Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Books Do Furnish a Room: Book 10 of A Dance to the Music of Time
    Books Do Furnish a Room: Book 10 of A Dance to the Music of Time
    Books Do Furnish a Room: Book 10 of A Dance to the Music of Time
    Ebook275 pages4 hours

    Books Do Furnish a Room: Book 10 of A Dance to the Music of Time

    By Anthony Powell

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Anthony Powell’s universally acclaimed epic A Dance to the Music of Time offers a matchless panorama of twentieth-century London. Now, for the first time in decades, readers in the United States can read the books of Dance as they were originally published—as twelve individual novels—but with a twenty-first-century twist: they’re available only as e-books.

    The tenth volume, Books Do Furnish a Room (1971), finds Nick Jenkins and his circle beginning to re-establish their lives and careers in the wake of the war. Nick dives into work on a study of Robert Burton; Widmerpool grapples with the increasingly difficult and cruel Pamela Flitton—now his wife; and we are introduced to the series’ next great character, the dissolute Bohemian novelist X. Trapnel, a man who exudes in equal measure mystery, talent, and an air of self-destruction.

    "Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."--Chicago Tribune

    "A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."--Elizabeth Janeway, New York Times

    "One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."--Naomi Bliven, New Yorker

    “The most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have.”--Kingsley Amis

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2010
    ISBN9780226677439
    Books Do Furnish a Room: Book 10 of A Dance to the Music of Time

    Read more from Anthony Powell

    Related to Books Do Furnish a Room

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Mar 1, 2022

      Table Talk
      8 min read

    • Article

      To Hell And Back

      Sep 1, 2022

      The first complete English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy appeared in 1802, and over the past two centuries, new versions have proliferated beyond count, like Beatles covers or Sherlock Holmes movies. A diverting literary parlor game is to imag

      4 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker

      Sep 7, 2021

      Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker - the author who reimagined and propelled Vlad III as Dracula onto the international scene – is of Irish heritage, born in Dublin on 8 November 1847. Although he published his first short story at 24 years of age and wrote many

      1 min read

    • Article

      From Murderpan to Mattapan

      Dec 1, 2021

      From Murderpan to Mattapan
      15 min read

    • Article

      Are You Jewish?

      Sep 1, 2022

      Are You Jewish?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Re-Covered: The Mischief

      Dec 2, 2019

      Re-Covered: The Mischief
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jesse Paddock

      Dec 9, 2020

      I’d gotten what I’d wanted—a room full of books and time enough to read them—but at a cost. The post A Year in Reading: Jesse Paddock appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Vernon Sullivan: The Bestselling Writer Who Didn’t Exist

      Mar 30, 2017

      In 1946, a novel called I Spit On Your Graves (J’irai cracher sur vos tombes) appeared in France. The book was a hardboiled thriller written by a newcomer, a black American writer named Vernon Sullivan. The translator was a French author well-connect

      9 min read

    • Article

      Valentine’s way AN WILSON Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life

      Jun 2, 2021

      Handheld Press £15.99 One old reviewer found a tear rolling round his cheek towards the end of this book. When the poet Valentine Ackland went into hospital with breast cancer, she wrote to her lover of 38 years, novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, ‘You

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Flatwoods Monster!

      Mar 24, 2022

      The Flatwoods Monster!
      1 min read

    • Article

      Desiree C. Bailey

      Dec 15, 2021

      Desiree C. Bailey
      2 min read

    • Article

      Graphic Adaptation Of 'Heart Of Darkness' Takes On Canonical Racism, Artfully

      Nov 10, 2019

      Artist Peter Kuper has adapted Joseph Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness in a way that undercuts Conrad's depiction of Africa as a place of existential horror, and centers the African characters.

