Late to the Dance

For some reason, when looking around for something to read a few weeks ago, I decided to take up Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. I've known about this monster work for many years, and I've always thought I would enjoy reading it, but I was put off by the thought of such a lengthy commitment, a sequence of 12 novels arranged into four groupings of three volumes each, linked to the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.

Now having read the first three books -- A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market, and The Acceptance World -- which take the narrator Nicholas Jenkins from his public school days through university to his first experiences with the many changes brought about growing into adulthood and the diverging and converging paths taken by friends, their extended families and social and business relations, I'm rather glad I waited. At an earlier point in my own life I suspect I would have missed some of the irony and humor in the narrative voice of an older Nicholas as he remembers and tries to make sense of his own experience of the dance. One of the great attractions for me at this point is in recognizing the ways in which Nick, a rather passive character, often more observer than actor, lets life come to him, but also learns to appreciate the superior results achieved by others of his acquaintance, including the sometimes loathsome Widmerpool, who pursue more active engagement.

The dance is a great source of amusement and belated instruction. Reflecting on those rare occasions when I found myself thrust into situations requiring decisive action, or at least decisions, while I was never inclined to shy away from responsibility, I found my own impatience with others, however carefully concealed, tended to blunt the force of any natural inclinations to leadership. Time and again as I stood on the brink, or perhaps it was the threshold, of worldly success, I stepped back (or was gently pushed aside), not from indecision so much as from a loss of patience.

And so naturally enough I find myself identifying with Nicholas Jenkins, who seems perpetually mystified by the actions of those he encounters. Of course, Powell is writing about upper-middle class Brits, who are notoriously ill equipped for personal intimacies, it's the basis of their literature and film industry; nevertheless, the social and psychological complications of Nick's relationships with friends, family, and lovers provide great insight as well as amusement. And since lately I've been inclined to stand back at a greater distance as I observe what is going on around me, and reflect on my own recollections of former friends and colleagues, I've found many points of contact between my own passage and that of Nick Jenkins as described by Powell. And as I read I repeatedly recall with a fondness almost the opposite of nostalgic moments of inexplicable yet sympathetic understanding. Tomorrow, appropriately, I will begin the first of the three books of Summer.