The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Venusberg, by Anthony Powell; How the Wheel Becomes It!, by Anthony Powell
reviewed by Brian Evenson

Anthony Powell. Venusberg. Green Integer, 2003. 253 pp. Paper: $10.95; O, How the Wheel Becomes It! Green Integer, 2002. 188 pp. Paper: $10.95.

Anthony Powell is best known for A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of twelve interlinked novels that serves as Great Britain’s answer to Proust. Green Integer has chosen to reissue several of Powell’s novels outside of the Dance series, in this case one novel written near the beginning of his career (Venusberg, 1932) and the first novella written after the Dance series was finished (O, How the Wheel Becomes It!, 1983). In Venusberg Lushington goes as a special correspondent to a Baltic State, has a long affair, and eventually goes back home. Its characters include an extremely opinionated valet and a count who sells cosmetic products. It reads like Evelyn Waugh’s satiric novels and, at its best, is exceptionally funny, the dialogue extremely snappy. Yet somehow, out of such figures of fun, Powell manages to construct a dark, moving, and convincing ending. In O, How the Wheel Becomes It! Powell trains his eye upon Shadbold, a minor literary figure whose life becomes complicated when a dead friend’s work begins to receive attention and by his discovery in this friend’s diary of events that bring him to question his reading of the past. Slightly darker than Venusberg, it still possesses Powell’s keen wit, departing slightly from the realism of Dance to satiric effect. Indeed, these two books show that Powell’s range goes far beyond the admittedly brilliant Dance—that he, like Waugh, has strengths as a satirist as well as a realist. They suggest that Powell’s early work, having fallen under the shadow of Dance, has been underestimated. Venusberg in particular proves that Powell is worthy of a second look.