1. I wasn't going to write about "Dance to the Music of Time" till I finished the full re-reading (am at volume 7 of 12) but wanted to recommend this fine John Banville piece on Powell: newrepublic.com/article/151605…
2. I particularly liked this observation: "Yet he could with justice claim of A Dance, as Joyce did of Ulysses, that it is a triumphant feat of engineering." It really is: it's amazing how the incidents and characters all weave together to form a larger pattern.
3. "Dance to Music" really is a cumulative work. You read any one volume and think "that's a nice novel, but not great." But over multiple volumes, it adds up and really gives the feeling of decades (in part because it takes decades to read....)
