Stranded; The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977-1991 - Clinton Walker

I'm boning up on the Aussie post-punk scene in anticipation of All Tomorrow's Parties, and this is clearly the best place to start. It is strongest in the earlier parts describing the rise of the Saints and Radio Birdman, and in its profiles of key players like Ed Kuepper and Tex Perkins. As such, it provides a useful antipodean appendix to the more wide-ranging Rip It Up And Start Again.

Unfortunately, the book gets weaker as it goes on, particularly in the increasing insertion of irrelevant and egotistical autobiographical asides.

Anyway, now for me to check out the music itself.

The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

I have read a few of the tales in the original Middle English, but to get through the whole lot I opted for the tried and trusted Coghill translation. It was a fun and easy read, if a bit long-winded when the Manciple and one or two others take their turns.

The sparkiest moments were mainly from stories I had read years ago, notably the oleaginous Pardoner and the spunky Wife of Bath. Reading the whole (albeit fragmentary) sequence also brings out the best from the Host himself and the interplay between the various pilgrims. I laughed aloud at his exasperated response to the masterpiece of hopeless poetry that comprises the first tale from Chaucer's own persona.

Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell

So the Dance to the Music of Time comes to an end and I would say that, cumulatively, the twelve novels make up one of the greatest reading experiences of my life. Impossibly elegant and stylish, with a panoramic view of aristocratic and artistic life through the twentieth century and a glorious representation of the way that life is subjectively lived.

Our narrator, Nick Jenkins, is both passive, stoic and so self-effacing as to be almost absent from his own narrative, to the extent that I'm not even sure we ever learn the name of his children. Instead we are left with a series of indelible images; Widmerpool having a cup of sugar poured over him, a servant walking into a dining room bereft of clothes, a tableau of photographs representing the Seven Deadly Sins.

There are classical references throughout (the picture above by Poussin provided the title), most of which passed me by. What I took away instead was an array of unforgettable characters, some magnificent serio-comic prose and a shamefaced sense of nostalgia for a world I never knew.

A Question of Upbringing - (1951)
A Buyer's Market - (1952),
The Acceptance World - (1955)
At Lady Molly's - (1957)
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - (1960)
The Kindly Ones - (1962)
The Valley of Bones - (1964)
The Soldier's Art - (1966)
The Military Philosophers - (1968)
Books Do Furnish a Room - (1971)
Temporary Kings - (1973)
Hearing Secret Harmonies - (1975)

Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell

The later books in the Dance are both more melancholy, as characters show the effects of time passing, and somewhat ruder, as the publication date gets later. Powell keeps things interesting with a long section set in Venice and some unexpected plot developments.

One more to go.