Synopses & Reviews
Unsavory artists, titled boobs, and charlatans with an affinity for Freudsuch are the oddballs whose antics animate the early novels of the late British master Anthony Powell. A genius of social satire delivered with a very dry wit, Powell builds his comedies on the foibles of British high society between the wars, delving into subjects as various as psychoanalysis, the film industry, publishing, and (of course) sex. More explorations of relationships and vanity than plot-driven narratives, these slim novels reveal the early stirrings of the unequaled style, ear for dialogue, and eye for irony that would reach their caustic peak in Powells epic
A Dance to the Music of Time.
From a View to a Death takes us to a dilapidated country estate where an ambitious artist of questionable talent, a family of landed aristocrats wondering where the money has gone, and a secretly cross-dressing squire all commingle among the ruins.
Written from a vantage point both high and necessarily narrow, Powells early novels nevertheless deal in the universal themes that would become a substantial part of his oeuvre: pride, greed, and what makes people behave as they do. Filled with eccentric characters and piercing insights, Powells work is achingly hilarious, human, and true.
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“Powells wry, understated style sharpens his general picture of nastiness.”
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“Vastly superior to all the current stuff about ‘swinging London.”
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“A master of irony . . . a writer of social comedy as revelatory as any written by Evelyn Waugh or Henry Green.”
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“[A] still-too-little-acknowledged comic masterpiece.”
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“A superlative new short novel, a satirical zinger. . . . O, How the Wheel Becomes It! is a distillation of all that is inimitable about its author—deflation of high seriousness and the pursuit of esteem at the expense of others, achieved with rigorous understatement; a wryness that is never mocking or arch; and a sense of pathos just offstage.”
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“Powell has always dealt beautifully with the vagaries of the sexual imagination. . . . A treat for the many Powell addicts.”
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“Powell’s observations of human behavior are as sharp, his ear for conversation as devastatingly accurate, his wit as trenchant, as they ever were.”
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“The unmatched serenity of Powell’s humor is the product of a classical perspective: confident that the more obvious verities of life do not change much, he refuses to wring his hands at the decadence of the age, contenting himself with the sheer spectacle of human excess.”
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“There is no other . . . British novelist whose sense of social nuance is so delicate or so subtle, or whose comic range is so wide. . . . And there is certainly no other novelist whose work gives so much or such consistent pleasure.”
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“One of his cleverest, funniest, and most delightful books.”
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“Elegantly casual and scandalously funny. . . . Venusberg, I once read somewhere, is a satire on totalitarian government. That’s as good a handle for it as any. Yet it concentrates much more on men and women than upon the laws that govern them. . . . In some of the best light dialogue of our time, Powell makes clear the difference between feverish sophistication and true worldliness.”
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“A brilliant picture of diplomatic and less exalted society in a little Baltic State. Mr. Powell’s dialogue and comments are crisp, shrewd, and satirical, and his second novel is a worthy successor to Afternoon Men.”
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“Powell’s novels bite deep, but only to reveal that even at our most foolish we are all in it together.”
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“Looking back at Powell’s earlier novels, it is possible to see him discovering there how to use his razor-sharp satirical sense until it is purged of bitterness and extravagance.”
Synopsis
FROM A VIEW TO A DEATH (1933) is set at a dilapidated English country estate. It brings together a miscellany of country and city types: spoiled, shy Mary Passenger, whose father hopes she will marry into money to help support Passenger Court; ambitious Zouch, who imagines himself an “Ubermensch”; and Major Fosdick, secretly cross-dressing when not out riding. (V. S. Pritchett describes the book as “featuring the undesirable artist among the speechless fox hunters.”) Powell wrote this when he was 27 years old; he mocks with gusto the prejudices and mindlessness of English landed gentry. But as the story moves along, suffering adds humanity to his caricatures, even the “objectionable country squire.”
Synopsis
The first novel Anthony Powell published following the completion of his epic
A Dance to the Music of Time,
O, How the Wheel Becomes It! fulfills perhaps every author’s fantasy as it skewers a conceited, lazy, and dishonest critic. A writer who avoids serving in World War II and veers in and out of marriage, G. F. H. Shadbold ultimately falls victim to the title’s spinning—and righteous—emblem of chance. Sophisticated and a bit cruel,
Wheel’s tale of posthumous vengeance is, nonetheless, irresistible.
Written at the peak of the late British master’s extraordinary literary career, this novel offers profound insight into the mind of a great artist whose unequaled style, ear for dialogue, and eye for irony will delight devotees and new readers alike.
Synopsis
Written from a vantage point both high and deliberately narrow, the early novels of the late British master Anthony Powell nevertheless deal in the universal themes that would become a substantial part of his oeuvre: pride, greed, and the strange drivers of human behavior. More explorations of relationships and vanity than plot-driven narratives, Powell’s early works reveal the stirrings of the unequaled style, ear for dialogue, and eye for irony that would reach their caustic peak in his epic,
A Dance to the Music of Time.
Powell’s sophomore novel, Venusberg, follows journalist Lushington as he leaves behind his unrequited love in England and travels by boat to an unnamed Baltic state. Awash in a marvelously odd assortment of counts and ladies navigating a multicultural, elegant, and politically precarious social scene, Lushington becomes infatuated with his very own, very foreign Venus. An action-packed literary precursor to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Venusberg is replete with assassins and Nazis, loose countesses and misunderstandings, fatal accidents and social comedy. But beyond its humor, this early installment in Powell’s literary canon will offer readers a welcome window onto the mind of a great artist learning his craft.
About the Author
Anthony Powell (1905-2000) was an English novelist best known for A Dance to the Music of Time, which was published in twelve volumes between 1951 and 1975. He also wrote seven other novels, a biography of John Aubrey, two plays, and three volumes of collected reviews and essays, as well as a four-volume autobiography, an abridged version of which, To Keep the