The Anthony Powell Society from the Secretary’S Desk the Anthony Powell Society Although Being a Voracious Reader, My Registered Charity No
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Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #24 The Anthony Powell Society From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Although being a voracious reader, my Registered Charity No. 1096873 father never showed any great interest in Newsletter The Anthony Powell Society is a Powell. Some years ago I gave him a charitable literary society devoted to the Issue 24, Autumn 2006 ISSN 1743-0976 couple of volumes of Dance to try, life and works of the English author although if he ever read them, he never Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. discussed them with me. But clearing out Let the Dance Resume: Echoes Of his papers after his death earlier in the Contents Officers & Executive Committee Anthony Powell in the Fiction Let the Dance Resume … 1 year I found half a dozen book reviews of DJ Taylor From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 by Powell which my father had culled Patron: John MA Powell from the Daily Telegraph between 1966 by Jeffrey A Manley Widmerpool’s Lair … 9 President-Elect: Simon Russell Beale Society Notices … 11 and 1976. They were reviews of books Anyone familiar with the literary Society Events … 12 on diverse topics in English history, Hon. Vice-Presidents: th journalism and criticism of DJ Taylor will Dates for Your Diary … 13 ranging from King Arthur to the 17 Julian Allason be well aware of his admiration for the Local Group News … 14 century Interregnum. No surprise at Hugh Massingberd works of Anthony Powell. For example, Performing Nothing … 15 Powell having written such reviews (he *Chairman: Patric Dickinson Taylor has described Powell as “the From the APLIST … 18 did read History at Oxford) nor really that *Hon. Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall th greatest English novelist of the 20 Letters to the Editor … 21 my father had kept the reviews, having as *Hon. Treasurer: Kevin Jewell century” (Independent on Sunday, 4 July Society Merchandise … 22 he had an interest in the nooks and 2004). In addition, Taylor has also written crannies of English history. What was *Committee Members: AGM Business … centre spread Dr Christine Berberich a considerable body of fiction, and it is however slightly surprising, on reading Dr Nicholas Birns (USA) the reviews, were some of Powell’s perhaps less well known that he finds Leatrice Fountain (USA) numerous methods for expressing his unexpected insights into English history. Stephen Holden admiration of Powell in his fiction as well. AGM Decades on these insights may be Tony Robinson Prof. Ian Young (N Ireland) The Novels Saturday 28 October common-place to historians today, but Between 1992 and 2001 Taylor wrote four See centre spread had not previously occurred to me. Often Newsletter Editor: Stephen Holden novels which may be said to represent his in almost throw-away lines, Powell gives Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall attempt to describe how it was to live in us clues about the iniquities of Ship PR/Media Adviser: Julian Allason Money, the Normans in Italy, riots by England during the 1970-89 period. The All correspondence should be sent to: apprentices against the Puritans for their concept of this cycle seems to have been Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society formed in a series of essays published in suppression of Christmas celebrations, 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford 1989 as A Vain Conceit: British Fiction in the major occupants of castles being not Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK the 1980s. In those essays Taylor took the aristocrats (who owned them) but Phone: +44 (0)20 8864 4095 English writers of serious fiction to task lowly knights (who were paid to look Fax: +44 (0)20 8864 6109 for failing, or not wishing, after them) and the homosexuality of Edward II. On the Normans Powell says: Email: [email protected] to perceive ... the powerful forces at * Members of the Executive Committee who are work in society which really influence The Normans were, in general, good the Society’s trustees. All officers are resident the way in which we think and act: at fighting, but many of their in England or Wales unless stated. America, television, the global money greatest successes were due rather marketplace, and especially to administrative ferocity and © The Anthony Powell Society, 2006 and the language, the constantly revivifying, cunning, together with an excellent propaganda machine (for instance, individual authors named. All rights reserved. endlessly self-renewing language of Published by The Anthony Powell Society. transatlantic and transcontinental the Bayeux Tapestry). Printed and distributed by Express Printing, culture. (Ibid. p15-16) [Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1976] Peterborough, UK 2 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #24 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #24 He cites the previous generation of English