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘Translation Is An Art’: Why Translators Are Battling For Recognition

      Jul 3, 2023

      They have often been overlooked in the artistic and literary process, but translators have long claimed they have the power to change everything. There are tales of myths being born, societies being forged and cities destroyed with just a slip of the

      3 min read

    • Article

      José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature

      Nov 21, 2023

      American readers have largely forgotten the single greatest writer to come from the Latin American Boom: Chilean novelist José Donoso. The post José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Gathering In The Kitchen

      Dec 1, 2021

      A Gathering In The Kitchen
      13 min read

    • Article

      Jenkins

      Feb 4, 2021

      Jenkins
      6 min read

    • Article

      Lover of Cars

      Sep 12, 2023

      all those Stingers Jaguars Tiguans Fiat 500sand San Remo Green Beemer i4s I love allthose model numbers numb-sexy like cashmerethrown over a dinosaur skeleton like a robot’skiss I fell asleep watching an Audi documentaryand dreamt of a low low R8 sco

      1 min read

    • Article

      EDITOR’S Note

      Feb 15, 2023

      WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF A REMARKABLE CONVERSATION that veered from motorcycles to square dancing, from Carl Jung to Marcel Proust, when his wife politely interrupted and set before us a plate of madeleines she had just that afternoon procured from a

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Books Do Furnish a Room

    4/5

    77 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      "Après la guerre,
      There'll be a good time everywhere."

      The 10th novel in Powell's Music of Time cycle takes us to the years after WWII. Nick Jenkins is now in his 40s, with a second(?) child on the way, and London is a world greatly changed from his youth. The wonderfully titled Books Do Furnish a Room takes two unexpectedly connected subjects as its centrepieces: the short-lived left-wing magazine Fission, to which Jenkins hitches his wagon alongside a plethora of supporting characters from pre-War novels, and the antagonistic marriage of Kenneth Widmerpool (now an MP) and Pamela Flitton. We knew there would be sparks and savagery when these two married, but the truth is even more delectable. Widmerpool (whom the delightful Rosie Manasch likens to Lewis Carroll's Frog Footman) has matured into the great villain of the series, but Pam sure gives him a run for her money. When she arrives for a funeral early in the novel, pale as ever in her black dress and red lipstick, Jenkins remarks that she seems an appropriate attendant on Death. (The best revelation is that Pam's repeated final insult to her male lovers that they are terrible in a bed is in fact a feint; she is the frigid one, and ol' Kenneth gave up after just a couple of attempts. Marriage... is complicated.)

      The two plots are linked by the almost-overpowering presence of a new character, X. Trapnel, a proto-beatnik writer whose ambitions outweigh his achievements. (I'm not sure which of his titles I prefer best, Camel Ride to the Tomb - a literal scene in his Egyptian novel but also a metaphor for life - or Bin Ends!) "A novelist is like a fortune teller", says the bearded, perpetually sunglass-wearing Trapnel, "who can impart certain information but not necessarily what the reader wants to hear". He feels both a loving parody of a particular kind of writer but also an acknowledgement of the burden those destined to create great art must often carry.

      Now that Nick and his crew are older than myself, I was prepared to struggle with the sixtysomething Powell's inevitable reflection on time, and the pains of memory. So I was surprised to discover that Books is perhaps the volume least interested in the act of memory, at least since the very first. This is a very much a novel about the art of making art. Its specific nature, especially given that many of the parodies of post-War literary life are all but lost to me, will give some readers pause. But I found it rather invigorating. Powell had certainly not lost any of his touch (Hilary Spurling, in her recent biography, notes that he was undergoing renewed inspiration, especially as he was beginning to fear his life might end before he finished the cycle!).

      By now, I have made my peace with Powell's unorthodox decision to sideline Jenkins, our narrator, almost completely. It is still difficult to appreciate his wife Isobel, barely a sketch outline, or to know if he has truly had any friends since the day he left highschool in the first volume. (Powell always insisted he would have written this series even if Proust had not existed, making out that the influence didn't concern him, but I still believe his creation of a twelve-volume series without a "self" at the centre if a deliberate inversion of Proust's more centripetal work.) Yet I appreciate now that Jenkins is a kind of narrative voice personified. He is able to be present at every major moment - think of the twin deaths of the Lovells in the previous volume, or the twin confrontation scenes involving Widmerpool and Pamela here - without anyone raising an eyebrow. While the narrative could function without Jenkins, it is his connection to events, as a kind of living recorder, the annalist par excellence, that keeps him relevant. If these novels are ultimately an attempt to depict Time on the page, Jenkins is the clock hand itself, slowly ticking ever closer to midnight.

