Agents and Patients: A Novel - Softcover

Powell, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022613735X ISBN 13: 9780226137353

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2014

Synopsis

Unsavory artists, titled boobs, and charlatans with an affinity for Freud - such are the oddballs whose antics animate these early novels from the late British master Anthony Powell. A genius of social satire delivered with a very dry wit, Powell builds his comedies on the foibles of British high society between the wars, delving into subjects as various as psychoanalysis, the film industry, publishing, and (of course) sex. More explorations of relationships and vanity than plot-driven narratives, these slim novels reveal the early stirrings of the unequaled style, ear for dialogue, and eye for irony that would reach their caustic peak in Powell's epic A Dance to the Music of Time. From a View to a Death takes us to a dilapidated country estate where an ambitious artist of questionable talent, a family of landed aristocrats wondering where the money has gone, and a secretly cross-dressing squire all commingle among the ruins. In Agents and Patients, we return to London with the newly wealthy Blore-Smith: an innocent, decent enough chap...and a drip who falls victim to two con artists. In What's Become of Waring, Powell lampoons a world with which he was intimately acquainted: the inner workings of a small London publisher. Filled with eccentric characters and piercing insights, Powell's work is achingly hilarious, human, and true.

About this title

Review:

"A master of irony . . . a writer of social comedy as revelatory as any written by Evelyn Waugh or Henry Green."--Leo Lerman "New York Times "

"Elegantly casual and scandalously funny."--Charles Poore "New York Times "

"Looking back at Powell's earlier novels, it is possible to see him discovering there how to use his razor-sharp satirical sense until it is purged of bitterness and extravagance."--Elizabeth Janeway "New York Times "

"Anthony Powell is our foremost comic writer."--V. S. Pritchett

A master of irony . . . a writer of social comedy as revelatory as any written by Evelyn Waugh or Henry Green. --Leo Lerman "New York Times ""

Elegantly casual and scandalously funny. --Charles Poore "New York Times ""

Looking back at Powell s earlier novels, it is possible to see him discovering there how to use his razor-sharp satirical sense until it is purged of bitterness and extravagance. --Elizabeth Janeway "New York Times ""

Anthony Powell is our foremost comic writer. --V. S. Pritchett"

Book Description:

Just down from Oxford in the depre4ssion of the Thirties, young Blore-Smith has the confidence of the callowest of youths, and the security of a sizeable private income. But when a car accident causes him to bump into Maltravers, an almost-famous film director, and Chipchase, a dinstinctly amateur psychoanalyst, he finds himself swept into an hilariously instructive - yet costly - adventure...

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 022613735X
• ISBN 13: 9780226137353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 226