O, how the wheel becomes it!: A novel

By Anthony Powell

Book Overview

G. F. H. Shadbold, a lifelong poseur and literary manque lives, for the most part, in fear of discovery. A friend, Cedric Winterwade, whom he evidently seduced in his college days, writes a novel almost as insignificant and badly written as Shadbold's own literary output. As time passes, however, and the friend is killed in the army, Winterwade's novel begins to be rediscovered, creating panic in Shadbold and a hilarious series of events in which Powell pokes fun at the writing community, academic life, and a whole generation of memoir-toting literati. Anthony Powell, who recently died, is one of the great comic writers of Britian in the 20th century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0030639999
• ISBN13: 9780030639999
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A biting tale of minor players in the literary world...

'O, How the Wheel Becomes It' was the first of Powell's books that I ever read, and the one that made me want to sit down and work through 'A Dance to the Music of Time' (which, after some bad experiences with long multivolume novels...ahem, Marcel, I wasn't so keen on doing, however attractive the books appeared to be). Fortunately, 'Wheel' is such an amusing read that any trepidation washes away in anticipation of a good long story.'Wheel' is the story of G.F.H. Shadbold, a second-rate author who, in his declining years, has established himself as the sort of literary critic and general hack who appears on television chat shows as the venerable old man of letters, which, of course, he is not. Shadbold's fortunes begin to change, though, when the diary of a companion and fellow-novelist of his youth, Cedric Winterwade, who authored the forgetable 'Welsons of Omdurman Terrace' and later died for his trouble in the Second World War, appears on the scene, and Shadbold attempts to suppress it, fearing the unfavourable exposure that it will bring. The result is one of quiet hilarity, sure to bring a smile to any reader who enjoys a clever lampooning of literary fashion, and the literary establishment as a whole.So, while not a book rising to, say, the level of Wodehouse or Stephen Fry, this comic work is well worth the time of the reader with a taste for the ironic, yet devastatingly accuracte, exposure of human nature that Powell has penned.