Dancin' and Fishin'

A former student (Marjorie) convinced me that I really should read Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time.  Every now and again, I’d heard a stray word or two in praise of this series, but since the series is 12 books long, it always struck me as one of those things that you really don’t want to start because then you feel compelled to read the whole thing, and a 12 volume commitment is a bit much.  Marjorie told me it was good, really good.  I trust Marjorie’s judgment on books (and paper—Marjorie is the only paper connoisseur I have ever known).  But, even still...12 volumes.  Then she wrote a review of the series in one of those webzines  (why “one of those webzines” and not just “a webzine” or even better just “a review,” location unspecified?  I have no idea—I just noticed the oddity of the praising in proofreading—surely there is Freudian interpretation of the choice of words there), and sent me a link to the review.  Reading her review, I had to finally face up to the task—these books were too good to skip.  So, I bought them.

I read Volume 1:  A Question of Upbringing.  Marjorie was right—I’m going to enjoy this series.

The series as a whole is one of those broad sweeps of time, in this case the 20^th century, in which we watch characters stumble through history.  I can’t be more specific than that because, well, I’ve only read volume 1.

A Question of Upbringing traces our narrator’s time in prep school and college.  We meet three…not really friends, and not really acquaintances…something in between.  One suspects these three are going to weave in and out of our narrator’s life throughout the work as a whole.—which makes the general conclusion of this particular book a bit odd.

Taken on its own, this book is the story of youthful attachments and their demise as one ages.  We get this right near the end:

With regret, I accepted the inevitability of circumstance.  Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.

On its own, a well-worn idea—graduation, for example, is full of people wondering if they will ever talk to their friends again.  (Last weekend, I met a pair of students who had come back for their 10 year reunion.  These two were very good friends as undergrads.  They conspired to get one’s father to marry the other’s mother.  Talking with them about these machinations provided me a great deal of amusement when they were undergrads—honestly, I was surprised when it worked.  Now they are step-sisters.  So, they still see each other regularly.  A rather innovative solution to a general fear of losing contact with one’s friend, I must say.)

But, while the idea that human relationships are fragile is well-worn, is it true?  This book itself is an odd answer—this particular volume is arguing that it is true, but since it is obvious these characters all come back into the narrator’s life, we know it really isn’t true.  Just how fragile are the ties that bind?

An example.  A student of mine who graduated in 2008 was back on campus yesterday.  She was invited by the Alumnae Association here to participate in a big Story Corps project to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Mount Holyoke.  Story Corps is a national organization that goes around recording interviews with people.  But, the interviewers are not professional interviewers; it’s regular people interviewing other people.  So, the Alumnae Association picked 10 alums to come back and each one had to pick someone to be the interviewer.  My former student asked me to do it.  It was fun.  There we were sitting in a makeshift recording studio and I got to ask her all sorts of questions and she answered them and it was just like Old Times.  I interrupted her when her answers got formulaic and told her she was just rambling.  I pressed her when she got vague.  I made her admit she was pretty good at what she does.  I asked her if she liked Upper or Lower Lake better and scoffed when she said she hated being outside in nature…city girls…ugh.

Now I have talked with her a few times in the four years since she graduated, but not all that often—an e-mail here or there.  Yet, there we were, talking as if it was the Spring of 2008 and she hadn’t yet graduated.  We talked about her boyfriend and her job and her future.  While I talk with her far less than I did when she was at Mount Holyoke, we are still friends.  Good friends. 

So, why do we think of human relationships as brittle things?  Clearly some relationships are brittle, but why?  And which ones? 

But, I digress.  (Though come to think of it, Marjorie would also appreciate this digression. But, I digress again.)  The Powell book is quite good as an exploration of the demise of childhood friendships.   I suspect one’s high school friendships are more fragile than most, not because of the nature of friendship, but because as one moves from the age of 14 to the age of 21, one changes.  It is not the death of friendship, but the death of youth we notice in this book.  Our narrator thinks of himself as the constant and everyone else around him changes.  What was charming in a 15 year old acquaintance is merely annoying in a 20 year old acquaintance.  And so, youthful attachments decay.  But, then we know they come back in future volumes.  It’s hard to know what to make of a book like this in the end—do we treat it as a stand-alone novel or simply chapter one in a 12 chapter book?  I have no idea.

12 volumes; 12 months—one book a month.  That’s my project...well, one of my projects, for the next year.    

And so, take this opportunity to e-mail a friend today and emulate the end of this song.