Musing on The Music

I enjoyed reading this article in yesterday's Grauniad. It's interesting that leftwingers like Tariq Ali (and like me) find The Music of Time so enthralling. Powell has that in common with Waugh.

I was most interested in what he says about Hearing Secret Harmonies. The fact that Powell was no longer bohemian, he suggests, affected the tone and structure of the novel. Well, I wouldn't be quite so sure about that, but I did feel left down by volume 12. I'd put that down to the sense of bereavement I'd felt at coming to the end of it all.

And I hadn't known about the alternative ending planned for Widmerpool, his disappearing (as he had appeared) into the mist. Would that have been better? It feels like it...

But I disagree that Widmerpool was "taken out of character" in the last volume. He behaved in a way which could not easily have been predicted, to be sure. But it was not out of keeping with the "slavish" look he had as a schoolboy when hit by a banana thrown by the captain of the Eleven; or having sugar poured over him by Barbara Goring; or the whole course of his relationship with Pamela. Departure into the mist would have been more dignified than his real exit. But Widmerpool's dignity was always a complex matter.

I was 24 when I first read A Dance, 47 when I re-read it. I doubt I'll wait 23 years for the third go.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more

How many pallets can you fit in the back of a Fiat 500?

Image
At least 1. Maybe I could have got 3 altogether, at a pinch. Also 200+ gorse seeds, which have begun to look in danger of damping off, so I'm thinking they'll be better off at the allotment in the fresh air. I'm worried about slugs, snails and woodpigeons, though, so I put them in a wheelbarrow, covered with a net. Also this morning, planted a row of beetroot detroit.
Read more