Anthony Powell: A Life

by Michael Barber

Book Overview

A biography of Anthony Powell, publisher, journalist, man-about-town, and author of the Dance to the Music of Time sequence, Michael Barber takes a close look at the man and the writer. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585676187
• ISBN13: 9781585676187
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

First-rate copy of first-rate book.

Powell tends to rank higher and higher among 20th-Century British novelists. This would seem to be the definitive life.

A dance to the music of the author

For any fan of the incredible series "A Dance to the Music of Time", this is a must-read. The characters portrayed in that series were based on people the author knew, and Barber has gone to great lengths to attached the original person to the character in the book. Powell's life itself is fascinating, and Barber has done a very good job of leading the reader through it. Powell was a member of one of the most famous generations in British literature, thus, with this book, one gets a view of that group of people, as well as the environment that produced them. Powell's relationships with various members of the group make for some of the most interesting parts of the book. For example, he and Evelyn Waugh were competitors (and Waugh didn't like anyone who competed with him) and their poisonously friendly exchanges are fun to read. Powell's relationship with Malcolm Muggeridge is another problematic friendship in the book. Barber is a good writer, and he tells the story of Powell's life clearly and well. He describes the critical events in Powell's upbringing (esp. his attendance at Eton) and points out how these events affected the person Powell became. He also explains the basis for each of Powell's novels, which, as a reader of these works, I found very interesting. Barber does not cover Powell's marriage and his children is any but a cursory manner, and the book would likely have been better had that been more fully examined. One learns more about his relationships with his parents and brother than with his wife and children, and this gap is bothersome. Anthony Powell was a private man from middle-class means who married a member of the nobility, and his quest for wealth dictated most of his actions. The parallels between him and Waugh are striking, but whereas Waugh was not at all a nice man, Powell shows to be a more humane and less judgmental person. This is a good book for anyone interested in the period, and an excellent one for those who love Powell's magnum opus.

Fails to Bring Powell to Life

Michael Barber's immense biography is a benchmark in Anthony Powell studies, but that does not mean it is without fault. Over its length Barber becomes intimately familiar with Powell's idiosyncrasies, but he does not take into account how trying they will seem to the majority of his readers. At every turn, he is obsessed with status and with class; this bias was probably useful in composing his novels, especially the amazing tour de force that was his roman fleuve A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, but it does not make for a very nice person perhaps. Oh well, perhaps we ask the gods for too much if we expect a talented author to have a charming personalitu as well. And indeed Powell (pronounced "Pole" as in fishing pole) did have his charms, especially when he wanted something from you. As Barber shows us, he despised Graham Greene's writing, calling him a third-rate Joseph Conrad, who had the temerity to add "Roman Catholic propaganda" to an insipid stew, and yet he found it easier to pretend to like him to his face, even calling him "cher confrere," --until Greene's death, and then he could pour out the venom he had secreted. Barber also discusses Powell's friendship with the doomed, damned composer Constant Lambert, who also figures in the recent Meredith Daneham biography of Margot Fonteyn (he was her lover and mentor early on). Powell satirized Lambert as one of the characters in his novel, as indeed he did everyone who he met and knew well. Daneham provides a more compassionate portrait of Lambert, Barber a colder one, following the lead of Powell, who seems to have had great satisfaction in outliving almost everyone else and then telling the world what he was not able (due to stringent libel laws) to hint at in fictional terms. We learn the origin of nearly every character and plot point in the DANCE, and that is the great use of this biography. I can't imagine reading another biography of this dreary man, so I expect my final impression of him will be one who, like Evelyn Waugh, saw only the worst in mankind, and made money doing so.