Anthony Powell
Paperback | Pages: 715 pages Rating: 4.26 | 1419 Users | 94 Reviews
Describe Out Of Books A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9)
| Title | : | A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9) |
| Author | : | Anthony Powell |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 715 pages |
| Published | : | May 31st 1995 by University of Chicago Press (first published 1970) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Classics. European Literature. British Literature |
Description To Books A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9)
Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses. In this third volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, we again meet Widmerpool, doggedly rising in rank; Jenkins, shifted from one dismal army post to another; Stringham, heroically emerging from alcoholism; Templer, still on his eternal sexual quest. Here, too, we are introduced to Pamela Flitton, one of the most beautiful and dangerous women in modern fiction. Wickedly barbed in its wit, uncanny in its seismographic recording of human emotions and social currents, this saga stands as an unsurpassed rendering of England's finest yet most costly hour. Includes these novels: The Valley of Bones The Soldier's Art The Military Philosophers "Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."—Chicago Tribune "A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."—Elizabeth Janeway, New York Times "One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."—Naomi Bliven, New YorkerDefine Books As A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9)
| Original Title: | A Dance to the Music of Time: Third Movement |
| ISBN: | 0226677176 (ISBN13: 9780226677170) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9 |
| Characters: | Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool |
Rating Out Of Books A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9)
Ratings: 4.26 From 1419 Users | 94 ReviewsNotice Out Of Books A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time #7-9)
4.5 starsWhile the dullness of administrative army life is inevitable, here it is not written as such, at least not lengthily, and through much of this installment I was speeding along with everything that happens. Irony abounds: the worst happens to these characters while the narrator, Nick, is on leave; he hears of other deaths quite a while after they happen and his informants are surprised to find that he did not know already. When Nick first meets Pennistone (one of several new charactersI read this volume over such an extended period of time I actually don't recall much of what came in books 7 and 8, but I did enjoy them and continued to appreciate Powell's characters and humor. The 9th book, however, was difficult to get through and a big reason why it took me so long to get through this Movement. I did not have much issue with the army adventures in the first two books, but in this one it seems like Powell really dives into the nuts and bolts of the administrative end of the
This one had the same compelling feel as the other two, but it definitely wasn't as good. The author used the same methods to tie everything together, but in the first of the novels in this volume, the speech was very weird sounding. And most of it took place in military offices during the war and the story was sometimes bogged down in technical discussion. I still look forward to the next one though!
The Valley of Bones:It's a tailor's warnot for old duffers like Nickhe's a daddy now.The Soldier's Art:Bombs and bed-hoppingNick's French costs him a new jobit's good to have friends.The Military Philosophers:The infamous Pambreaker of powerful ballsKenneth's perfect girl.
Ah, the vicissitudes of life. In the third movement of A Dance to the Music of Time, Nick Jenkins, a bit too old to fight in World War II, jumps from army post to army post, where he struggles with bureaucracy, politics, and personalities in the sometimes bewildering hierarchy of the British Army. As the main characters as they are, come in and out of interacting with Jenkins: Charles Stringham, emerging from alcoholism to fight in the way he can in the War; Peter Templer, who involves himself
I am still working on the best way to describe A Dance to the Music of Time in a sentence or two and how to persuade someone that they should read a twelve-volume epic about a posh English guy's really rather unremarkable life. Nick Jenkins, our stalwart protagonist, is now in his thirties as World War II breaks out, and rest assured, he will not be storming the beaches at Normandy, interned in a POW camp, or even working in secret outfits, though many of his associates and even childhood
This one was a struggle. War from beginning to end...which I guess isn't supposed to be a whole lot of fun. I don't know if it was a deliberate manifestation or the effect of advancing history (Powell wrote the sequence from 1951-1975), but I detected definite shades of Yossarian in these pages. Different dialect, different arena, same outlook.The most affecting character in this section is Charles Stringham, former schoolfriend, former drunk cured of alcoholism by "Tuffy" his former governess
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