923, this typewritten notice was fastened squarely against a closed door:

NOBODY MAY COME INTO THIS ROOM IF THE DOOR IS SHUT TIGHT (IF IT IS SHUT NOT QUITE LATCHED IT IS ALL RIGHT) WITHOUT KNOCKING. THE PERSON IN THIS ROOM IF HE AGREES THAT ONE SHALL COME IN WILL SAY “COME IN,” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND IF HE DOES NOT AGREE TO IT HE WILL SAY “NOT YET, PLEASE,” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. THE DOOR MAY BE SHUT IF NOBODY IS IN THE ROOM BUT IF A PERSON WANTS TO COME IN, KNOCKS AND HEARS NO ANSWER THAT MEANS THERE IS NO ONE IN THE ROOM AND HE MUST NOT GO IN.

REASON. IF THE DOOR IS SHUT TIGHT AND A PERSON IS IN THE ROOM THE SHUT DOOR MEANS THAT THE PERSON IN THE ROOM WISHES TO BE LEFT ALONE.

5. Richard Nash talks about William Poundstone's Priceless in his "Year of Reading" roundup at The Millions.

6. Two more pieces to write...

A convention of blobs

Stringham's letters from Kenya reported that he liked the place better than he had expected. They contained drawings of people met there, and of a horse he sometimes rode. He could not really draw at all, but used a convention of blobs and spidery lines effective in expressing the appearance of persons and things. One of these was of Buster selling a car; another of Buster playing polo.[...]
—Powell, A Question of Upbringing

Species of spaces

Jenny has a thoughtful, well-argued, and zestily written post about attempting—and failing—to get into the spirit of Anthony Powell (thanks to U. Chicago Press's free e-book offer)...and yet I couldn't disagree more!

I had just (like 15 minutes before) been reading a chunk of the first volume, A Question of Upbringing, on my little ipod* before seeing Jenny's post, and was feeling very lucky to be re-entering Powell's universe. (Can't quite recall when I finished the twelfth and last volume, but it has been well over a decade since I read Question.) The passage she quotes with irritation brought me great pleasure, as did many others; in fact, pre-reading-Jenny's-post, I was trying to figure out how to copy and paste the following little bit to blog. It's Nick Jenkins, talking to his house master Le Bas; Jenkins and his roommate Stringham have just received a surprise visit from Jenkins's black-sheep relative Uncle Giles, traces of whose smoking can still be detected.

'I am afraid my uncle came to see me, sir. He lit a cigarette without thinking.'
'Where is your uncle?'
'I have just been getting Cattle to let him out of the house.'
'How did he get in?'
'I think he came in at the front door, sir. I am not sure.'
I watched Stringham, from where he stood behind Le Bas, make a movement as of one climbing a rope, following these gestures with motions of his elbows to represent the beating of wings, both dumb-shows no doubt intended to demonstrate alternative methods of ingress possible employed by Uncle Giles.

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Powell's pre-war, pre-Dance novels are decidedly comic novels (Afternoon Men is my favorite, but all are pretty good); Dance isn't, but it's full of passages like this—I can't get enough! I love in particular the way it's choreographed, the way we get (almost by surprise) a very particular sense of space: We're focused on the dialogue between Nick and an irate Le Bas, while in another part of the room, visible only to Nick (and us), Stringham is goofing around. (The "Dance," appropriately, is full of such choreographies, particularly in the numerous party scenes.)

I also like how it's not 100% clear to us what Stringham is trying to get across—the humor reaches full impact with the narrator's explanation, which is itself hilarious in its ornateness: "dumb-shows intended to demonstrate alternative methods of ingress."

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*This is a story in itself...

December interlude

You know how I'm always talking about Anthony Powell? Like, I can't shut up about him?

Now's your chance to read the first novel in his Dance to the Music of Time sequence/meganovel as a free e-book, for this month only, thanks to the University of Chicago Press. The entire series is being reissued electronically (and of course you can still buy the physical books, in four omnibus volumes.) Amazon seems to be the easiest way to take advantage of this offer.

