'O, How the Wheel Becomes It' was the first of Powell's books that I ever read, and the one that made me want to sit down and work through 'A Dance to the Music of Time' (which, after some bad experiences with long multivolume novels...ahem, Marcel, I wasn't so keen on doing, however attractive the books appeared to be). Fortunately, 'Wheel' is such an amusing read that any trepidation washes away in anticipation of a good long story.

'Wheel' is the story of G.F.H. Shadbold, a second-rate author who, in his declining years, has established himself as the sort of literary critic and general hack who appears on television chat shows as the venerable old man of letters, which, of course, he is not. Shadbold's fortunes begin to change, though, when the diary of a companion and fellow-novelist of his youth, Cedric Winterwade, who authored the forgetable 'Welsons of Omdurman Terrace' and later died for his trouble in the Second World War, appears on the scene, and Shadbold attempts to suppress it, fearing the unfavourable exposure that it will bring. The result is one of quiet hilarity, sure to bring a smile to any reader who enjoys a clever lampooning of literary fashion, and the literary establishment as a whole.

So, while not a book rising to, say, the level of Wodehouse or Stephen Fry, this comic work is well worth the time of the reader with a taste for the ironic, yet devastatingly accuracte, exposure of human nature that Powell has penned.

Project Powell ends off with a whimper. It took me awhile to get through this last volume in the "Dance to the Music of Time" series. Now that I've read all twelve, I think I can make some sweeping generalizations about the series.

Although the first book implies that the series is about four people, basically it is just about two: Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator, who is a rough stand in for the author himself; and Kenneth Widmerpool, the man who rises above his station and falls off the ladder. I like Jenkins. His demeanor and outlook on life is wry, sophisticated, and inimitable. Just how an author would like to be seen. However, I did not like Widmerpool, and I felt mad with myself for falling into Powell's trap. I get the feeling that you aren't supposed to like Widmerpool for a single reason: he does things the wrong way. He's pushy, self-centered, and vain, or at least that's the words we use for people who are failures. If Widmerpool had been successful (that is, if we were to speak of him before his fall), we would have said that he was aggressive, driven, and eccentric.

In this last book, Powell tries to pull in the loose ends, updating us on a little bit of all the characters we have met in the past, while trying to put the finishing touches on his comments on this generation. I found it anti-climatic. The climax came in the last book with Pamela Widmerpool dropping the horrible revelation about Kenneth's sexual habits. The wind out of his sails, he floats about afterwards, his previous accomplishments now meaning- less. It's a sad story, alright.

I'm not inclined to read more by Powell. While I found the series interesting, and do not regret having taken the time to work my way through it, his style was a little too "laid back" for me to enjoy.

This is probably not the best part of The Dance to start with. It is, after all, the penultimate volume of a twelve-part series. Still, it is possibly the one novel of the series with the greatest notoriety, and also some great acclaim.

In this volume, it is about 1958, and narrator Nick Jenkins is a full-on academic, attending a conference in Venice, reflecting on travelling professors' statuses as "Temporary Kings." It isn't long before Pamela Widmerpool arrives in the story and sucks all the air out of the other characters. They all meet while gazing at a painting featuring another King, a scene that Lady Widmerpool finds entirely too relevant.

For good measure, there's a couple of Americans tossed in. There's a movie director/race-car driver, and then the introverted would-be biographer of Pamela's late lover. Between the art and the horde of characters that show up in the seemingly casually strung together episodes, Powell continues to bring humanity to his characters, all the while killing them off more quickly and methodically than Jason dispatches errant campers in a Friday the 13th movie.

Still, the messy humanity of these characters is the driver for the story. In this way, the characters in this step of The Dance are much like the Osbournes on TV. Despite all the fabulousness granted to these literary, political, academic, or artistic elites, they're still naked under all their clothing. And their getting older, while realizing that they've reached the primes of their adult lives, and their friends are beginning to die of natural causes, and none of it is that unexpected at all.

The penultimate book in the "Dance to the Music of Time" series. With each book, I find myself reading these faster and faster. Some of this is due to the familiarity with the characters and settings, people and places that I have encountered before and thus do not need to labor at identifying. But it is also due to the 'dating' of the books. Early in the series, beginning as it does shortly after the first World War, I had little in common with the characters and their world. As Powell has progressed through the years, I find myself being able to visualize the people much, much easier.

As in the previous book, Books Do Furnish a Room, Widmerpool continues to embody the Peter Principle in his endless fall upwards, no matter the cruelty that his wife (or Anthony Powell) can bring to bear on him. While I do not find Widmerpool a character with which I can emphathize, I do find myself wincing at his discomfort in much the same way that I can hardly stand to watch sitcoms like "Seinfeld" where people are shown in embarrassing or humiliating situations.

I'm anxious to finish off the series, and made a summary statement about it, even though the first book is lost in the hazy memory of a year ago.

At the end of the first season of Powell's "monumental" novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, I stated that each book was getting better. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy At Lady Molly's very much, and I'm going to try to pin it down. I believe the main reason is that Jenkins reverts back to his observer role, whereas he had finally become much more of an active character in the last book. Herein, everything revolves around Widmerpool's strange engagement to a woman much older than him (and much more eccentric, if more of a "class" with their compatriots than Widmerpool). I am starting to fear that Widmerpool may be the single most important character in the novel, boding ill for my enjoyment.

The problem is that Powell's humor centering around Widmerpool is akin to the humor of Seinfeld. Like the characters of that show, Widmerpool is often sailing amongst the people around him, steadfast in his selfishness, and then has a bowl of sugar unexpectedly dumped on his head. While you do not feel sorry for him--he is, after all, quite a butt in his egotistical way--the manner by which he gets his comeuppance does not put the other characters in all that favorable a light either.

Truth to be told, I was much more interested in Jenkins, newly ensconced in the world of British cinema screenplay writing, and engaged by the end of the book. Unlike his romance with Jean Duport, his wooing of Isobel Tolland occurs entirely offstage, and one wonders at whether it was a thing born of love or of that endlessly ticking biological clock. Stringham and Templar, so important at the beginning of Powell's narrative, are little more than quick asides here.

Now that I'm a third of the way through the Dance, I'm committed to finishing its steps. I only hope that this current turn was simply a miscue on the part of my partner, Mr. Powell, and not a headlong fall into the bandstand.

I had never heard of Powell, or his twelve book symphony, until a discussion about the mechanics of the Alexandria Digital Library brought him to light. Although the recommender hadn't listed Powell as something I'd care for, one of the participants in the discussion who knew of First Impressions, thought it might be something up my alley. Based on this first book, I'm afraid that the machine wins.

A Question of Upbringing introduces you to the main characters of Powell's magnum opus: the narrator, Jenkins, who one never really gets a handle on because he spends more time describing the others than ever going on about himself; Templar, the womanizer and lay-about; Stringham, privileged and haughty; and Widmerpool, the odd man out, with drive and ambition, but no class. One meets them at boarding school and follows them through college in this first volume, but what happens is never as important as what one thinks is happening. As a narrator, Jenkins is obtuse to the point of frustration, never quite describing the situation, but using plenty of words to not do so. Every time I thought something was going to get interesting, the novel would shift to some other scene.

The blurb writers compare Powell to Proust, but I can safely say that A Question of Upbringing is much more interesting than The Remembrance of Things Past. A "comic masterpiece," though? Not in this first volume. The book I have has the next two in the sequence, and I will likely go ahead and give them a try, but based on the first soiree, I must dance to some other fiddler.