A Glastonbury Romance to be reissued

[Nick Halliwell]

I read it many, many years ago. It's one of a quartet of novels usually
grouped together under the "Wessex" banner (the other three being "Wolf
Solent", "Weymouth Sands" - I think that had a different title in the US -
and "Maiden Castle"). I keep meaning to reread Powys but I read so much of
him in my early twenties that... well, sometimes you're a little worried
about going back in case it's not as good as you remember, aren't you? I
don't think I'd start with "Romance", though. As far as I remember my copy
upstairs runs to around 1500 pages. I suppose the Dostoevsky etc.
comparisons are obvious, not only in terms of scale but in terms of dealing
with themes of good and evil. I know that Duckworth have been gradually
reissuing the books in the US because we've been getting them over here, and
the ones on sale in British shops are obviously US copies because all the
spelling is Americanised. I have most of them in UK Picador editions from
the early eighties, plus there were a number, such as "Porius", which came
out published by a small imprint the name of which slips my mind. 

Anyway, Powys is neglected again nowadays, he's one of those writers who
seems to slip in and out of vogue. But there was a piece in "The Guardian"
only a few weeks or months ago all about the upcoming reissue of "AGR".

So, to sum up, "A Glastonbury Romance" is one of those books so large that
it's difficult to judge them by normal criteria. People who read Tolstoy are
much more likely to have read "Anna Karenina" (itself not exactly a novella)
than "War and Peace" or with Dostoevsky "Crime And Punishment" rather than
"The Brothers Karamazov". I swear by all that's holy that I DID read all of
"AGR" back in the days when life seemed so much longer. 

Anyway, Powys is a neglected writer, whether this is his masterpiece is open
to debate... It may be but then again... He wrote an awful lot of books and
lived into his nineties. 

Sorry, I'm rather tired so I apologise if this isn't terribly lucid.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Ya Sam
Sent: 11 February 2007 19:01
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: A Glastonbury Romance to be reissued

Has anyone read it? Is it really a neglected masterpiece?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glastonbury-Romance-John-Cowper-Powys/dp/0715636480/
sr=1-4/qid=1171218347/ref=sr_1_4/026-4357268-0446006?ie=UTF8&s=books


Synopsis
This is the first modern paperback edition of "the only novel produced by an

English writer that can fairly be compared with the fictions of Tolstoy and 
Dostoyevski." - George Steiner, "The New Yorker". John Cowper Powys has been

acclaimed by some of the greatest minds of this century, from Henry Miller 
("my first living idol") to George Steiner ("supreme in English fiction 
after Hardy") to Robertson Davies ("a great writer"). "A Glastonbury 
Romance", first published in 1932, is his masterwork, an epic novel of 
terrific cumulative force and lyrical intensity. In it, he probes the 
mystical and spiritual ethos of the small English village of Glastonbury, 
and the effect upon its inhabitants of a mythical tradition from the 
remotest past of human history - the legend of the Grail. Powys's rich 
iconography interweaves the ancient with the modern, the historical with the

legendary, and the imaginative within man with the natural world outside him

to create a book of astonishing scope and beauty.

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