May I Cut in Here?
A Dance to the Music of Time is one of the monuments of 20th-century British literature.
As a monument, it is immediate, cleanly chiseled, foursquare and, despite occasional intricate carvings of angels, stark. As a monument, it does not clearly disclose its sculptor – whether, in this case, it be the author, Anthony Powell, or its universal narrator, Nick Jenkins. And as a monument, at least for me, it is also less “to read” than “to have read.”
I wrote earlier here about the first two “Movements” of Dance (each Movement comprises three of Powell’s sequentially published novels). I entered the third Movement hoping that it might pry loose the hinge to the narrator, Nick Jenkins. War, after all, brings misery but most of all change. I was disappointed that nothing of the sort unfolds. The writing is excellent, incisive as always, but the content, especially considering the upheaval of World War II, is peculiarly insular and abstracted. The coincidences on which the the “dance” must necessarily depend seem more forced, less a natural interactive swirl.
Unlike in the first two movements, things do happen. Sort of. Jenkins experiences the deaths of friends and acquaintances, but if they have lasting emotional effect on him, he doesn’t (won’t?) express it. He serves at one or another military backwater that deals with nothing that impacts directly on the progress of the war. We seldom know precisely where he’s stationed (on the home grounds of England and – I think – Northern Ireland) or what his job or rank entails in practical terms, behind a scattershot of unexplained acronyms. (Perhaps this is a holdover from that odd spatial and temporal shyness in 19th-century English novels, which feared that exact placement of its characters would somehow embarrass the real realm. Better to have them live “during 18__ in _____.”)
Hitler and Germany receive one or two tangential mentions, but the enemy remains a nebulous something and the outcome of it all hardly a matter for thought. Jenkins’ personal life goes as unexplored as ever. He is married but seems unconcerned with his wife and child.
Socially inept megalomaniac Kenneth Widmerpool, the bizarre cement of those first movements, takes on a larger presence in his aggressive climb up the military ladder, but, to my mind, occupies a smaller – less pivotal – role here. By contrast, the addition of Pamela Flitton, a vituperative vamp who sleeps with almost anyone of importance (and many of none), introduces Powell’s most interesting and explosive female character. I missed the sense of humor that pervades the first two movements but seems in abeyance here.
The last Movement – which enfolds the final three novels – takes Jenkins into his 60s, a period when many of his contemporaries have died, either in the war or of a combination of mostly natural causes. It also expands on characters introduced during the wartime years, particularly the self-centered, beautiful, fearfully consuming Pamela. For continuing readers, it enduringly examines the slow rise and later rapid dissolution of Widmerpool. Though perhaps impossible within the limited confines of the “real” world, these two oppositely aligned but equally destructive forces marry and wreak havoc at every turn, their alliance within Dance necessary, perhaps inevitable.
A new, interwoven sub-cast includes novelist X. Trapnel, destroyed in part by Pamela; Trapnel’s biographer, the self-protective American Gwinnett; and young cult leader, Murtlock.
Such an outline may sound as though a great deal of action at last takes place, but actually, as in the rest of this 3,000-page opus, little is acted out onstage. The reports we hear, through Jenkins, range from mildly removed through emotionally distant to windblown supposition.
Stylistically and in its orchestration of events, Dance as a whole is close to perfection. Sentences slither and knot through themselves to come out the other end as straight lines of meaning. Present and past intertwine in Jenkins’ mind with remarkable clarity and cohesion. Characters introduced years in the past recur with enticing recollection. That’s not only difficult to do but, yes, monumental to achieve.
I haven’t read critiques of Powell’s work (I never do), but I think he was trying to tie together a definitive package of mid-20th-century England. If so, his success depends on how you define “England” in the social sense. If it’s a narrow slice of upper-middle-, lower-upper-class life, he’d done the job superbly (even if this slice today is mostly burnt toast). But if it’s the country’s society as an evolving whole, then hardly.
Though Jenkins interacts through the years with almost everyone he has ever known (the foundation of the “dance” concept), his waltzing partners, despite disparate backgrounds and modes of progress, can take on a narrow, claustrophobic quality. Where they step off the dance floor and have the temerity to die in the cloakrooms of, say, Japan during the war, they dissipate and cease to be “those who matter.”
Is this deliberate on Powell’s part? It unsettles me that I can’t say, that I can’t pin down the author’s overall intent. What did he have in mind by presenting both the war and Jenkins as enveloped in massive indifference? Which ties in to my biggest problem with the whole production: How are we to view Nick Jenkins?
He is embraced by one and all as a friend or trusted acquaintance, the one to whom you choose to impart the latest news, yet he does little but ask questions and absorb responses. He had two or three early love interests that turned out poorly, then married Isobel (who is allowed perhaps 40 lines of dialog over 12 volumes). He has two, possibly more off-camera children, one a girl (Caroline?) born during WWII, another a son (unnamed) who was interviewed by a university. A published author, he never discusses his books. In the military, by his rise in grade, he shows competence, so something of importance must reside inside him.
Does he stand in for Powell, or is he an objective-commentary mechanism? Is he presented as an uber-character who is peculiarly lacking in affect and empathy, or is he representative of an uncaring or at least undemonstrative social stratum? Is he all of these together? Or is he something else, a dissociated outcaste of the 20th century, at base unaware that he is dissociated or an outcaste?
Despite my general applause for, even amazement at this work, I don’t know who to recommend it to. An exquisite 19th-century verbal tapestry transposed to the 20th century, it should exist largely because it does. Any author who would undertake such a labor should be rewarded with recognition and careful consideration. But it’s not an easy read, not an enjoyable read, I’d guess, for most. It can seem an exercise in verbalism, a sort of literary isometrics. But once you’ve started, if you accept the scope and encompassment of it all, you will want to finish. Monumental, indeed.
by Derek Davis