A Glastonbury Romance

[Anonymous No.20630081]

I’m ~25% of the way through it and I’m liking it so far. A lot of the Druid, welsh mythology, Arthurian mythology, etc that Powys uses thematically goes over my head as I’m not too well versed in those subjects. Learning as I go along though, and it doesn’t make the novel intelligible. I can see a lot of the symbolism especially the grail. The characters are interesting and you gain insight into every character. The city Glastonbury is the main character itself in a way that Paris is in Les Miserables, and Notre Dame, and Winesburg in Sherwood Anderson’s book is. I can definitely see the influence of DH Lawrence. A lot of visceral and symbolic sexuality. Powys seems to have a more sadistic view than Lawrence though. I like the Welsh antique dealer even though he might be a violent pervert. He at least has the urges and seems aware of it, and wants to redeem himself though. Anyone else read this? Please no spoilers but I’d love to hear thoughts

[Anonymous No.20631019]

>>20630081
Shot in the dark bump. Made this thread 4 hours ago and already on page 9

[Anonymous No.20631065]

>>20630081
I have this book, I found it at a second hand store a few years ago. I've never read it.

[Anonymous No.20631194]

>>20631065
Cool. We are book brothers

[Anonymous No.20631279]

>>20630081
I’ll add it to my stack; I hate historical fiction but I enjoy brainy Britishness

[Anonymous No.20631374]

>>20631279
It's not historical fiction!

[Anonymous No.20631414]

I love this book but I don't think I read it in the way you're doing. I'm an entirely superficial reader because I think what's on the surface is generally (in life as in letters) more interesting than what's beneath it. I don't read for themes or symbols or anything like that, I just let the scenes wash over me, it's a purely aesthetic experience. There are so many vivid characters in this book, my faves off the top of my head being the Mr Wollop and the kids, particularly Nelly and Bert. The antique dealer is essentially a Powys self-insert with his err particular sexual fixations... In fact my attitude to reading is a lot like Mr Wollop's way of approaching the world
>Mr. Wollop was one of the happiest men in Somersetshire. He neither smoked, nor drank, nor whored. He never gave way, even in the solitary watches of the night, to the feverish pricks of sensual desire. As soon as his head touched the pillow he fell asleep. Of what did Mayor Wollop dream? He never dreamed; or, if he did, he forgot his dream so completely on awakening, that for a man to say, “I dreamed like Mayor Wollop,” would be tantamount to saying “My sleep was dreamless.” Of what did Mayor Wollop think as he walked from his house in Wells Road to his shop in High Street? He thought of what he saw. In truth it may be said that with the exception of Bert Cole no one in Glastonbury regarded the Panorama of Things and Persons with more absorbing interest than did its Mayor. Not a stink or a stone, not a bit of orange-peel in any gutter, not a sparrow upon any roof, not a crack in any window, not any aspect of the weather, wet or fine, not any old face or any new face, not any familiar suit of clothes or any unexpected suit of clothes, not any dog, or cat, or canary, or pigeon, or, horse, or bicycle or motor car, not any new leaf on an old branch, not any old leaf on a new roof—but Timothy Wollop noted it, liked to see it there, and thought about its being there. The Mayor was one of those rare beings who really liked the world we all have been born into. More than that; oh, much more than that! The Mayor was obsessed with a trance-like absorption of interest, by the appearance of our world exactly as it appeared. What worries some, disconcerts others, agitates others, saddens others, torments others, makes others feel responsibility, sympathy, shame, remorse, had no effect upon the duck's back of Mr. Wollop beyond the peaceful titillation of surface-interest.

[Anonymous No.20631424]

I also like the scenes with the girl and her pastoral poet bf. And the eccentric new mayor too, one of the most striking scenes was his visit to the rich guy's (sorry I'm terrible with names) house... the father of the aforementioned girl.

