The Soldier's Art (Dance to the Music of Time Book 8)

I’ll start this review of The Soldier’s Art by referring you to the 1982 action film, Rambo. A soldier, recently returned from Vietnam, struggles to adjust to civilian life. His frustrations lead him to take fiery retribution against vindictive small-town police. The authorities call in a former commanding officer to pass on a stern warning about shooting ‘friendly civilians’.“There are no friendly civilians,” comes John Rambo’s world-weary reply.Strange as it may sound, The Soldier’s Art reminded me of this film. Yes, they seem very different - one an action movie, and the other a volume of Anthony Powell’s twelve-part novel about life amongst London’s twentieth century smart set. Rambo shoots up police stations, while Powell’s narrator Nick Jenkins ponders on Robert Browning poems, and deals with mundane army business - trying to help the drunken commanding officer of the army laundry, for example. But I don’t think Powell would have minded the comparison with a Hollywood action movie, since his book characteristically shows opposites as two sides of the same coin. Rambo is neither a solider nor a civilian. He is stuck in the middle. Nick, similarly, does his best to live up to military duties, whilst remaining a civilian at heart, continuing to love the literature and culture of his peacetime life. Nick’s in-between situation is also reflected in his army rank. He is a middling officer, who finds himself dealing with two school friends, one who has achieved seniority above him, while the other works as a mess waiter, serving him food and drink. These varied fates for his friends seem neither expected nor deserved, the result of a capricious fate that can send people any which way for no good reason. From his ambivalent half-way viewpoint, Nick does his best to deal with many other apparent clashes of opposites, whether that’s between countries in wartime, men and women who don’t get on in their marriage, bombed-out houses which look perfectly normal from the outside, a time of war which is also largely a time of boredom, or deadly air raids going unnoticed because of the noise of conversation in a restaurant. There’s also the sense that ordinary people are more heroic than fictional military heroes - since Powell’s everyday folk have to deal with great challenges without having any special abilities to do so.The motto of the army laundry, with which Nick has dealings, is Quis Separabit, meaning ‘who shall separate us’ a motto shared with the Irish Guards apparently. Laundries and fighting units adopt the same motto. Quis Separabit is a sentiment that neatly summarises The Soldier’s Art, a book which takes a time of war and shows how all the oppositions of life are not as black and white as they seem. There’s always a kind of peace treaty going on between them

This is the eighth instalment in the "Dance to the Music of Time" sequence, and the second set during the Second World War. As is the case with all of the novels in the sequence, Powell keeps the reader fully engaged even though very little actually happens. Nick Jenkins's war is not one of direct and exciting engagement with the enemy. For most of this book he remains based in Northern Ireland while the Division to which he is attached prepares for deployment overseas. Jenkins finds himself working as general dogsbody for the Deputy Assistant Advocate General (the DAAG), in the person of the odious and overwhelmingly ambitious Kenneth Widmerpool, now gazetted in the rank of major but desperate to go much higher. Hitherto Widmerpool has been an occasional character - 'a transient and embarrassed spectre' as Widmerpool's and Jenkins's former school master le Bas might have said - but in this volume he is a constant presence, and we can almost feel the torpor with which Jenkins's spirit is ground down as, between them, they plough through the volumes of mindless paperwork.Much of Jenkins's time is spent observing the ceaseless machinations within the internal politics of the Division as Widmerpool strives for advancement and to outflank the almost equally odious Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, a veteran officer who had seen service in the First World War and is never less than scathing of recently-drafted and generally ill-qualified junior officers. Hogbourne-Johnson earns Widmerpool's undying emnity following a splentetic outburst, provoked by an unavoidable traffic snarl-up during a regimental exercie. From that moment on, Widmerpool expend almost as much energy in trying to do Hogbourne-Johnson down as he does in pursuing his own advancement.This novel sees the re-appearance of Stringham, who had been absent from the last two or three volumes. Here he appears as a Mess waiter serving Jenkins and Co at dinner. Now seemingly sober, he is even more deeply riven by melncholy than previously, though he accepts his lowly miltiary status with considerable equanimity. We also catch up with Bithel, the irredeemably shabby but immensely likeable Welsh Officer who had so narrowly avoided court martial in the previous volume.Powell retains his light and sardonic touch throughout, though the background melancholia from the preceding volumes is never wholly absent.

Had a hard time reading his style of narative. I would imagine you need to read the series from the start.

I bought this as a replacement for a copy I had owned for forty years and which had fallen to pieces from repeated use. The book is one of twelve composing the "Dance to the Music of Time" sequence, which is arguably the best sustained account of English middle-class life ever written. The prose style is elegant and witty, and it is a joy to read.

The sequence of novels continues to impress.The book was just as described. It was delivered promptly.

A complex, rather directionless book on first thoughts. But as one reads more the complexities of relationships are eluded to, occasionally described. A great read.