Read more about it from Levi, who is conveniently wearing both his UChicago Press hat and his Powell-championing hat!

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Next step: Getting Afternoon Men, A View to a Death, and the other pre-Dance Powells back into print!

Reshuffling

As the forlorn purlieus of the railway-station end of the town gave place to colleges, reverie, banal if you like, though eminently Burtonesque, turned towards the relatively high proportion of persons known pretty well at an earlier stage of life, both here and elsewhere, now dead, gone off their rocker, withdrawn into states of existence they–or I–had no wish to share. The probability was that even without cosmic upheaval some kind of reshuffle has to take place halfway through life, a proposition borne out by the autobiographies arriving thick and fast—three or four at a time at regular intervals—for review in one of the weeklies. At this very moment my bag was weighed down by several of these volumes, to be dealt with in time off from the seventeenth century [work on a study of Robert Burton]: Purged Not in Lethe...A Stockbroker in Sandals...Slow on the Feather...Moss off a Rolling Stone...chronicles of somebody or other's individual fate, on the whole unenthralling enough, except insomuch as every individual's story has its enthralling aspect, though the essential pivot was usually omitted or obscured by most autobiographers. —Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room

This line was in my head all day

Reverting to the university at forty, one immediately recaptured all the crushing melancholy of the undergraduate condition. —Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room

Chin music

"But why do you wear a beard?"

Zouch said: "That is the second time in five minutes that I have been asked that question. I'll tell you. It's because I think it suits me."

"Do you?"

"Don't you?"

"No."

Zouch said: "I expect that is only because you are not used to beards. They can look very distinguished really. And, by the way, it isn't because I've got a weak chin. I happen to have a very good chin."

—Anthony Powell, From a View to a Death

Byssine days

"And I say, by the same token, don't get huffy, but why do you wear a beard?"

"Because I like the feel of it," said Zouch.

He had often been asked the question before and was quite prepared for it. He sometimes even welcomed it as a good opportunity for describing himself to people from his own point of view. But now he had a growing perceptivity that his byssine days were drawing to a close and that with a newly acquired social consciousness he would soon do better with bare cheeks. He could sense that change was in the air. A change for the better. But still while he wore a beard it was his duty to stick up for it.

—Anthony Powell, From a View to a Death

Ivy and Anthony

"Ivy Compton-Burnett embodied a quite unmodified pre-1914 personality. Her jewellery managed never to look like jewellery but, on her, seemed hieratic insignia." —Anthony Powell

(Via LM Thos.)

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And Levi has some thoughts on the Anthony Powell Society...Apparently there's a collection of writings on AP's Dance by high school students(!). Here's what Nick Birns has to say:

But reading Dance so early will give these young women and men important gifts to have at their disposal throughout their lives, a gift that will never stop giving. They will have a stock of archetypes with which to associate acquaintances. When they have to talk about current politics as a way of breaking the social ice, they will reap the humour of the resemblance to uttering “It seems the nationalists have reached Peking” in 1928. They will learn how to deal unflappably with the wide range of preposterous situations, all the while facing melancholy ones with poise and resolution, having been partially made immune to the depredations of the world’s Blackheads and Widmerpools and Pamelas and Murtlocks, and made receptive to the joys of the world’s Stringhams, Morelands, Barnbys, and Umfravilles.

Annals of Facial Hair, III

In this [mirror] Zouch he examined his face, wondering what sort of an impression he would make when he arrived. Not too good a one, he felt, if the mirror was to be relied upon. He sat on the edge of the great upholstery, leaning forward, trying to discount the elongating tendency of the glass and the havoc that it played with his beard. Twenty-nine next year, he thought. The V comprised by the lapels of his coat and enclosing his shirt, collar and tie was all right. It had that touch of ingenuousness that was expected of a painter. His shoes, vast golfing brogues with hobnails, were all right too. It was the beard that he was least certain about, but it had served him well in the past and he saw no reason why it should not do so again. —Anthony Powell, From a View to a Death

TNCOM, #8

8. They have invented an entirely new form of boredom, like the worst moments of being in the boy scouts at one's preparatory school. —Anthony Powell, Venusberg

