Anthony Powell's Venusberg

I mentioned a while back that I had written a foreword to the new edition of Anthony Powell's second novel, Venusberg, that my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Press are publishing this fall. That book--which has the lovely cover above--will be available in early October, but you don't have to wait to read the foreword: the good folks at Open Letters Monthly have published an extended version of it in their September issue!

Longtime readers of this blog may recognize some aspects of the foreword that got an initial working out in this space; it was fun to revisit my earlier thinking about Venusberg and translate it into the more orderly, more expansive form of a foreword.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't say what an honor it is to see my name on the cover of a book alongside Anthony Powell's. To have my years of reading and thinking about Powell formalized, in a sense, in this way, makes me happy beyond words. If my praise for the book brings it some new readers, it will be modest recompense for the countless hours of pleasure that Powell has given me.

Hope you enjoy it--and while you're there, check out the rest of OLM's offerings. Month after month, they put out a strong magazine, full of interesting voices writing about unexpected books.

Venusberg

Those of you who keep up with Twitter (Who can keep up with Twitter? I mean, I love it, and even find it borderline essential for discovering interesting books, but it doth flow past me like the vasty deep unleashed; I'm lucky to snag a few beautifully polished pieces of driftwood as they idle in eddies.) may have caught an announcement recently that, while minor in the scheme of things, was major for me: I've written a foreword to the new edition of Anthony Powell's Venusberg that my employer, the University of Chicago Press, will publish in October.

This is exciting for me for a couple of reasons. First is probably the most obvious: after years of reading, and thinking about, and writing about Powell--probably 40,000 words or more in this space alone--it's a pleasure to get to have some of those words appear in conjunction with Powell's own. The second reason is that in recent years Venusberg, with its Lubitsch-style whirl of counts and ne'erdowells, has risen substantially in my estimation. It now vies with Afternoon Men to be my favorite of Powell's non-Dance novels. (As Powell himself put it in his memoirs, the reviews were "well-disposed," with the "habitual undercurrent of disapproval from those who disliked books being 'modern.'" Several critics, Powell, noted, "commented that the stiff hurdle of a second novel had been satisfactorily cleared." Which is a very Powell way to put it.)

I'll leave more detailed commentary on the book to the foreword itself. Instead, I'll point you to two earlier times when I wrote about it, because both posts include bits from or about the book that I think you'll find entertaining. The first quotes an extended discussion between Venusberg's protagonist, Lushington, and the not wholly self-effacing butler he's saddled with in his new journalistic posting, Pope. It belongs in the upper ranks of butler comedy. The second goes into the publishing history of the book a bit, via a collection of letters between Powell and the New York bookstore owner who decided to bring the book out in the States in 1952. That post is worth reading, I promise, for the quote from a letter from a disgruntled reader.

Up next: the cover, which should be available soon, and is lovely. Stay tuned!

Anthony Powell and the publishing world of the past

As I promised on Monday, today I turn to Anthony Powell's letters for a glimpse at the publishing world of the not-so-distant past. The letters come from The Acceptance of Absurdity: Anthony Powell and Robert Vanderbilt, Letters 1952-1963, a slim volume that was published in a limited edition in 2011. Vanderbilt was a New York bookshop owner, and the correspondence began when he proposed to Powell that he reissue Venusberg and Agents and Patients in a single volume. They had been published in the UK years earlier, but had failed to find a US home and, as Powell himself noted in a reply to Vanderbilt, were hard to find:

My books are practically impossible to obtain secondhand, which, although satisfactory from one point of view, is most inconvenient from another.

Vanderbilt's proposal met with approval, and by the end of the year he had published the book, complete with cover illustrations by Powell's friend Osbert Lancaster.





That's when the publishing part of the story gets interesting, at least for someone who works as a publicist today. In its first three months on the market, the book--which, remember, was an edition, by a bookshop, rather than a proper publisher, of novels that were at that point twenty years old--Vanderbilt had sent Powell reviews from Newsweek, the New York Times (which Vanderbilt characterized as "doubtless . . . more like a press release of our own than any other we shall get"), the New Yorker (which Powell told Vanderbilt was so good that it "absolutely staggered" him--and which he viewed as useful in England, too, because "In some ways in certain circles, New Yorker book reviews are looked on with even more awe than in the States."), the Atlantic, the New York Herald Tribune (written by Elizabeth Bowen and, Vanderbilt wrote, "rapturously favorable" despite Powell's earlier worry that she wouldn't like his work), the San Francisco Chronicle (contributed by a woman of whom Vanderbilt wrote, "She's been described to me as a type who has gone a long way on self-confidence. She thinks BM [Powell's Dance novel A Buyer's Market] is like Trollope. A friend of mine remained calm, and said 'Also like Proust, don't you think?' This arrow was never recovered."), and Vogue (where it was listed as "a modish subject of conversation"). Oh, and after Vanderbilt poked his head in at the Scribner's bookshop, while they declined to devote a window to the book, they did take five copies.