      I wanted to share this quote from Evelyn Waugh, a lifelong friend of Powell's and an admirer of the novels - although he did not live to see the series end:

      "Less original novelists tenaciously follow their protagonists. In the Music of Time we watch through the glass of a tank; one after another various specimens swim towards us; we see them clearly, then with a barely perceptible flick of fin or tail, they are off into the murk... Their presence has no particular significance. It is recorded as part of the permeating and inebriating atmosphere of the haphazard which is the essence of Mr Powell's art."

      I'll be truthful; I'm a little nervous about approaching the end of this series. For two reasons: first, I'm aware that - after covering 30 years in 10 volumes, Powell is now going to cover another 20 years in just 2; I'm hopeful the series does not just become (as Philip Larkin cruelly put it) "social accountancy". More to the point, though, I'm nervous about revelation. When I completed Proust's In Search of Lost Time, the climax had me unsettled and in awe for days. I was a wreck. If Powell does not equal that, I'll be eternally dissatisfied. If he does equal that, I will need to prepare myself for some weeping.

      Ah, well. The future will have its way with us, whether we like it or not.
    • 5/5
      This is the tenth volume of Powell's autobiographical epic, "A Dance to the Music of Time", and his fictional avatar Nick Jenkins returns once more to London's literary world after securing his release from military service. It is now the late 1940s and Jenkins is "doing the books" for the new politico-literary magazine "Fission" while also struggling to complete his own latest work, 'Borage and Hellebore', an exegesis of Robert Burton's classic Renaissance volume, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy'. Working for Fission brings Jenkins back into regular contact with J G Quiggin who has now relinquished his own aspirations as an author and taken to publishing. The magazine is edited by Lindsey Bagshaw, known to all his acquaintances as 'Books Do Furnish a Room' Bagshaw, or simply 'Books'. He is a veteran journalist and lifelong student of the numerous strains of socialism. Jenkins also makes the acquaintance X Trapnel, a highly accomplished yet dangerously volatile writer who strides around the icy capital in an old RAF greatcoat while brandishing a swordstick. Jenkins is surprised to find that Kenneth Widmerpool, now a Labour MP and recently appointed as Principal Private Secretary to a member of the Cabinet, is involved with the magazine as one of its financial backers and a regular columnist. In this latter role he churns out wordy pieces espousing the merits of increased cultural and trade links with the Soviet bloc countries.After an inauspicious first encounter Trapnel becomes utterly enchanted by Pamela Widmerpool's wife. Pamela has hitherto been a fairly ephemeral character but takes a more prominent role in this volume, leaving her husband to set up home with Trapnel in the dim hinterland of Kilburn. Needless to say, life with Pamela is far from tranquil, which drags Trapnel down, and compromises his health (he has never been physically robust) and his writing. The portrayal of Trapnel is based upon the equally melancholic life of Julian Maclaren-Ross, who promised so much but died regrettably young without ever fulfilling his potential.As Jenkins becomes more deeply immersed in Burton's work he sees ever more characteristics of different forms of melancholia among those people with whom he works, and Trapnel in particular. Trapnel does display a certain style, but is ill-equipped for the vicissitudes of post-ar London, and the Dickensian winter that shows no sign or thawing.Often very funny this novel is also very closely observed and offers pellucid insight into the difficulties endured by the professional writer.
    • 3/5
      This book, volume 10, finds Jenkins at University doing research on Anatomy of Melancholy. He meets with Sillery and Short and learns that Quiggins and Cragg are starting a publishing company. There is a funeral for Effridge. This book spends a great deal of time on Pamela Flitton Widmerpool who has simply atrocious manners. X or Trapnel has a big part too. Trapnel is a man who drinks and does "pills". He borrows money and doesn't seem to make any.
    • 4/5
      The War is over, and Nick Jenkins witnesses the beginning of Post-war Britain. Widmerpool is at last successful, and has fallen to marrying Pamela Flitton. It won't end well, I'm afraid.
    • 5/5
      This is volume ten of the monumental 'A Dance to the Music of Time' .Nick Jenkins is now firmly embroiled in the literary world and is attempting to produce a work on Robert Burton and his 'Anatomy of Melancholy'. The reader is introduced to the fascinating character,X.Trapnel and his explosive affair with Pamela Widmerpool. We also become reacquainted with La Bas who was Nick Jenkins teacher in 'A Question of Upbringing'.Ten down and two to go.

