Cheating on my reading of Parade's End

I rarely do this but, trying to make some headway in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, I jumped to the front of the queue and read some of the introduction (Malcolm Bradbury, Everyman edition) - trying to get some context or understanding - as the chapter I've been working on is making less and less sense - Tietjens obviously smitten with the young suffragette (Miss Wannab? Violet? - can't even remember the names, thanks to Ford's assiduous avoidance of omniscient narration) as he tells her he loathes her cause (harumph) but admires her tactics, which include not just protests on golf links (harmless) and hunger strikes (harmful to the individual) but also terrorism such as mailbox bombs. Obviously, he's just a contrarian and blowhard, heading for a fall- and then there's the issue of his marriage - wife at a spa in Germany and teasingly offering some kind of reconciliation. He will have to choose. Or will he? As one thing I learned from Bradbury's intro us that PE is a war quartet - and yes, it's set on the brink of WWI - so I did figure that the characters would be off to war and, like the entire generation in England, would be shocked and transformed by that horrendous experience. Ford is taking his time kicking that plot element into action, however. Also, from reading part of the intro., I can see that there are some (painful) similarities between Ford and his anti-hero, Tietjens - the disheveled appearance, the trouble with women, the marriage difficulties, the eccentric intelligence, the literary bent - and perhaps the course of a war experience as well, further into the novels. Was surprised to learn that Ford was such a prolific writer - 80-some books - as today he's almost exclusively known for The Good Soldier and PE - and I'd forgotten what an important literary ed. he was, a champion of all the modernists and (in Transatlantic Rev.?) of some great American writers such as the ever-ungrateful Hemingway. None of this makes it easier or more pleasant to read PE, however; yes, I can accept that it's a modernist novel and owes a debt to Woolf and Joyce - but they are so much Ford's betters as to make PE look dismal by comparison. Modernism does not equal willful obscurity and narrative prickliness. More on point, Bradbury in his intro describes PE as a "state of England" novel, or series of novels - and that is true, it is a window onto its time, from the POV of a particular social class or set. Unfortunately, it seems to me to be a work of its age but not necessarily for all time - yet, maybe it gets better once the characters' lives are rattled by war. I may cheat even further and watch the HBO v. when I get a chance - it may be that, reduced to plot elements, this baggy and often obscure novel may have a great story at its core.