The Fisher King

by Anthony Powell

1987

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, 20th Century, British Literature, English Literature, Novels

Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

People best know British writer Anthony Dymoke Powell for A Dance to the Music of Time , a cycle of 12 satirical novels from 1951 to 1975.

This Englishman published his volumes of work. Television and radio dramatizations subjected major work of Powell in print continuously. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Powell among their list of "the fifty greatest British writers since 1945."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony...

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this wounded, enigmatic little book - when I read it around 1979 - ranked near the tart apogee of Powell's output. I really liked the intertwining of the magical mystery of myth with the banal twitter that is part of a cruise.

Powell has said, I guess, 'Well, OK - my magnum opus is a wrap - let's try to Dream a bit again!’

Gored and damaged irrevocably by my nattering bipolar nature at that time, I felt myself at retirement to be as adrift as this famed photographer, Henchman, and the whole motley ship of fools on the floating Meet Market he is cruising with.

Like me and Powell's mordantly unasperged modern Fisher King, old wounds never heal. No, but they have given real Identity to our heartaches.

And the light banter of A Dance to the Music of Time has been put away - as St Paul put away the mirth of childhood - In favour of the weight and gravitas of a grand, dour legend.

For those of you who don't know, the Arthurian myth of that disabled king is based on ancient fertility rites.

The Fisher King coulda given Sir Perceval fertile soil in which his Quest could bear fruit. But no, youth is impervious to age's ripeness - it seems so dull to them with their dance card so full!

And the British cruise ship we find ourselves on here is flush with the thrust, feint and parry of the usual Music of Time flirtations. Wounded warriors need not apply: unless romance snooping is your own career...

So the partiers avoid this dour eminence grise in the midst of their noise. And his inappropriate mate. Yet mismatches are all the more intriguing!

As Julian Barnes might say, all this anxious hubbub is merely The Noise of Time.

Powell's famous Henchman wants none of it. Aloof and mysterious, the half-spoken noble truths of King Arthur's misty time die on his lips unheard.

Like the Dying King himself!

Now, if you are a fan of the Golden Bough and all its progeny, like me, you'll probably love it. Henchman is nothing if not a devalued hero:

Henchman is

The wounded surgeon (who) plies the steel
That questions the distempered part...

For in his steely gaze is healing, if this Era would only have it!

I get the feeling here that Mr Powell was finally exhaling and venting a tad, exhausted after the enormous effort of A Dance to the Music of Time.

Feeling spent, his wisdom useless, in a new Literal Age.

An age that finds its wisdom in stats.

And don’t I know that feeling!

A sad, useless age indeed to fallen Christians.

[Jonathon McKenney · Rating 2 out of 5]

A whole lotta “huh”. Maybe went over my head (don’t know enough if King Arthur Cycle) but did not enjoy this book. Bummer. Some great language and images, little lines that made it almost worthwhile

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of the novel was interesting, modern day character's intertwining with Arthurian lore, but I wasn't impressed with what I read. The whole novel basically took place in the ship's dining room over dinner and drinks... like one very long conversation between aging couples on holiday... very disjointed and dry. I struggled with the writing style and found that there really wasn't a climax to tie everything together. This novel gave me a chance to research some myths I have never heard of “The Fisher King” being one of them and I was most intrigued by the story of the “Loathly Damsel”. Each stand alone myth or legend the character's spoke of was delightful but everything meshed together didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

In my opinion the informational portion of this book (97%) was carelessly thrown about and it was difficult to follow. One moment the characters were discussing Arthurian lore and the next Greek gods. While I could see some of the similar traits between the modern characters and the myths it was at times unclear who was being compared to who. I wish more time was spent expounding on the character's relationships with each other. That being said the story drug on for what seemed like forever and it's final destination left me confused and somewhat disappointed.

I'm going to have to go and read a Meg Cabot book just to wash this story out of my memory. Which Princess Diaries book did I leave off on? Number 11? Only kidding, I left that phase behind in middle school. But the fact still remains that I'm still really young, and at this stage in my life I don't think I'm “well-read” enough to fully appreciate this novel – however I did stick with it to the end . Maybe this is something I'll pick up again when I'm older and have some more literature under my belt... but for now I have to give “The Fisher King” a 2 out of 5 stars.

[Andrew Darling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent. A masterpiece.

[Ambika Devi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I return to again and again that inspires me deeply.