(Via Levi)

Parkiana for October 2009

I. My J.G. Ballard appreciation, in the form of an abecedary, is in this weekend's Los Angeles Times. Alas, we couldn't fit the entries for letters F, M, S, and W, so I include them here—that's right, this is a DISAMBIGUATION EXCLUSIVE™! (This whole setup reminds me of the end of Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe, where the abecedary is revealed to be incomplete because "On September 24, 1994, federal operatives, acting under the authority of the Punitive Confiscation Act, sized Chapter Five manuscript entries for the letters B, E, H, J, K, L, N, O, P, Q, R, U, and X.") Many thanks to my editors for letting me write the piece in this form in the first place!

Flight
Flight enabled and denied haunts these pages. In “The Air Disaster,” the “world’s largest airliner,” holding a thousand passengers, crashes near Acapulco, and though people think it landed in the sea, one intrepid journalist, acting on a hunch, heads to a remote mountain village instead. But his hunger for a scoop colors his judgment, and he finds himself in a hell of grotesque misunderstanding.

Man
Some story titles: “The Overloaded Man” (1961), “The Subliminal Man” (1963), “The Illuminated Man” (1964), “The Impossible Man” (1966).

Science fiction
Places where most of these stories appeared: Science Fantasy, New Worlds, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, Worlds of If, Argosy, Anticipations, Dangerous Visions.

Wave IX
Poetry journal edited by Paul Ransom, narrator of “Studio 5, The Stars,” featuring products of the VT. (See Vermilion Sands.)

II. I wrote a brief appreciation of Renata Adler's Speedboat for a cool little book called City Secrets Books: The Essential Insider's Guide (Fang Duff Kahn), a gathering of similar appreciations of interesting (and mostly obscure) titles. How obscure? Thornton Wilder's...The Cabala. Patricia Highsmith's...Edith's Diary. Jonathan Franzen's..."Erika's Imports." E.B. White's...The Fox of Peapack and Other Poems. Plus stuff I have somewhere but have never read (Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept...no, not that Elizabeth Smart), stuff by writers whose other stuff I like (Robert Kelly's The Flowers of Unceasing Coincidence—"The shape of the whole thing...is that of a rhizome, i.e. a non-hierarchical space, a burrow where you, the can go to earth for as long as little as you like"), stuff that I've mentioned on this blog within the past couple of weeks (Chuck Wachtel's Joe the Engineer), stuff I truly have never heard of, authorwise and titlewise (Otto Lilienthal's 1889 book Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation, anyone? Giovanni Paolo Marana's 1683 Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy?), and enough of my all-time favorites (William Boyd's Any Human Heart, Powell's Dance of course, Todd McEwen's Who Sleeps With Katz [!!?!?!], Jonathan Coe's The Winshaw Legacy, Rachel Ingalls's Mrs. Caliban, Nigel Dennis's Cards of Identity) to make me believe that this gathering has some basis in reality. And where else can you read writers like John Crowley on Paul Park (no relation!), Carole Maso on The Pillow Book, Gary Shetyngart on Mordecai Richler? Wait...Buck Henry on Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress?? Is this book for real?

Friday cogitatin'

Levi quotes Phillip Lopate on Sontag:

Sontag felt the big game was fiction. And that’s where you win the Nobel Prize. You don’t win it for writing essays. That’s understandable and that would’ve been great had she been a great fiction writer. Some people can do both, but she lacked a deep sympathy for other people—which is okay if you’re a critic because you don’t have to be that empathetic if you’re a critic, you just have to know what you think about something. And she lacked, for the most part, a sense of humor. It’s hard to be a great novelist without those two things.

...and it gets him thinking about Powell, friendship, humor, life, novels...and I agree!

xoxo,
WLB

(World's Laziest Blogger)

PS Here are some other recent Levi posts on Powell.

