''Afternoon Men'' is the first published novel by the English writer

Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work '' A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English. Powell ...

. In its characters and themes it anticipates some of the ground Powell would cover in ''

A Dance to the Music of Time ''A Dance to the Music of Time'' is a 12-volume ''Book series#History, roman-fleuve'' by English writer Anthony Powell, published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power ...

'', a twelve-volume cycle that spans much of the 20th century and is widely considered Powell's masterpiece. Published in 1931, it focuses on the romantic adventures and discontents of one William Atwater, together with a circle of his friends and acquaintances, in London around the end of the 1920s. Atwater, a museum clerk, pursues a never-fulfilled relationship with Susan Nunnery throughout the novel, while other characters – painter Raymond Pringle, Harriet Twining, Lola, Verelst, the American publisher Scheigan, and Susan’s father George amongst them – carry on similar dissatisfying quests for emotional fulfilment. The novel is predominantly comic, with persistent melancholy and occasional vitriol also present. Like much of Powell’s fiction, the novel portrays British society and its subtly stratified interconnections by focusing in detail on individual behaviour both in social situations–at parties, country weekends, at work–and in solitude. Marius Hentea has looked at this era of "the Bright Young People" comparing ''Afternoon Men'' to '' Vile Bodies'' by

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...

and ''

Party Going ''Party Going'' is a 1939 novel by British writer Henry Green (real name Henry Vincent Yorke). It tells the story of a group of wealthy people travelling by train to a house party. Due to a fog, however, the train is much delayed and the group ...

Henry Green Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke (29 October 1905 – 13 December 1973), an English writer best remembered for the novels ''Party Going'', ''Living (novel), Living,'' and ''Loving (novel), Loving''. He published a total of n ...

.'' Hentea, Marius. (2014) "The End of the Party: The Bright Young People in Vile Bodies, Afternoon Men, and Party Going " ''Texas Studies in Literature and Language'' 56, no. 1: 90-111." The novel belongs clearly to its era, showing the influence of cinema as both entertainment and as a means of constructing a narrative. As a first novel, ''Afternoon Men'' is, perhaps, a little harsher in its humour than a reader might expect, given the subtlety of wit for which Powell later became renowned. The title is drawn from Robert Burton’s ''

The Anatomy of Melancholy ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' (full title: ''The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Ph ...

'', and the novel accords with Burton’s insistence on the need to laugh at human foibles.

Plot summary

''Afternoon Men'' is divided into three sections: "Montage," "Perihelion," and "Palindrome." In the first, we are introduced to Atwater and his circle of acquaintances. We are also given a comically restrained view of the trials and tribulations of a museum clerk’s working day. In the middle section, Atwater seems to make headway with his courtship of Susan Nunnery. Highlights in this section include the mechanical seduction of Lola, and the attendance of a boxing match by Atwater and Susan. The final section centers on a retreat to the country by a number of the principals during which several unexpected physical consummations occur and much humour is drawn from the apparent absurdity of many conventions of polite manners and proper behaviour. The novel ends in a kind of ricorso leaving Atwater in more or less the same emotional state in which he began, as suggested by the subtitle, “Palindrome.”

References

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External links

Afternoon Men
at the Anthony Powell Society website 1931 British novels Novels by Anthony Powell Novels set in London Gerald Duckworth and Company books 1931 debut novels