Masters of War

Only the English - write war novels that show literally not a single scene of war - no guns, no fights, no battles, no death - at least that's the take so far on Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time - now reading volume 8; read volume 7 some years ago, which was about the first conscription into WWII and now volume 8 follows, as we are with Nick, the opaque narrator, as he's in some kind of training camp in England, serving under the officious, oleaginous, and sycophantic Widmerpool, who has dogged him through the previous 7 volumes, since their days together at boarding school. The first quarter of the novel involves many fights - but all among the various generals, colonels, and other officers jousting for positions of authority in this division. Widmerpool obviously is the ultimate survivor, and as far as Powell's novel goes, he's also the life of the party - we keep rooting against him, keep knocking him down, and he keeps popping up and enduring - Nick reminds us of the episode in an early volume when a woman dumped a bowl of sugar on W.'s head, and he just went on casually, to mortified to do anything about this humiliation, knowing somehow he would triumph in the end. In this volume, he has all the memorable lines, so far - noting that so and so is one of only two people qualified to run the division. And who's the other? "Modesty prevents me from answering." A perfectly smarmy and self-contradictory statement - simply saying so is the precise opposite of modesty. W. has also learned - when a superior officer wrings him out for screwing up some of the planning maneuvers - that the perfect answer is: I don't know, but I will find out. Only in this case he overwhelms his superiors with details about all of his planning, and how nothing that went wrong was his fault, all unavoidable or someone else's screw-up - perfect Widmerpooleese. Everyone hates him, but they tolerate him because he gets things done, in his fashion. I said there is no fighting, but Powell is shrewed enough to mention the bombings of London (which have destroyed some murals that we'd come to know in an earlier volume) and the occasional raids that pass over the encampment - so war is literally on the horizon, and perhaps more frightening because of this - fear of invasion worse than dread of attack. And you wonder - why are these people so foolish, so petty, when the fate of their country is on the line? This section of the series reminds me of vol 2 of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End - another British novel, this one about the first World War, in which the battles are elsewhere and the fighting is petty and political. (This may change in vol 3 of Parade's End, and also in future volumes of Dance to the Music of Time.)