The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 18 December 2015
by Anthony Powell
In this novel, the third in Anthony Powell's epic, we continue to follow Nick Jenkins, who, as with the Narrator in Proust, is an analogue to the author. And, also as with Proust, you can find lists of Powell's characters alongside the real-life personages who inspired them. It is that kind of a novel. But it is still fiction, which allows for it to be intricately and brilliantly crafted.
It is a couple years after the events in the previous volume. Nick is working as a publisher of art books, and he is currently frustrated in his attempts to get an older somewhat washed-up author to write an introduction to the latest book, about the works of Horace Isbister. So, in a way, the novel continues Powell's theme of the visual arts, though now on a somewhat more practical angle. He is friends with a painter, Barnby, and his school chum Templar is married to one of Barnby's former models. Deacon is no longer among us, but his ghost seems to linger. There is an Isbister retrospective, which is a convenient place for Powell's characters to collide with one another, along with the socialist political march going on in the park outside. All along, Nick Jenkins is maturing in his relationships, as well. People are hooking up, getting married, having affairs, getting divorced, living together, all in a jumble of the characters we've come to know through three volumes (so far). Here, Jenkins finally gets intimate with Jean Templar (though she, too, is still married to an estranged husband who ran off with another of the growing cast of characters). Nick seems happy with Jean, and less conflicted by her own romantic history. But it seems that theirs may not be a very long term commitment.
We move through the early 1930s here, and there are forebodings of political upheaval and economic downturn (though the crash of '29 is not explicitly mentioned). Widmerpool, a quirky character who glides through the book, despite being roundly disliked by most of the other characters, leaves his work in The City, presaging economic changes afoot, and goes to work for what Powell calls "the acceptance world", a business model that is essentially a wager against future profits. Our happiness, he seems to say, is a wager against our future unhappiness. We fail to calculate our long term survivability while pursuing our immediate gratification. Its certainly a story for a capitalist, and familiar down to the present day. What lies next for Jenkins and his troupe of schoolmates when the bills fall due?
This is the third instalment of a twelve-volume saga. The books look back on a life lived in the upper-middle-class and educated culture of the first half and more of the 20th century. The language is often dense, but articulate, given to British precision, but also subtle, observant, atmospheric and rather funny. Recommended.
Also by Anthony Powell: [A Question of Upbringing] [A Buyer's Market] [At Lady Molly's] [Casanova's Chinese Restaurant] [The Kindly Ones] [The Valley of Bones] [The Soldier's Art]
[The Military Philosophers]