[Anonymous No.20631529]

>>20631414
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good so far on the surface too. Anyone can pick this up because the references aren’t essential. They just add another layer to it. I can’t post for a bit but I’ll add my 2 cents more in a few hours if this thread doesn’t die. You ever read any other Powys? I might check out his autobiography next. He was a character

[Anonymous No.20631543]

>>20631529
I've read a couple but not his autobiography or any of his other big works yet. I'm a huge fan of his non-fic books on literature: Suspended Judgments, Visions & Revisions, and the Pleasures of Literature. I spam quotes from them on here all the time. I also like his brother Llewelyn Powys's books.

[Anonymous No.20631554]

I like what he wrote here about Balzac, relevant to his own novels too perhaps
>So far from finding anything tedious or irksome in the heavy massing up of animate and inanimate back-grounds which goes on all the while in Balzac's novels, I find these things most germane to the matter. What I ask from a book is precisely this huge weight of formidable verisimilitude which shall surround me on all sides and give firm ground for my feet to walk on. I love it when a novel is thick with the solid mass of earth-life, and when its passions spring up volcano-like from flaming pits and bleeding craters of torn and convulsed materials. I demand and must have in a book a four-square sense of life-illusion, a rich field for my imagination to wander in at large, a certain quantity of blank space, so to speak, filled with a huge litter of things that are not tiresomely pointing to the projected issue. I hold the view that in the larger aspects of the creative imagination there is room for many free margins and for many materials that are not slavishly symbolic. I protest from my heart against this tyrannous "artistic conscience" which insists that every word "should tell" and every object and person referred to be of "vital importance" in the evolution of the "main theme."
I've said it before on here but AGR marked a huge shift in my reading, I really think i was but a memed reader before that.

[Anonymous No.20631565]

How is this novel compared to Porius?

[Anonymous No.20631613]

>>20631565
I haven't read Porius yet. I'm less into things with a non-contemporary setting. Generally the two are considered his best works. How did you rate Porius?

[Anonymous No.20632150]

>>20630081
Missed opportunity of calling it the Glastonbury Tales

Maybe the sequel

lol

Canterbury

[Anonymous No.20632320]

One of my favourite books. I'd say at 25% through you should be pretty acclimatized - if you love it at this point you're set, it's so long but so worth it. The whole middle/end of the book, pageant chapter and Geard's trip especially, is just astounding in the way he choreographs everything. Evans the antique dealer I'll stay quiet on. He's a lot like Powys himself (as are John Crow and John Geard). Best characters imo are Sam, the Marquis's daughter, and Tom Barter et al.

If you enjoy it you will prob like Wolf Solent, but it suffers in comparison for me by the unrelenting/cloying focus on Wolf's psychology compared to AGR's sweeping authorial consciousness. My fav of the other three Wessex novels is Maiden Castle, largely since Powys's whole schtick can get tiresome and MC is him really satirizing himself. Weymouth Sands is a bit obscure to me, it reads very different to the other three, but it's his best constructed and most coherent. Powys is a very uneven writer. A lot of what he puts out is just nonsense and filler, and still more is not adequately joint up with the rest of a work, but when he gets it right he's up there with the GOATs for me.

Re the mythological/esoteric aspects, I don't think fully understanding them is necessary for a proper appreciation of the book. Powys himself was not a real scholar, just an (genius) enthusiast, but his is his own interpretation. If you're interested after you've read AGR you can read something like Wilson Knight's The Saturnian Quest to figure out that aspect, a lot of what Powys criticism is out there (there's not much) is dedicated to explicating this kind of thing. But imo these works rather miss the point of his genius, which, even where philosophical, is located in the novelist's usual realm of character and plot etc. with the esoteric stuff a particular frame he uses as a writer to expose it

[Anonymous No.20632328]

>>20630081
Thanks for the rec, looks great.

[Anonymous No.20632332]

Music inspired by the book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcd2XKhxuOY

[Anonymous No.20632465]

>>20631414
>I'm an entirely superficial reader because I think what's on the surface is generally (in life as in letters) more interesting than what's beneath it.
>in life as in letters

Genuinely curious if you could expand on this. I pretty much am on the complete opposite side of things, but I'm curious how the other side sees the world. For me, it's only the things which penetrate beneath the surface that have any interest for me.

