O, How the Wheel Becomes It! by Anthony Powell

First published: 1983

Type of work: Comic satire

Time of work: The 1980’s

Locale: Great Britain

Principal Characters:

• G. F. H. Shadbold, an aging and inactive man of letters, somewhat of a pompous hack
• Prudence Shadbold (Prosperine Gunning), his second wife, a successful detective novelist
• Cedric Winterwade, killed in India during World War II; new interest in his obscure novel and his diary creates the story’s conflict
• Isolde Upjohn, an old flame of G. F. H. Shadbold, who was also Winterwade’s lover
• Jason Price, G. F. H. Shadbold’s hotshot young publisher
• Horace Grigham, a don of English literature at the local university and an ex-husband of Prudence Shadbold
• Rod Cubbage, a well-known television interviewer primarily interested in literary gossip

The Novel

To anyone familiar with the massive and magnificent twelve-volume novel series published by Anthony Powell between 1951 and 1975, A Dance to the Music of Time, this more recent comic satire will seem slim indeed. In fact, the book’s brief length (143 pages) and its narrow width in the British hardback edition make one think that Powell has written it to be literally a “slim” novel, confident that the critics will name it that anyway. This work is less a novel than a clever and witty literary indulgence, a satiric jab at creative and critical poseurs. The only character in the novel who remains unscathed at the end is Prudence Shadbold, for she pretends to be nothing more than what she is—a good craftsman and a good hand at a detective story.

The primary purpose of the novel seems to be to create an elaborate trap of poetic justice to destroy G. F. H. Shadbold, a pompous old hack who has not published anything in twenty-five years and whose earlier works, both critical and creative, were self-important and pedantic. The series of comic events which catch Shadbold in the web of his own past pomposity begin when his publisher, Jason Price, asks him to evaluate a recently discovered diary of Cedric Winterwade, author of a long-forgotten novel titled The Welsons of Omdurman Terrace, which Shadbold has previously recommended against republishing.

After Shadbold reads the diary of his old school companion and discovers Winterwade’s love affair with Isolde Upjohn, a 1920’s beauty much sought after by Shadbold himself, he recommends against publishing the diary in the most damning terms. His hopes to lay the ghost of his old friend to rest are soon dashed when he hears his name raised again by Horace Grigham, an English don who fancies himself an expert in the new structuralist and semiotic approaches to literature and who thinks perhaps Winterwade’s one novel might yield unexpected “cultural codes” worth investigating. Grigham is as pompous as a new critic as Shadbold is as an old one. Shadbold once again denies his dead friend by telling Grigham that he does not know him or his work.

The final blow to Shadbold’s efforts to suppress Winterwade’s works and his memory, and thus the final blow to his ego, comes when another ghost from the past appears—Isolde Upjohn herself, who wants Shadbold to write an introduction to her memoirs. This turn of events would not have been so disastrous had not Rod Cubbage, an obnoxious television interviewer, arrived at the same time (a day early, as the fates would have it) to do an interview with Shadbold. While Cubbage digs for dirt and Isolde tries to promote her memoirs by unearthing the old affair with Winterwade, Shadbold is trapped into saying that he admires Winterwade’s novel and that he believes that Winterwade died a hero’s death in India. The knife of poetic justice is twisted even more when Shadbold’s wife lets him know that she has told Grigham about the Winterwade diary Shadbold has tried to squash.

The ultimate irony of the reversal of Shadbold’s efforts to keep Winterwade’s work suppressed is that, after the interview is screened on television, Shadbold seems to be on the threshold of more literary fame as a result of his knowledge of Winterwade than he ever gained on his own. Consequently, he attempts to locate the Winterwade diary. His desire to regain access to the work is intensified when he discovers that instead of dying a hero’s death in India Winterwade was killed while visiting a brothel. Shadbold feels justified in his previous scorn of Winterwade and even more determined to find the diary. In the last two chapters of the novel, however, after this momentary respite from attacks on his ego, Shadbold is dealt the final blow: Winterwade is to be the subject of a new critical study by Grigham, and the diary has been destroyed. Shadbold dies without ever having the opportunity to crush the reputation of Winterwade.