[Richard Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last one he wrote and the last one I'd yet to read. Definitely not his best (the best are the last three in The Music of Time) I still found this intentionally claustrophobic tale of a relationship coming apart on a cruise ship engaging. In typical Powell manner, it's all seen through the eyes of a semi-detached observer - popular historical romance writer Valentine Beals. Not as creepy as Time's Kenneth Widmerpool, social-climber Beals is treated by Powell with understanding and even a touch of respect: he's a writer who knows his audience and has to rein in some aspects of his imagination in order to allow them to keep up. I wonder if Powell in some ways felt the same way about his own work: the way in which Hearing Secret Harmonies teeters on the brink of becoming a Charles Williams-like spiritual thriller, but always just about restrains itself, suggests as much. The disfigured protagonist, photographer Saul Henchman, surprised me in that his bombastic pretentiousness didn't prevent me from accepting that he possessed a genuine talent.

Powell's sure-footedness in the construction of lengthy sentences was beginning to slip at this stage and I came across one or two in which the meaning, however closely I looked, was genuinely ambiguous. He was a writer who very obviously worried about such things and I suspect that he might have made a conscious decision to bring his career as a novelist to a close because of this.

Though the presumably recent publication of Henry Kissinger's memoirs, together with an awareness of the Iranian Revolution and of the IMF places the events of the novel in July and August of 1979, The Fisher King isn't anything like as evocative of the late 70s as Hearing Secret Harmonies is of the late 60s. But it is a pleasant read and I'm sadder than I might have expected to realise I will never again read an Anthony Powell novel for the first time.

[John Mccullough · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fisher King story in one form or another was born from ancient Celtic stories of the damaged king who was reduced to fishing as he could do little else. To be effective the king must be both strong and healthy, else his kingdom must suffer. The old solution for an ailing king was probably elimination, as seen in some bog bodies dispatched by classic overkill – death by three different methods. Transformed into Arthurian legend, the king could be cured by a specific visitor if only that visitor would ask the right question, which seems never to have happened. In Arthur’s court, that failing country bumpkin visitor of a knight was Percival, spelled differently in the various languages in which he appeared.

The Fisher King story has been retold in numerous ways, including T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” and here in Anthony Powell’s vacation cruise touring Pagan Britain, South to North. A tour group on a cruise ship embarks, scheduled to visit ancient ruins and other sites. The traditional characters in the legend are transformed into persons aboard the tour ship and act out their roles for the most part. Powell’s erudition shines as he walks through the story, page-by-page, act-by-act, from the king himself all the way down to Percival and the Loathsome Damsel.

Hardened mystery readers will deride this retelling of the legend as a cozy – a small number of actors in a confined space, but Powell had to do this to focus on the characters and their actions. Will a modern telling change the story to a different ending? Only reading the book gives the answer.

I enjoyed the book despite a necessarily slow start. I also learned a great deal about some of the Great Western European Tradition that was neither Roman nor Greek, but solidly Northern Pagan. Give me that Olde Time Religion!! Minus the overkill, of course.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Arthurian legend of the Fisher King is set up rather bluntly at the beginning of this tale and repeated ad nauseum by a character named Beal to be sure even the thickest reader will get the metaphor. We get it already. No particularly likeable or admirable characters, and the author uses high flown language to the point of undermining their credibility. Maybe the cast is meant deliver a portrait of some cross-section of British society, but they are not very plausible. Not even English toffs make clever-talk to this magnificent extent, although some of the dialogue is amusing – as dialogue.

A word on style. it's a very fast read. Extensive dialogue keeps up the pace. However, in general the recommendation to authors these days is “show don’t tell”. This form of narrative is all about “tell don’t show” giving it a sort of documentary feel. That’s kind of interesting as a study of writing technique, as is the million-dollar vocabulary, once you get used to it.

I suppose the point of the story is to reveal the tragedy of Henchman (wounded war veteran, magnetic personality & Fisher King doppelganger) and his relationship with the beautiful Barberina Rookwood. You know that’s where all the build-up is heading from the get-go, but when you get there, as a reader -you probably won’t care. Who are these damaged people? You are no closer to the answer at the end of the book than you were at the beginning.

[Harald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cruise ship in British waters is the setting for this novel, Anthony Powell's last. The plot involves many of the passengers, but two stand out: Saul Henchman is a respected but disfigured photographer with an unusually beautiful girlfriend; Valentine Beals is an almost equally famous writer of pulp fiction. Beals has the brilliant idea of ​​drawing an analogy between one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the unfortunate, exiled "fisher king," who, like Henchman, has been disabled in war. But he is not a reliable narrator. At crucial events along the way, Beals is either absent or distracted by fellow passengers.

