Anthony Powell

Scorpio Murtlock easily absorbs would-be High Priest of the alternative society, Ken Widmerpool, into his commune. Nicholas, now an elder statesman of the Literary Establishment, makes a nostalgic return journey to Stourwater to catch a final glimpse of Widmerpool as he disappears once more.

x, 467 p. ; 24 cm

Pages 26 and 27 are damaged.

"Powell tells the story in O, How the Wheel Becomes It! of a British literary celebrity who is not an important writer, is no great personality, and certainly is no cause for celebration of the human species. G.F.H. Shadbold, a lifelong poseur and literary manque, lives, for the most part, in fear of discovery." "A friend, Cedric Winterwade, whom Shadbold evidently seduced in his college days, writes a novel almost as insignificant and badly written as Shadbold's own literary output. As time passes, however, and the "friend" is killed in the army, Winterwade's novel begins to be rediscovered while Shadbold's work remains ignored. The discovery that Winterwade has penned a journal sets the stage for a hilarious series of events, ending in Shadbold's justifiable downfall from grace as he discovers that his friend has revealed not only Shadbold's sexual indiscretions, but has described his own affair with a woman with whom Shadbold had been in love. Powell pokes fun at the writing community, academic life, and a whole generation of memoir-toting literati."--Jacket.

"To earn the reputation of a literary giant within the generation of Waugh, Orwell, and Greene is no mean feat. To do so with the grace and genius that characterized Anthony Powell - whose twelve-volume A Dance to the Music of Time is possibly the only English-language work to match the majestic scope of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past - is nothing short of spectacular. Yet Powell himself remains absent from his writing; he was, said the New York Times, "a writer of mordant succinctness who rewards the reader while revealing little of himself."" "Powell did eventually reveal himself in four volumes of memoirs published between 1976 and 1982 with the titles of Infants of the Spring, Messengers of Day, Faces in My Time, and The Strangers All Are Gone. This edition of Anthony Powell's memoirs is an abridged and revised version of those volumes."--BOOK JACKET.

This is the eleventh volume in the series "A Dance to the Music of Time." In this penultimate volume, Temporary Kings (1973), Nick and his contemporaries are at the height of their various careers in the arts, business, and politics. X. Trapnel is dead, but his mystery continues to draw ghoulish interest from readers and academics alike--as well as from his lover, Pamela Widmerpool. Kenneth Widmerpool, meanwhile, is an MP with mysterious connections beyond the newly dropped Iron Curtain, but he continues to be tormented by Pamela; a spectacular explosion, Nick can't help but realize, is imminent. --Amazon.com.

Nicholas Jenkins enjoys bizarre adventures in the post-war publishing world of Greater London.

Set mostly in London, with a brief interlude overseas, it is the period 1942-45. Nicholas Jenkins has been posted to a War Office liaison Section to work for the Allied armies. Absurdities coincide with horrors for the characters especially in the shady secret services; and although the violence is off-stage, it is still catastrophic. Widmerpool, now well-placed officially, runs into some rather colourful personal complications after meeting Pamela Flitton, the niece of Stringham and a notorious man-eater.