    Book preview

    Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell

     ebook_preview_excerpt.htmlm|˒F`uYV,%HJbǨؗe$ @%>3?61/sG H4UH Ǐm8}Z}_gw|ݛo߽}_4* }f߭k7u]5}UOK:z߹>F\j?kЄ9ᦺM~\fj+7ñs3諾ǿ^vv]Uw睎㫈Ս.Lѻn>*WfWϩjB‚Mf\U3v?UW'kfB:fW!ZS+UΥcջn"Zr-sSS xڏs\yH[. |9U풯KtS\MT~  ۭ8kl_5\Kݔn,6 opx`3LFv].pSV~yox* aOnba8oW9SηXç}tU^n]?8vW%WOjm@ i!Dp,kP ۄwavZK M? 7旸{&|8ƭ@y\@蚛á&ѻU?LR~ۇ#zcOޔkr&yeqh) 7۾ 5갺:'8C=buDX? }V V?DѸAuˌ}֐'uAge6m"N+ 1wVx ,:fY3M^cxwqEHg(݃v׹}Y- \!K2JaT)yK*9zOX5wyS} ~ EY4Y| O56'(%}vLS[O+6C#@JVnҡ 5dT4p{w8ͪ uOG.:q˸I v"?~qƍ\#;x_#:_ 5lB-CK .2L?SL7TnyWZ!Caj(d 1s(xz10Y%-p ).]c \Y5 #QjX%3GtMbc4/LK{S}p؝?̌# m 8Q`?aB{贆(^98O5%b >n8v,bFJ(^h@('{ l_J~SW#H (B A7#%csZдGܝ#\>NBC;d=`Pf/ A^#uC&B8I/̌߼ ~giVS(C g3`e]t;Dy8;kzU֤h;ל{`c]pt C䒊1v@tL;fuKCFRP(҆&A@Beo.,eI5p,R278H&8.<JB+qw!"(I:W 7!δٶ'"J330 ?X-w:!>:jO;ٻ=qjH ƙ:&oˈLzv P# 8Zpr>];^rx~\f>D$pJؔhQ: >+Z&Iڠ k9"E`9rt")\946t>@n/{gy fH i}`̏{f S`eGcc ow9o [5?{83~JQk`0=AtxO-T;S>'*W ,S @lX[0~.ͮE|DasyF' ΍Ibx0,U38WO=ORr:?}!?(eQPq^<*cK{Au;BZ92b,-F y! X62wBob%ښox(7@&k L(;oiF!EPi⯑ͻy}I4%.A" 2 9"1Ee A8QoLN:`u6~Ht"Oc2 3:3V'7l9k-EK&LwH h8-XKOIa]LFuROj0so!. O>Pl).'.$ΏgZ],Ȝ0~nl|tr0$0/b//q L9ɰ cQddyCOh:Gyˋ[R?8w.q NƐģӜJzYҜLu{$@~d=FZr<_PddY{Zo2pޒg:HHp_LkD*)X(%5Zb>H&s4lP J,$:+Z0[2JXM}X0 uzy)_DTܔ#E$INA2AẉJigdxQ5>É9@̞̼}ȐWB`}М?!'.B6dسW`Z2:J) :`C9њ°tbrfdyfxL^y'\c !mdu#p*.)