Time, ambition and Kenneth Widmerpool
Synopsis
A Dance to the Music of Time is Anthony Powell’s sequence of twelve novels following a loosely connected group of characters through several decades of twentieth-century British life. The story begins in the 1920s, when the narrator Nicholas Jenkins is still at school, and continues through university, work, marriage, war, politics, publishing and old age. Characters disappear for hundreds of pages before returning unexpectedly, often transformed by success, failure, marriage or simply the passage of time.
There is no single dramatic plot running through all twelve books. The sequence is built instead from conversations, parties, professional relationships, chance encounters and the gradual movement of people through one another’s lives. At the centre of much of this movement is Kenneth Widmerpool: awkward schoolboy, relentless social climber and, for me, the most memorable character in the entire sequence.
Why I Read It
I was attracted to A Dance to the Music of Time precisely because it seemed to reject many of the things a novel is normally expected to provide. There are few dramatic plots, major revelations or neatly engineered climaxes. Instead, Powell relies on observation, character and the accumulation of apparently minor events. I liked the idea of reading something that did not constantly need to manufacture excitement, and which trusted the reader to find meaning in the way people changed over a much longer period.
Its epic scale was equally attractive. Twelve novels following the same loose network of characters across roughly half a century promised something a single novel could never reproduce. People disappear for years, return in completely different circumstances and acquire significance that would have been impossible to predict when they first appeared. Reading the sequence feels less like following a plot and more like watching an entire social world slowly reorganise itself.
I was also intrigued by the almost cult following the books have developed. They are widely admired without ever feeling entirely mainstream, and the people who love them often talk about Powell’s characters as if they were real acquaintances. Kenneth Widmerpool is the obvious example. He begins as an awkward, faintly ridiculous and apparently peripheral schoolboy, yet repeatedly returns in more influential positions. Each reappearance creates the same question: how has this strange, humourless and seemingly unimpressive man managed to advance again?
What I Learned
The sequence reinforced how easily persistence can be mistaken for merit. Widmerpool is not without ability, but his rise depends as much on endurance, political instinct and his willingness to keep advancing after humiliation as it does on judgement or wisdom. Other characters are more naturally gifted, charming or intelligent, but many become distracted, complacent or self-destructive. Widmerpool simply continues. Powell shows how institutions can reward the person who remains in the room, understands the hierarchy and wants power badly enough.
It also made me think about how status changes perception. Widmerpool’s underlying personality remains remarkably consistent, but the way other people react to him changes as he acquires authority. Behaviour that appears merely ridiculous when he is powerless becomes much more threatening when backed by institutional influence. His story is a useful reminder that power does not necessarily transform character; sometimes it simply amplifies what was already there.
The books also demonstrate how little control people have over their own reputations. Characters attempt to shape how others see them, but identity is created collectively through memory, gossip, status and circumstance. Widmerpool is mocked, feared, used and underestimated by different people at different points in the sequence. The person remains broadly recognisable while the meaning attached to him changes completely.
Perhaps the most important lesson is about time itself. Significant change is often incremental rather than dramatic. Widmerpool does not rise through one spectacular victory. His advancement is produced by dozens of smaller appointments, alliances, decisions and acts of persistence. By the time the scale of his transformation becomes obvious, the process has been happening for years. The same is true of decline: characters who appear central in one volume can become marginal in another, while supposedly insignificant figures move steadily towards the centre.
Review
The individual novels are uneven, but the achievement of the complete sequence is extraordinary. Powell creates the sense that time has genuinely passed rather than simply informing the reader that it has. A joke can take several books to develop, a character’s decline may only become visible when compared with an appearance hundreds of pages earlier, and seemingly insignificant encounters acquire meaning much later.
Nicholas Jenkins is an unusual narrator because he is rarely the most interesting person in the room. He observes rather than dominates, which allows the books to become a study of social systems as much as individual lives. School, marriage, work, the military, politics and publishing all become overlapping networks of loyalty, ambition, reputation and influence. People move between them, carrying old relationships and rivalries into new settings.
Widmerpool gives the sequence its strongest thread. He is ridiculous, persistent, ambitious and increasingly disturbing. Powell describes him at one point as retaining an “exotic drabness about his appearance”, which captures something essential about him: he is simultaneously ordinary and impossible to ignore. His rise from comic outsider to a figure capable of exercising real power is one of the most compelling parts of the twelve books.
What stayed with me most was not a dramatic scene or a conventional plot twist, but the accumulation of small changes across thousands of pages. That was what attracted me to the sequence in the first place, and ultimately what made it worth reading. The people who advance furthest are not necessarily the wisest, most talented or most admired. Sometimes they are simply the ones who cannot be discouraged.
Rating: 4.5/5