This happens every once in a while: just when I think I've fully taken in just how different the publishing world, and especially the book review landscape, used to be, I'm surprised anew. The coverage Powell's book received would these days be viewed as a solid success for a new novel, and out of the realm of all possibility for a reissue. Wow.

The letters themselves are a pleasure: Vanderbilt is a congenial interlocutor for Powell, and Powell himself is just as amused, opinionated, and entertaining in his letters as one would hope. I look forward to what will surely be a larger, more complete selection somewhere down the line.

I'll close with another amusing glimpse at older ways. In a letter of February 11, 1953, Vanderbilt tells Powell,

A few days ago my mail included a small blue note saying the following.

Gentlemen: I ordered and received (for which I paid $4.00) a copy of Venusberg. After reading 11 pages of this book I knew it was not the kind of book that I could give as a birthday gift to an elderly, churchgoing lady. It is also not the type of story I enjoy or admire. The book shop from where I purchased it is not carrying any copies--it was a special order--so therefore I cannot expect them to refund my money. Therefore my request to you is will you allow me to return it to you and I shall be satisfied with the refund of the wholesale price. It is in the same perfect condition in which it was delivered to me. May I say in addition I think it a vulgar, salacious book and one which I do not care to read further. (Eleven pages are more than sufficient).

Which leads to two thoughts:

1. Elderly, churchgoing ladies differ in the States and England. Barbara Pym would have found such a gift perfectly suitable, as, I dare say, would a number of her characters. (Though I suppose it would likely have given rise to a flurry of quiet speculation about the motives and stance of the giver.)

2. The woman's understanding of the business, and willingness to adapt to its structures, impresses me. Asking only for the wholesale price is a remarkable concession considering how powerfully she reacted against the book.

Vanderbilt sent her the refund, and the story amused Powell, who replied with an anecdote of his own:

I remember when I was a publisher [with Duckworth] the illustrated catalogue designed by myself elicited a letter saying 'as I have a household of children and young servants I should be obliged if you would not deliver your cess on my door.'

Enjoy the weekend, folks.

"I started without butlers and I'll die without butlers, no less a happy man."

In writing about Anthony Powell's Venusberg last weekend, I quoted a passage wherein the protagonist, Lushington, gets saddled, entirely against his will, with a valet named Pope. Described as "a curious character," by the time he actually shows up, he turns out to be far worse than even that description might suggest, more like a demonic Jeeves, with hints of Dickens. His first appearance in Lushington's service comes with the flick of a light switch in Lushington's bedroom well before dawn, when his new master is still far from finished with sleeping off a late night of carousing:

"Who are you?" said Lushington, still with his eyes shut.

"I'm Pope, sir. Mr. Da Costa's man. I expect Mr. Da Costa mentioned that I was going to call you."

He coughed behind his hand. Lushington tried to adjust his memory. The man's face was certainly familiar, so he said:

"Oh, yes, he did. But you have called me rather early, haven't you? What is the time?"

"Mr Da Costa told me to call you first. Mr. Da Costa goes to the chancellery rather late sometimes. He said that he thought it would be better if I called you first. Those were his orders."

"By all means call me first. Very likely Mr. Da Costa does not get up until lunch. But is it necessary to be as early as this? This is an unearthly hour."

"I'm afraid it would be very inconvenient to call you at any other time sir. I am sorry."

That settled, Pope moves to the task of laying out Lushington's clothes for the far-from-dawned day:

"Which suit will you wear?"

"The blue one."

"The one you wore yesterday?"

"Yes."

Pope hesitated. He said:

"If you did not wear the suit you wore yesterday, sir, I could brush it."

"All right; I'll wear the other one."

"The brown one?"

"Yes."

"The brown one needs pressing terribly, sir."

"I know."

"Shall I press it for you, sir?"

"Will you?"