哯w (sQ݌dCT?t(£%[pGffʃZq"d|Gݹ(vRX KN AypV _'PLX)(i*.Sc5XUKVΌڅ$LwtG8_aZ`U)3dSQ$LFl hHs‰l"]FV_xКubKs =cvO=ѐ}}IU#,(={z}W"2 s͖dZwOoQ}ƹgWwjo"+0U3ȷDMGDm8?e'AUYwD5nWshVR{caz+kPLQwr>S_ JSf5!3v4Rp>"hOV>XE`x\z{} Df;KaIRvsD9c5 -t4]1Y ]W`/fe/nޒD_fqU}S,յKYN㿾;sp]sw 67FE `%Qau3%bXCxHQ޹f%X%^QH LYH$ġ,FuƲJƴS:!ul]JBYiؼF"T&@B<5<6&JsÇޱDLFzCQ3 +0vASV63I@>؝R^!lπh7[Eh',c'~q,a4OH*L~UU"XjOD?@T3,5~R6siݘrn$+Ht'USsYJX#6䬞TNxhrDґb.FyYud*Hce?IuTxf" X [6JGqx)D̖EjGƆJ>ݺ,r(TϧŷPX|}B/\~?o['o/↠`eC[ =E!wǑM0^O,2Y5wZk [aҠ.X1(Zx`_t[9h Ttja^(pV!6Nz8:rKӇ>R /Y=C|x^/YjW#+OWR*m…5ãк}FG,Wx :i7vy^D]ɯ,RaW٘UWûdV\BZa8ҕ#@UHRTmqrmXu CԊHvClo=;̲[Jgg@-Ӓ83ϪEh(uƴ:љ-VūtI@kE:]PΤcՔR+m]Q;NIdSAZXLC- uMT7:2'{SsSb3tEG!p\H HPt^"Jp#*pź \f!.i"Ν|AsϾ}?-3oֳc:O#x .U*ɑ$+<9lh(87޶.K_ pnO5ܐsR?#+J֗Fy}W+dZG1%s9ө\{;Fyc\<=aG9[O]4 K:NnhRZH`TM>p9:Lҧ̃^ #Q -IО a!ߜb?1*w Pbz=UTzنsYiO˨QZV6W X;H4B~|׽f!-adGuNM\UV1*ٖ2k*3{YHq5{VvA4DŽEs+mkHƕ&lJƒHW[KnC2Y.ٓOݒ^e#2bE|YZ²hnQ2_G+5c4sdR*.m [~t2&a2kWKJ Q=wҽt}(8ͦE^D@/h:Tm/18nYkn*ϯr(q'MZ o̓%wS=R 3bB}Pv*#dۦt?.MiH]4D66vssoP7 mpVɂa'ePR(|o^7kWQ=kjxoq4Vo 9X_ bjFy{Ռ+M_$M^[MkbTem*Yjj̆3;?9Ll9S .aR%(,o`A]@+Hɨ7y¼CXT`'$Yse^|U#aU~m+o?N[B s,=Z:FpX2{paEZ0-SME+!\ǴϞD_1NO5tVÛ2&k<>[tL;/D/Oy 4_lq Ǭz?ϑWU~H!My1Cx*R?<*vvx>yTsZRzLaGS+?<<2ɥ%~b1dNg8`J8T?ojmJJ9‰/VTnD<~K,mB󳶙#/}^f#Pv.2Y$ʌ-(Ej>c3;}jV)B(`wCUK %$8ߕ4,'S@'lElMO0%_fS ;4R|^?~ txst`hAXMɗkɹz!r4a/rY"K5=Fy kDl.7}YWk:غVgfs\fld,khEpR9-hlx<pD[@$~ߞ'dXwLbhA Y_B}Wדh3{5WE;DʣllmKx~_yBVV2f~ь<`c'$wgOhh$*\Y:/6yQ%w؀~]QGį8m)##s|?9/9\'ME`w?FML]3y2,kڋwJKδ=i֏J}0o[ه6$gm]Y`ufM@xHR5#A|_NU$T;$.wr+Q~2r?\sݦJ
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1