Anthony Powell (1) (1905–2000)

Well, two of the three are, "A Buyer's Market" and "the Acceptance World". This is a long novel in twelve volumes presenting a picture of upper middle class, somewhat artistic, British Life, from the 1920's into the 1960's. There is gentle fun, and an insightful mind at work. The two most remembered characters are Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator, and Kenneth Widmerpool, a perpetual outsider. The twelve sections were not an instant classic, but are well thought of, by their generation. the characters become gradually part of one's mental life, which was of course, the point. Powell became a long time pillar of the literary world and ended his epic in 1974.… (mere)

à propos Berlin
A couple of days short of September, procrastinating with my term paper, I have started the next novel, volume nine, in »A Dance to the Music of Time« by Anthony Powell. It is a 1971 edition, Fontana book, I purchased second hand, featuring on the cover [...] a likely scenario behind the many doors of Whitehall were Nicholas Jenkins works with the Intelligence Corps, as Pennistone’s assistant in Polish Liaison in WWII.

Here’s to Berlin (p. 31):
»Michalski, now in his late thirties, had served like Bobrowski with the Polish contingent in France. Of large size, sceptical about most matters, he belonged to the world of industrial design – statuettes for radiator caps and such decorative items – working latterly in Berlin, which had left some marks on him of its bitter individual humor. In fact Pennistone always said talking to Michalski made him feel he was sitting in the Romanisches Café.« [28 August 2020]… (mere)

I tried to find a picture of a wooden bound old prayer book without avail. Islam book binding sometimes has wooden boards covered in leather. I wonder, if there would be carved or inlaid book covers. The prayer book Kedward ist telling about probably is a Christian one, though.
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Meeting up with Kipling
Further on in „The Valley of Bones“, volume seven from „The Music of Time“ by Anthony Powell, the army has moved to new quarters, still back in Great Britain. Nicholas Jenkins shares the room with Captain Gwatkin who wakes him in the night because he himself was startled out of sleep by the thought that he might have forgotten to put the new codeword order into the safebox. -- It is only „The Jungle Book“ I ever have read by Kipling so far, and it was back in the late Seventies at the Diavolezza mountain hut above the mighty Morteratsch glacier, the day before our little rope team crossed the three summits of Piz Palü – a much nicer prospect than battling the Huns.
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The aftermath of the defeat of Dunkirk with victims among his acquaintances makes Nicholas Jenkins ponder:
"The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal ending."… (mere)

It doesn't feel as if there is a single, significant change of approach from Powell in the third book of the series to easily explain why this is much the strongest at this stage. Rather, a number of things. First, you can see a newly found technical confidence from the start - not just the in the extended descriptive passage described the Ufford, Uncle Giles' hotel, but just as much in the subtlety in which he deals with his cast, their time in focus and the brilliant way reappearances and telling juxtapositions are handled. Then, the writing itself is at a new level of fluency and the time taken unobtrusively laying the ground in the previous two books now pays off here in abundance, principally in the deftness it facilitates. Already - in Templer and Stringham in particular - we see what feels like the start of a realistic and distressing downward spiral. And Widmerpool's menace - still not exactly explicit - is superbly evoked even though he doesn't appear until the last third of the novel. Above all, I sense a realisation within Powell that the sequence is possible, will work, which takes this book to another level. I am really keen to see where we go from here.… (mere)