A Rolling Ball Gathers No Moss

Count ‘em: a twelve-volume roman a clef; four volumes of memoirs; three volumes of diaries and a published notebook; two volumes of collected criticism and a recipe for curry; also numerous guest appearances in tedious books about the so-called Brideshead Generation; add two volumes of autobiography by his wife, Lady Violet, and you have to begin to wonder if there was any need for a biography of Anthony Powell.
But of course there is. Even after reading all those aforementioned volumes you still must ask yourself: what was Powell really like?
And was he the “English Proust?” Or merely, in Auberon Waugh’s delicious slighting phrase, “the North Somerset novelist.”
Frankly, I am a huge admirer of Powell – the playwright Alan Bennett sniffed that Powell was an author who gathered “fans”, and there is much truth in that – so I shall not be reading the new and much needed biography: as a fan, I am afraid of undesirable facts that it might reveal.
Still, at least he wasn't a youthful sexual invert like the elder Waugh. (Come out of hiding Soames!)

Comments

[Andrew]

In college, I read and fell in love with "A Dance to the Music of Time." The English Proust? The comparison has always been cheap, and slighting to Powell; at any rate, Powell was funnier, and I'd rather read about Widmerpool than Swann any day.

I could only ever find one more Powell novel--"The Fisher King"?--and was disappointed by it, perhaps because I illogically expected him to write another "Dance." I should really give Powell another go one of these days.