The strange decline of literary journalism
Oh for the golden age of Orwell, Muggeridge and Powell
It’s hard to tell whether my addiction to A Dance to the Music of Time is something to worry about. Is it a bit like spending too much time at one’s club, when a more adventurous approach to social life might introduce me to ‘new people’? (‘Dread phrase’, as Wallace Arnold might have said.) Probably. But one of the pleasures of old age is that you no longer feel shame at basking in the familiar. Open any volume of Dance and you know you will not be disappointed. Every now and then I reread a volume of Proust to remind me that Powell is not really in the same league as the long roman fleuve to which Dance is, in a sense, a tribute. But, in fact, the pleasures of reading the two novelists are quite distinct. The truly great writers, of whom Proust is one, actually change your way...
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