Goldsmith’s College, London, achieves Narrative Structure novelists (including Powell, Waugh and some success, roughly speaking, as The narrators of the novels bear little Orwell) as well as the Victorians such as scriptwriter in the pornography industry social resemblance to Powell’s Nick Trollope, Thackeray, and Gissing as centered in Soho during the 1970 boom Jenkins. None received his education at a having taken on this task of writing what years, only to return to Norwich when that major public school, nor do they have any he describes as books that seek to “cope business (or at least his firm) collapses. connection with upper class friends or with their own vast, chaotic canvas” or English Settlement (1996) has an acquaintances comparable to those of books reflecting social comment or the 1 American narrator from West Virginia who Jenkins. On the other hand, many condition of England. (Ibid. p38). becomes a management consultant in a characters other than the narrators would Without any apparent announcement of his London accounting firm and is farmed out fall well within the parameters of the intentions in the books themselves, he to a mid-division football team in West Bohemian world of London populated by seems to have picked up his own challenge London where he discovers irregularities the characters of Powell’s novels. with the cycle of four novels beginning in in its business. The team has a “run” in Like Jenkins, Taylor’s narrators are 1992 with Real Life. It is not my intention one of the football cups and begins to describing events in which they were not here to assess the extent to which Taylor generate positive cash flows but then the prime movers but rather peripheral or may have succeeded but rather to describe collapses as the cup final approaches. secondary actors. This enables them to how he used elements of Powell’s style Trespass (1998) is narrated by another adopt a certain degree of detachment in and content from Dance in his own cycle Norwich native who is raised and educated their narratives similar to that used by of novels. In a Spectator article entitled Powell for Jenkins. They do not “Dukes, Debs and Democrats” (4 July in a working class district of that city, pronounce judgment on the characters 2004) Taylor described Dance as the work migrates to London where he studies whose actions cause the debacles which which “more than any other work of accounting and becomes involved with an are the theme of each story but rather fiction, tells you what it was like to have uncle in a sort of Ponzi scheme investment describe the events and participants in been alive in England between the years fund. This fund achieves a success for a seemingly objective but ironic voices, 1920 to 1970”. Since Taylor seems to be time as repository for the investments of allowing the actions and the resultant attempting a similar task in his own novels ordinary people but eventually collapses, failures to speak for themselves. covering a period that begins about the and the narrator returns to East Anglia, where he is contracted by a publishing time that Dance concludes, this may The narrative structures of Taylor’s novels firm to tell his side of the story six years explain his frequent allusions to Powell. Anthony Powell Resides Here are quite like those of Powell’s. While the after the collapse. plots are not linked chronologically nor do While Taylor’s novels, unlike the sequence CRAWFORD DOYLE BOOKSELLERS seeks and sells early editions of Anthony the characters reappear, the novels which of twelve written by Powell, are not linked The last of this series, The Comedy Man Powell’s works together with those of all take place in the Thatcher Years2 seem by character and plot lines they are linked (2001), is narrated by a former member of other distinguished British authors such a two-man comedy team which attains intended to form a cycle with some vague by theme. The novels describe events in as Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse, linkage to Powell’s Dance. This much is England during the 1970s and 1980s. In Virginia Woolf, Henry Green and popular success on national TV and related established, at least by implication, in A the first, Real Life (1992), the narrator, James Lees-Milne. In addition to rare venues in the 1970s. This novel traces the books, we offer a complete collection of Vain Conceit, as noted above. Any doubt from Norwich and educated at a cathedral- economic collapse of the narrator’s small new books in our store near the on that score is allayed by the epigraphs to affiliated school in that city and shopkeeper family in Great Yarmouth, Metropolitan Museum. Catalogs issued all but one of these novels, the only upon request. follows him through the glory years of popularity resulting from national TV exception being Trespass. By starting with 1 1082 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10028 An earlier novel, Great Eastern Land (1986), exposure and ends with his rather bleak these epigraphs, Taylor makes no secret of appeared before Taylor laid down his challenge in Open seven days per week Telephone: 212 289 2345 Vain Conceit.