From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com   
      
   "Martha Bridegam"  wrote in message   
   news:lcGGh.5474$P47.3855@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net...   
   > Robbie, damn you for asking sensible questions like "what do you mean by   
   > that?" The Powell books were holding up a lower section in a stack of   
   > bookshelves and I nearly ruptured something getting them out. (A neighbor   
   > who came in while I was setting up those shelves said he had a nightmare   
   > about them falling over on us. But, dammit, we had a 4.2 quake the other   
   > day and the shelves held.)   
   >   
   > Martha Bridegam wrote:   
   >> ROBBIE wrote:   
   >>   
   >>>>>> Anthony Powell is *that* wonderful?   
   >>>>> Yes.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> You won't like him   
   >>>> I did, just not that much. Too impressed with himself, or trying to be.   
   >>>   
   >>> How do you mean?   
   >   
   > I was mostly thinking of his assumption that large numbers of people would   
   > take an interest in what often sounds like in-crowd gossip. Sometimes   
   > things are presented as likely to be interesting merely because locally   
   > fashionable, without working to draw a stranger's interest on their   
   > merits. (Maybe I feel this more as a foreigner.) Except I'm not sure how   
   > to differentiate this from Proust, who is gossipy the same way. Maybe it's   
   > that Proust sticks tighter to considering how reputation, status and   
   > personality shift, whereas Powell sometimes slips into writing like a   
   > society columnist.   
   >   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>> Also, he's not sure if he thinks he's writing comedy/parody or not. I   
   >>>> mean, Dickens makes things larger than life in about the same   
   >>>> proportion all the time, but Powell is serious and nuanced one minute,   
   >>>> then throwing goofy caricatures   
   >>>   
   >>> Examples, if you have time, I'm genuinely curious about this.   
   >   
   > Well, Widmerpool has serious effects on people but he's a completely   
   > outsized character.   
      
   Some people are you know.   
      
      
   I know X. Trapnel had a real-life model, but he's   
   > larger than life too. Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones turn into the Itchy and   
   > Scratchy Show through the whole middle of the story.   
      
   ?   
      
      
   >   
   > But he doesn't know if he wants to be a caricaturist or a psychological   
   > novelist. "Choosing more or less at random," we have a re-encounter with   
   > J.G. Quiggin in Book 2 (pp. 239-40 in Mandarin paperback): "...My first   
   > sight of him at the party suggested that he had remained remarkably   
   > unchanged. He was still wearing his shabby black suit, the frayed trousers   
   > of which were maintained insecurely by a heavy leather belt with a brass   
   > buckle. His hair had grown a shade sparser round the sides of his   
   > dome-like forehead, and he retained that look of an undomesticated animal   
   > of doubtful temper. At the same time there was also his doggy, rather   
   > pathetic look about the eyes that had reminded me of Widmerpool, and which   
   > is a not uncommon feature of those who have decided to live by the force   
   > of the will. When we talked, I found that he had abandoned much of the   
   > conscious acerbity of manner that had been so much a part of social   
   > equipment at the university. It was not that he was milder -- on the   
   > contrary, he seemed more anxious than ever to approach on his own term   
   > every matter that arose -- but he appeared to have come much nearer to   
   > perfection of method in his particular method of attacking life, so that   
   > for others there was not, as in former days, the same field of   
   > conversational pitfalls to be negotiated..."   
   >   
   > Dickensian caricature gives way to Proustian insight midway through. It's   
   > an odd hybrid.   
      
   You could say that about Shakespeare if it comes to it.   
      
      
   >He doesn't know which master he wants to imitate.   
      
   It always surprises me how you can have such reductive cynicism for writers   
   but not for tramps, thieves and drug addicts.   
      
      
   >   
   >>>   
   >>> I think the second volume of dance I sort of thought he was taking   
   >>> things too seriously and I wondered if it was for me, bet even then   
   >>> there was a lot of commendable things about it; after that though it   
   >>> became a serious pleasure: whole sentences and phrases echo for me.   
   >   
   > OK, so maybe we agree on Vol. 2. But is the rest really different?   
      
   I think it improves greatly.   
      
   >   
   > "More or less at random," in Vol. 4 we have semi-Dickensian comedy   
   > followed by full-scale Dickensian romantic mush. Erridge (thought to be an   
   > Orwell stand-in, isn't he?) becomes embarrassed by having to pull rank in   
   > a contest of wills with his butler in front of guests, and then in walk   
   > Erridge's sisters, and next thing you know we've got this:   
   >   
   > "Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when I set eyes on   
   > Isobel Tolland, I knew at once that I should marry her? Something like   
   > that is the truth; certainly nearer the truth than merely to record those   
   > vague, inchoate sentiments of interest of which I was so immediately   
   > conscious..."   
      
   Romantic mush? I bet a lot of people have had that experience. I would   
   imagine that underneath your complaint of romantic mush is a resentment of   
   how men and women actually are/can be beyond your cultural Marxism.   
      
      
   >   
   > Some chapters later in No. 4, though, we have General Conyers sitting down   
   > for a chat with the narrator in a quieter room at a house party:   
   >   
   > "As soon as we were alone together, the General sat down on a chair in   
   > front of the writing-table, straightening out his leg painfully. It still   
   > seemed to be giving trouble. Alone with him, I became aware of that   
   > terrible separateness which difference of age imposes between individuals.   
   > Perhaps feeling something of this burden himself, he began at first to   
   > speak of his own advancing years..."   
   >   
   > Well, that's trying almost painfully hard to be Significant and   
   > Perceptive, isn't it?   
      
   In a word: no. It's a point worth making, it doesn't feel to me that he's   
   trying to be Significant and Perceptive. You;d have been dandy if he'd have   
   been observing a tramp and talking about money and not age. Do you think   
   Scott Fitzgerald is being pretentious in a similar passage in Gatsby about   
   ill health?   
      
      
      
   >   
   >>>>   
   >>>>> 2) His work cannot be construed as social work by other means   
   >>>> It's certainly social commentary, but perhaps that isn't enough for   
   >>>> you?   
   >>>   
   >>> I meant that perhaps that isn't enough for *you*.   
   >   
   > I thought you might, just having a little fun.   
   >   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>>> 3) He isn't gay.   
   >>>> Are you quite sure? ;-)   
   >   
   > There's a good bit of male and female homosexuality in the stories anyhow,   
   > though always with the narrator's expressed disapproval. And I almost   
      
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