Uneasily Pope watched Lushington in bed. He said:

"Would it be better if you wore the blue suit today and then I can press the brown one? Would that be convenient?"

"Yes, yes, I'll do that."

For Powell fans, this recalcitrance calls to mind Smith, the resentful, alcoholic butler who plagues Erridge and the Jeavons family in A Dance to the Music of Time. Smith's untimely death (from an infected monkey bite) prompts Ted Jeavons to launch into a rambling eulogy that quickly transforms into a disquisition on the entire profession:

Smith tried to take a biscuit away from that tenacious ape. Probably wanted it himself to mop up some of the gin that he'd drunk. God, the way that man used to put back our gin. I marked the bottle, but it wasn't a damn bit of use. . . . Smith'll probably be the last butler I'll ever find myself employing--not that there's likely to be many butlers to employ, the way things are going. That fact doesn't break my heart. Taking them all in all, the tall with the short, the fat with the thin, the drunk with the sober, they're not a profession that greatly appeals to me. Of course, I was brought in contact with butlers late in life. Never set eyes on them in the circles I came from. I may have been unlucky in the butlers I've met. There may be the one in a hundred, but it's a long time to wait. Read about butlers in books--see 'em in plays. That's all right. Have 'em in the house--a very different matter. Look what they do to your clothes, apart from anything else. I started without butlers and I'll die without butlers, no less a happy man. There's the bell. No butler, so I'll answer it myself.

To which Jeeves would say . . . nothing, for that is what a well-husbanded reticence is for.

The early steps of the Dance, or, The young Anthony Powell

Finding myself in need of a bit of literary comfort food last weekend, I turned to my old standby, Anthony Powell. Rather than diving back into my perpetual re-reading of A Dance to the Music of Time, however, this time I opted for one of his earlier novels, Venusberg (1932).

Venusberg, Powell's second novel, is much like his first, Afternoon Men: slight but worthy, showing equally the influence of Hemingway and Waugh, its spare prose and emotional aridity reminiscent of the former, the satire they serve clear kin to the work of the latter. While Dance is frequently very funny, the early novels are a reminder that, had Powell chosen, he might have become as straight, and nearly as vicious, a satirist as Waugh: in these books his eye for absurdity is married seamlessly to the affectless, listless cynicism that Waugh attributed to their entire generation.

For example, this bit of dialogue, between two English expatriates, Da Costa and Lushington, in an Eastern European nation, could easily have come from Waugh:

"And how are the Communists?"

"Splendid. They blew up the new gas-works the other day. At least that is supposed. Either that or the works manager, who was, it appears, a very erratic man. As everything is blown up it is hard to say. It is a pity, because architecturally they were of considerable beauty."

"Do you ever come in contact with the Soviet legation?"

"Not as a rule. But you ought to. I met one of their secretaries the other day at a tea-party. We were both lodged in a corner and he thought I was an American engineer on his way to some mines out in Russia and I thought he was a French author on his way back. They have invented an entirely new form of boredom, like the worst moments of being in the boy scouts at one's preparatory school. He was a fine example of it."

This exchange, too, between the same two men, feels distinctly Wauvian:

"That was Pope. I've arranged for him to valet you. He doesn't have much to do and he said he'd like to take the job on. I inherited him from the last man who was here. He's a curious fellow, as you see. Rather a character."

"But I don't like characters."

"I know you don't. Neither do I. But we can't always have what we like."

What I found most interesting, however, reading Venusberg for the second time, was a passage late in the novel that comes after Lushington's secret lover has been killed inadvertently by a political assassin:

Lushington stood and looked through the doorway of the bedroom. Here then was that rather astonishing mystery about which so much had been said that, when the fact itself was there, no further comment was possible. For the moment no near-at-hand formula seemed at all adequate. This was something well-defined and at the same time not easy to believe in. It seemed absurd, overdone. Lacking in proportion, like other people's love affairs. Here were all the signs of a loss of control. A breakdown of the essential machinery. The sort of thing no one could be expected to be on the look-out for.

That paragraph reads like nothing else in the novel, and, to my memory, nothing else in any of Powell's pre-war novels; rather, it reads like an early, slightly hesitant working out of the more serious approach he would take to matters of love and loss in Dance.

Many of the basic elements of the style Powell would reveal in Dance are there. Powell would both polish his style and significantly broaden his emotional range by the time he wrote Dance, but this passage makes surprisingly clear the fact that the seeds of the later work were already present before he'd turned thirty.