A Question of Upbringing • Anthony Powell

This book came to me as a review copy and first slipped to the back of my TBR pile. Somehow the blurb didn’t immediately grab me, but not much later I pulled it out and read it. It’s marketed as “as good as Balzac, as deep as Joyce, as refined as Thomas Mann,” and from a social-history angle it certainly promised an enticing read. Whether this first of twelve volumes in the cycle A Dance to the Music of Time is really a masterstroke — you’ll find out here.

At the center stands Nicholas Jenkins, scion of a well-to-do English family, from whose subjective perspective an entire social stratum is portrayed between 1921 and roughly 1971. This first volume covers Nicholas’s time at the public school Eton, a short language stay in France, and his years at university. Powell himself was part of the English upper class, and these books are said to be strongly autobiographical, even if the characters are invented and the story is entirely fictional. In Germany, Powell, who died in 2000 at the age of ninety-four, remains largely unknown, so this series is a renewed attempt to bring the cycle to a wider readership here. The subsequent volumes are currently being newly translated by dtv and were slated to appear at six-month intervals through autumn 2019.

Going in with the Balzac comparison, I began with the wrong expectations. The novel opens with a depiction of Eton’s rather drab surroundings and then moves into detailed portraits of Jenkins’s schoolmates — their traits as he perceives them and the relations among them. Seasoned with quite terse dialogue, that’s precisely the mode the book sustains. From a first-person perspective, we come to know the people and gradually build, from outward description and Jenkins’s subjective appraisal, a clearer idea of what makes them tick, what moves them, and how their characters are composed. Powell dispenses with a notable plot, and one simply drifts along on these descriptions and clipped exchanges. There’s something genuinely meditative about it — calm, relaxed, almost “dance-like,” as if someone were merely reporting “across the dinner table” (p. 253). That is exactly how Powell wanted his work to be understood — not as carefully balanced historiography (cf. afterword, p. 253).

The reader knows the figures only through Jenkins’s descriptions, so no real intimacy with the actors emerges. We remain outside, observing with Jenkins, assessing and judging rather than empathizing, and we are not — by way of a stand-in protagonist — part of this society. The individuals feel convincing and realistic, yet cool, distant, and loosely connected in their social contacts. According to the afterword, that mirrors the conditions of this class then as now quite well. Inevitably, a certain, surely intended critique arises of these young people whose life paths have been mapped out for a grand career in the ruling elite from the cradle — irrespective of education, since most of them either drop out of university or never attend.

I found the brief, excellent afterword striking in its claim that “in the last 150 years there has been virtually no social mobility in England” (p. 252). I’ve come across similar observations before, especially in contrast to Germany, whose ruling elites were largely replaced twice in the last century. Even today, many of the key political and economic figures in England come from a handful of expensive public schools.

I perceived the characters as very cool, overly nonchalant, emotionally reserved, and highly world-weary. Everyone seems certain he’s destined for greatness, and a certain jadedness is hard to deny. Deep social bonds are absent, and together with the mostly bleak, chilly settings, the effect is desolate. No personality truly grips you; everything flows along, apparently preordained and low on emotion. In that respect, Powell has likely achieved a very accurate depiction of this social stratum.

At the same time, the reading didn’t excite me much. Powell writes very well, and the sentences, analyses, and judgments Jenkins offers are elegantly phrased, full of fine ideas, and testify to an excellent eye for detail. The dialogue, however, disappointed me throughout: mostly very short lines tossed back and forth without gaining much depth. Even for a reserved and distant milieu, it felt too thin and not entirely realistic. Of course it’s a deliberate stylistic choice, but it doesn’t exactly enhance reading pleasure.

What also bothered me was the course of the narrative: it feels as if there isn’t one. The setting is sketched briefly (school at Eton, the estate in France, …) and Powell immediately plunges into describing people — at length and in detail, but without much arising from it. At the various stations of Jenkins’s development there are occasional subplots, and those can be entertaining, yet often things dissolve into even more detailed characterization. I suspect this cycle truly pays off only if you read all the books. Powell is said to field over 400 characters in the series, some moving to the fore, others disappearing or returning only in memory or conversation. The first volume already hints that the interplay of all these figures over time — that is, across Jenkins’s life — becomes meaningful. Individuals are set up to evolve, to have their own fates that intertwine with Jenkins’s and take shape through their decisions. That’s present in embryo here and, if the afterword is to be believed, becomes clearer in subsequent volumes. Overall, though, this opening novel felt very fragmented to me — composed primarily of loosely connected vignettes that outline Jenkins’s life and encounters while leaving numerous details out. It often felt as if I knew only a small portion — surely intentional, but not to my taste.

“On the stage, masks are assumed in a certain relation to the whole progress of the action; in daily life, however, the performers play their parts without regard to whether they fit the scene or suit the words spoken by the rest of the cast. The result is the general tendency for events to descend to the level of farce, even when the subject is very serious. This disregard of the unities is something inescapable in human life; yet sometimes close observation reveals, at the end of the performance, that things may not have been so incompatible as they appeared in the second act.” (p. 59)

The comparison with Balzac is certainly warranted: with The Human Comedy he drew a similarly large, complex social network. The extensive character descriptions here reminded me of him as well. But Balzac is another league — his books teem with life, suspense, and dynamism. He lays bare human thought and action in a broadly analytical way, shows their depths and heights, and captivates the reader by turning the screws. That wouldn’t suit a portrait of the cool English upper class of the 1920s; but it does mean Powell is surely not “as good as Balzac.”

A parallel to Joyce seems fair, because the descriptions often recalled, a little, the stream of consciousness that characterizes Ulysses. Jenkins’s experiences and accounts frequently include sensory details and small perceptions; the jumpiness of scenes, the reader’s limited vantage on events and people, and the fact that everything is filtered through Jenkins’s eyes often make it feel as if we’re tracing his inner world. Of course, this can’t be compared to Joyce, for whom the technique is structural — but the blend in Powell is noteworthy.

This novel also repeatedly reminded me of Henry James, who in The Ambassadors presents a similarly fine social web. James, too, renders impressions through a protagonist’s viewpoint, but he embeds them in a more rounded plot and reveals character through action and social interaction rather than through extended description.

Conclusion: On balance, this book enthused me rather less. The story felt too thin, the characters too cool and distant, the whole too uneventful. Powell’s prose is graceful, the reading flows pleasantly — even if it requires focus and isn’t especially fast — but the dialogue didn’t win me over: too terse, and thus not very realistic. To truly savor the many fine points of these human relationships, one likely needs to read further volumes of the cycle. The figures feel real enough, but I didn’t find them or their lives compelling enough to reach immediately for the next book. The Balzac comparison limps: his novels depict more complex social structures, with greater depth, while remaining gripping and suspenseful. If, however, one is specifically interested in the background — the English upper class of the last century — this will certainly hit the spot.

Book information: A Question of Upbringing • Anthony Powell • dtv Verlag • 265 pages • ISBN 9783423145947