Ordering the steps of the Dance . . .

Writing a novel is a voyage into unknown territory. (Reading one is also, of course.) The author explores possibilities. To some extent even those novels which seem far removed from autobiography represent the author’s imaginary, or alternative, life, characters owing more in the last resort to him than to any identifiable models. He is a puppet-master, ordering the steps of the dance. Nevertheless he is likely, in the writing, often to be taken by surprise. ‘How do I know what I mean till I see what I’ve said?’ What to the reader seems right, even inevitable, might have taken a different course.

The truth of this is well illustrated by the jottings Anthony Powell made, published posthumously as A Writer’s Notebook. Though rich in nice observation — ‘A great deal of individual success in life is based on not having the slightest idea what other people are like’ — their chief interest for those addicted to his great work are the glimpses they offer of what went into the making of it. Sometimes you have the first draft of a comment, not yet attributed to any character: ‘The really extraordinary thing about professional seducers is the drivel they talk, there is not a single cliché they leave unsaid. That is why they have such success with women.’ This line will later be given to Maclintick in Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant. Others were never used: ‘Poets as a class are so hard on whisky.’ You find ideas which turn out to have been false starts: ‘The Army Book should begin with something fairly grim like a suicide.’ It doesn’t: the two suicides come later.