The Characters

G. F. H. Shadbold is a professional man of letters, author of a slim volume of verses, mostly juvenilia; a play about his school experience, which exists in a limited edition tagged in catalogs “Does not turn up often”; two novels, long out of print; a critical study of the Cavalier poets; and two notebooks, one entry of which attempts to explicate Ophelia’s cry in Hamlet, “O, how the wheel becomes it!” in terms of the wheel of fortune. The titles and descriptions of the works are ample indication of the triviality of Shadbold’s literary efforts. He “keeps his hand in” primarily by writing reviews, notices, and obituaries of other writers.

Shadbold is not only the main character of this slight Powell novel; he is also its sole reason for being. The novel seems primarily to have been written to expose just the type of pompous literary drone that Shadbold is. From the beginning of the novel to its end, Powell mercilessly exposes him as a smug and self-satisfied old fool. Indeed, the novel is like an extended obituary of Shadbold, written by someone as smug as he; thus, it is a true case of poetic justice, for Shadbold is given to attacking his own literary enemies after their death.

The other characters in the novel fare no better. If they seem to be less the butt of Powell’s satiric joke than Shadbold, it is only because they occupy the center stage less often. Isolde Upjohn, for example, is another literary ghoul, who, like Shadbold, hopes to capitalize on the past and the dead Winterwade. The television interviewer, Rod Cubbage, is the classic example of one who feeds on the fame of others, for he makes his living digging up whatever gossip that will make his show a success. In the academic world, Horace Grigham, the jargon-spouting literary critic, is guilty of much the same kind of unearthing of the secrets of the creative and the famous and surviving on them. As is typical of satire, Powell’s characters function largely as representations of the subject of his barbs—in this case, all those who feed on the fame of others.

Critical Context

Published after the completion of his grand twelve-volume novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, and in the same year as the final volume in his four-volume set of memoirs collectively titled To Keep the Ball Rolling (1976-1982), the thin little satire O, How the Wheel Becomes It! is like a playful bit of self-indulgence for Powell. It is not a work that will add substantially to his reputation, but that is not important, for Powell’s reputation is already assured. It is not a work that is likely to find a wide readership, for it purposely limits itself to satirizing a relatively small group of so-called literary figures.

Being a member of such a group of literary figures himself, however, Powell does not present here a bitter and biting satire, but rather one that is primarily bemused and indulgent. Although Shadbold is pompous and even unscrupulous in his efforts to suppress his old friend’s reputation, not much is at stake. The possible revival of interest in one novel written by a minor writer of the 1920’s is hardly the stuff of vital interest. Instead, the novel is a bit of play on the part of Powell—a gentle jab at all the third-raters in the literary world who create nothing themselves but sustain themselves on the creation of others.

Although Anthony Powell has never gained the critical acclaim and popular readership of such contemporaries as George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, his efforts are considerably more important than those of the object of his satire, G. F. H. Shadbold. Powell has said that his long work A Dance to the Music of Time resulted from his decision after World War II to write a “really large work about all the things I was interested in—the whole of one’s life in fact.” Although O, How the Wheel Becomes It! is not a work that falls within that grand scope, it is a genuine bit of fun about something that interests Powell as a literary man: the literary life itself. It is Powell’s joke at his own kind, a fine bit of fun by a writer who has earned the right to indulge himself this way.

Sources for Further Study

Bergonzi, Bernard. Anthony Powell, 1962.

Brennan, Neil. Anthony Powell, 1974.

Heim, David. Review in The New Republic. CXC (February 27, 1984), p. 39.

Listener. CIX, June 16, 1983, p. 27.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. November 6, 1983, p. 1.

Michener, Charles. Review in The New York Times Book Review. January 22, 1984, p. 25.

Morris, Robert K. The Novels of Anthony Powell, 1968.

The New York Times Book Review. LXXXIX, January 22, 1984, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXIV, September 16, 1983, p. 118.

Russell, John. Anthony Powell: A Quintet, Sextet, and War, 1970.

Tucker, James. The Novels of Anthony Powell, 1976.

Walker, J. K. L. Review in The Times Literary Supplement. June 24, 1983, p. 660.