The author spends a full 80 pages introducing the characters before the drama on board takes hold. We eventually get every conceivable perspective on what leads Henchman to lose his partner. All in all, a letdown compared to Powell's brilliant main work in A Dance to The Music of Time, [1] a 12-volume novel series published from 1951-75.

[1]: https://bokelskere.no/bok/a-dance-to-...

[Shaun Rylands · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a book I enjoyed. I read it because of my interest in TS Eliot's references to the myth. The problem with mock pomposity is that it gets dangerously close to real pomposity. "He liked extracting pungent overplus from superficially unpromising essences. Incertitude, seclusion, concealment, were at once suggested by mere association of his name with so obscure a myth as that of the Fisher King".

[Filippo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro nella media.
A tratti affascinante, ma poco concludente.
Personaggi pettegoli e indagatori.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A highlight of one of the later volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time is a story about the life of X. Trapnel, following the time when the narrator lost sight of him. The narrator tells us this story at second hand, telling us about the man who told it to him, and about the way he tends to tell a story, so that we can judge the extent to which it is likely to be a straightforward and unflavoured account of the truth.

This narrative device is seemingly the whole basis of The Fisher King, in which the narrator tells us a story about a group of people on a cruise ship, but focuses to an extraordinary extent on the way the story was told by one of those present. It is about equally the story of the telling as it is the story of the story.

What worked as a small part of Dance doesn't work very well as a whole novel here. X. Trapnel was a great character and I was keen to find out what happened to him after we last saw him. At that point in Dance I'll take whatever I can get and like it, unreliable narrator be damned. I want that Trapnel story so much that the distancing effect of the layered narrative is powerless to stop me imagining the events exactly as described.

The characters in The Fisher King might be great, but we encounter them so distantly, at two arms' length, amid lots of discussion about how the character from whom the narrator heard the story tends to tell a story, that they don't have much chance to come alive for us. Their story is not compelling enough to blaze through the fussy narratological concerns that stifle it.

[Deborah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never bought the premise: a writer naturally and diligently invests himself in the conviction that people he encounters on a cruise represent archetypes, and the 3 people he's travelling with readily share his perspective and are equally interested in fitting what they know and imagine into an allegory. (This is not presented as a folie a quatre). I stayed with it to the end in the hope that the device would at some point pay off, but the rest of the narrative simply unfolds to confirm speculation and fill in the blanks.

One feels as if Powell is entertaining himself. (Like Mr. Jack). His solipsism played out fantastically out over the vast canvas of Dance to the Music of Time, which certainly dealt with allegory, mysticism etc but as themes not an organising principle. After having tried 2 other Powell novels (this and O How the Wheel Becomes It), I am ready to conclude that Powell is best taken in large doses, not small.

[David]

Powell's final novel, in some ways a recapitulation of major themes in Dance, in others new territory. The Arthurian legend/trope of the fisher king informs the structure of the book, in factual terms, the story of several passengers on a cruise around the North Sea, primarily touching at Hadrian's Wall, Edinburgh, and the Orkneys. All manner of symbolic archetypes appear, all of which are woven through contemporary realities like historical fiction, advertising, and photography. While there is nothing 'wrong' with this novel, Powell may have been wise to make it his last (at c.80) as one sometimes feels there is nothing here which he has not already explored more interestingly, earlier. I did really enjoy on this re-read the summation of Adam as a dissatisfying character as I was re-reading The Fisher King more or less in tandem with bits of Paradise Lost.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

. . . an interesting series of characters meet onboard a ship and the book follows their curious exploration of each other's relationships and eccentricities.

The book foreshadowed a dramatic conclusion that never took place---perhaps I just expected the strong personalities to clash in a more overt way.

Powell's principal characters are interesting and thought-provoking though.

[Kitty Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powell does character studies like no other, and this book is no exception. Very wordy, with complex references to classical music and British myth, it is nevertheless gripping when you get into his rhythm and style. Simultaneously capturing profound and mundane, The Fisher King is definitely a book I would recommend.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it possible to be "clever" in a bad way? I'm going to say that, yes, it is possible. And this book, in many ways, epitomizes that. Powell has to be British. I know he is.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather disappointing. Showed much promise but seemed to fizzle.