Temporary Kings

Temporary Kings is a novel by Anthony Powell, the penultimate in his twelve-volume novel, A Dance to the Music of Time. It was published in 1973 by Heinemann and remains in print as does the rest of the sequence. It takes place at a fictional 1958 symposium in Venice.

This article is about the novel. For the album by Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson, see Temporary Kings (album).

First edition cover
AuthorAnthony Powell
Cover artistJames Broom-Lynne
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SeriesA Dance to the Music of Time
PublisherHeinemann
Publication date
1973
Preceded byBooks Do Furnish a Room 
Followed byHearing Secret Harmonies 

Temporary Kings has been characterized as a novel in the post-war consensus of literary compromise.[1] It also demonstrates Powell's evocation of art at all levels, most notably an (imaginary) Venetian ceiling painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo[2]

Temporary Kings received the W. H. Smith Prize in 1974.[3]

It is dedicated to Roland Gant, Powell's editor, who Powell called "one in a million."[4][5]

Critical reception

In its review of Temporary Kings in 1973, The Times said the book was an improvement on the previous installment, Books Do Furnish a Room, which it said 'showed a certain staleness'. It added: "With 11 out of the 12 books in the series now before us, it is possible to speak fairly confidently of the work as a whole. In spite of that air of being our English Proust which has sometimes grated on those who like the French one, Mr Powell is unlikely to imitate the obsessional heightening in late Proust, nor to spring a redemption on us. His nature is to be uniform: there is hardly a ragged edge or an un-calculated incongruity anywhere in this urbane discourse, where the catastrophes are never witnessed, only inferred from scenes in themselves comic. If the new characters have not quite the flavour of the earlier Gileses and Jeavonses, and the range of the social panorama now appears less than it once seemed, the flow of reappearances and transformations is powerful enough to carry the series through that 'Dance to the Music of Time' whose discipline and formal rhythm do recall Poussin, the artist its title invokes: except that it is a great deal more fun."[6]

References
  1. MacKay, Marina. “‘Temporary Kings’: The Metropolitan Novel Series and the Postwar Consensus.” Modern Fiction Studies 67, no. 2 (2021): 320–41.
  2. June Sturrock (2010) The Arts in Anthony Powell's Temporary Kings: A Note and Some Comments, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 23:1, 56-60
  3. Literary Thing: "Book awards: WH Smith Literary Award", accessed May 19, 2020
  4. Spurling, Hilary.(2017). Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time. Hamish Hamilton, pp. 311-312.
  5. Jay, Mike. (2013) "Who Were the Dedicatees of Powell’s Works?" The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter.50 (spring): 9-10.
  6. The Times, "Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell", accessed on May 19, 2020
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