For Levi Stahl

Wednesday, 22 August [1984]
John A. Howard, Secretary of the Ingersoll Foundation, rang at 4.30 pm to say that I am, after all, to receive the T.S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing, notwithstanding the fact of not being prepared to travel to Chicago to collect it. I seem to have acted like someone who declares: 'I would not go to Chicago for Ten Thousand Pounds' (in fact somewhat more owing to the exchange). In palmier days I should have liked to see Chicago, a city which always sounds rather beautiful by its lake. Also Chicagoans encountered often seem rather agreeable. The trouble of such jaunts is the horrors of airports, combined with being these days unable to drink except in extreme moderation at parties, of which no doubt there would have been a spate.

—Anthony Powell, Journals

"Afternoon" delight

I. Have been scrutinizing an old favorite, Anthony Powell's Afternoon Men. Some quotes:

It occurred to him to begin writing a novel, but his brain was almost at a standstill and it would be a mistake to make a false start.

The aura of journalism's lower slopes hung around him like a vapour.

Fotheringham said: 'He's one of those brilliant men whose mind has become a complete blank.'
'Is he?'
'You can imagine what good company he is.'
'Yes, indeed.'
'All the brains and understanding there and never the least danger that they are going to become a nuisance.'
'Wonderful.'

II.
Taylor’s richly detailed work also calls attention to two breezy, auspicious first novels about the Bright Young People that are unfortunately out of print: Nancy Mitford’s “Highland Fling” and Anthony Powell’s “Afternoon Men.” Mitford was on the group’s periphery, and her book has much of the charm of “Vile Bodies”; Powell, a sometime member, shares Waugh’s piercing observations. Both novels appeared in 1931, an indication of how quickly the Bright Young People’s era receded. Even then Mitford, Powell and Waugh had the distance to mock its slight-as-a-bubble mentality. All three novels entice us into a frothy, evanescent world we have reason to envy, but not too much.

—Caryn James, "Oh So Amusing," NYT Book Review

, 1/11/09

Donald E. Westlake

Levi has an elegant tribute to Donald E. Westlake, who died on New Year's Eve. Here's a bit:

Donald E. Westlake himself warned us that this day was coming: the title of his twenty-second novel about Parker the heister, Nobody Runs Forever, serves as a reminder that even those of us who work in less risky occupations are nonetheless living on borrowed time. And what better use to make of that time than to sit down every single day at the typewriter and explore the vicissitudes of humanity, inventing characters and getting them into trouble just to see how they might get out of it? Do it long enough, do it well enough, and you just might create something that runs forever after all.

(Westlake, Levi notes, was an Anthony Powell fan.)

(Also: Sarah has a bundle of links. And here is my enthusiastic if brief shout-out to three of his Parker books, written under the pseudonym Richard Stark; they were among my favorite reads of 2008.)

(And here's Sarah's obit at the LAT.)

Jupiter jones — Lush life — Buffalo architecture

Jonathan Lethem's "Walking the Moons" is up at Joyland, that "hub for short fiction."

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In the NYTBR, Graydon Carter kicks off the front-page review with...Powell!

It can reasonably be said that “A Dance to the Music of Time,” Anthony Powell’s monumental 12-part novel about English manners, society, politics and power, still begs for an American counterpart. Lush and majestic, the book traces the years from 1921 to 1974 — pretty much the period we like to romanticize as “the American century.” But if no novel over here quite tracks Powell’s course, the life of George Ames Plimpton, impressively recorded in this glorious new biography, “George, Being George,” offers a potential substitute. Powell, in his novel, described four types of men: the artist, the romantic, the man of will and the cynic. —NYTBR

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The NYT's Nicolai Ouroussoff has a long look at Buffalo's architectural heritage:

At a time when oil prices and oil dependence are forcing us to rethink the wisdom of suburban and exurban living, Buffalo could eventually offer a blueprint for repairing America’s other shrinking postindustrial cities.

Touring Buffalo’s monuments is about as close as you can get to experiencing firsthand the earliest struggles to define what an American architecture would look like.

"Willmerpool"

Widmerpool acted quickly. He strolled to the kerb. A cab seemed to rise out of the earth at that moment. Perhaps all action, even summoning a taxi when none is there, is basically a matter of the will. —Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

(See Levi's latest Powell position.)