For instance, I would pick a brooding loner or a shizo weirdo as a conversation partner over a friendly neighbor that holds little to no inner-life. I simply just get bored of the latter

[Anonymous No.20632528]

>>20632465
If someone's brooding loner-ness or schizo-ness is evident, I'd consider them surface traits. A character in a Chinese novel once said
>the best attributes of anyone or anything usually reside on the surface, which is where, in fact, all of us live out our lives. Everyone has an inner life, but it’s best if we leave it alone. For as soon as you poke a hole through that paper window, most of what’s inside simply won't stand up to scrutiny.
But what I really meant was that what I most appreciate in terms of art and viewing beautiful things in the world can be found on the surface and scratching away at that surface to find a deeper, truer meaning or self is to me unfulfilling). It's probably why I'm allergic to literary analysis of poems and prose... what's doing he is using X technique, etc. Or paintings, they're not a collection of brushstrokes to me but a woman, a tree, etc. Same with music, I like to approach it on a happily ignorant aesthetic level of pure sound. Or like the Bible, I find reading it on a purely literal level, taking it all at face value makes it a wonderful, infinitely fascinating book. I find allegorical explication and such drags the surface weirdness down to something alot duller, "it's a metaphor for faith" etc. God as bearded man in the sky with volatile emotions is infinitely more wondrous to me than "oneness" or atman or whatever. I was sitting in the park the other day and staring at the greenery, and I thought to myself "what does it matter if Buddha is right and everything is transitory and devoid of self or that these lovely plants are really just atoms or whatever, they're nice just as they are on the level I see them thru my own eyes filtered by my own brain so why care about deeper truths. Sorry this is a lazy rambling lunch break answer, Powys put it better in that quote describing Mr Wollop.

[Anonymous No.20632894]

>>20632320
Were you the anon I was talking to in a Henry Miller thread I made some months ago? From what I’ve read of AGR, Powys reminds me of Miller in broad strokes regarding themes, except Miller uses autofiction instead of fiction. Miller is one of my favorite writers, but he too is very uneven, but when he’s on, there are few better. I believe he and Powys had a correspondence going. It would be cool to read their letters

[Anonymous No.20633037]

>>20632528
Thanks for your answer, and to the contrary of what I expected I think I agree with some of what you've said. At the very least, I don't think it's worth digging deeper if the surface level isn't appealing. But in the cases that the surface level is appealing, and that it alludes to more, I find it very satisfying to investigate into what that "more" could be

[Anonymous No.20633113]

>>20633037
Hemingway is the archetype for under the surface reading if you haven’t read him yet

[Anonymous No.20634669]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20635836]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20637016]

>>20632894
Afraid not, I've never read Miller myself, I do mean to get around to him. Where's best to start?

Afaik Powys was a bit of a hero for Miller from his days as an itinerant lecturer in the US in the early 20th century when Miller was young and they struck up a correspondence after Powys had moved back to England and started properly writing (at almost 60). It's difficult to find information on but Powys also had a long-running personal antipathy with Ezra Pound, iirc over Powys essentially cucking him. He seemed to inspire very strong feelings, could be very magnetic and charismatic, but also weirdly repugnant. There are certainly lots of Powys characters like that. He's not really spoke of as a Modernist but he was very involved in the Little Review and spoke at the Ulysses obscenity trial.

[Anonymous No.20637802]

>>20637016
My 3 favorite are Tropic of Cancer, The Colossus Of Maroussi, and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. The latter two are more erudite and wise Miller where as Cancer is more entertaining. Powys is definitely a weird guy from what I’ve read. I just read the sex scene in AGR between Sam and Nell after her husband leaves for Wookie Hole. It made me cringe but it was interesting at the same time.

[Anonymous No.20637815]

>>20632894
>Powys reminds me of Miller in broad strokes regarding themes
Only to retards who lack any sort of insight into the books they read

[Anonymous No.20638865]

Bump