One of the small sorrows of my life is that I’m unable to talk about my favorite novel with my friends. No one has read it. I have badgered any number of people into giving it a try, but most quit somewhere in the middle of the first paragraph.
Who can blame them? Just for openers, A Glastonbury Romance is 1120 pages long—the longest undivided novel in English. There are stretches of incomprehensible West Country dialect. For instance: “Thee’s ‘ooman be biding along wi’ Missus for thik party.” Powys is bombastic, windy, and utterly lacking in good taste. There is an unforgettable scene involving an enema. He is prone to phrases like “the divine-diabolical soul of the creative energy beyond space and time.” I love it!
In Glastonbury, England, the nexus of Christian legend and Celtic and Arthurian myth, great events are stirring. Johnny Geard, a low-church preacher who revels in the blood of Christ, is elected mayor. Young Bolsheviks establish a commune. Adulterous love affairs are consummated. The arrogant industrialist Philip Crow plans to electrify the local cave, Wookey Hole. And the Holy Grail is appearing. The cast of characters eclipses anything Dickens ever created: saintly and lustful Holy Sam, tormented sadist Owen Evans, cold-hearted Persephone Spear, and a whole battalion of country folk with names like Isaac Weatherwax and Tossie Stickles. Merlin is in there somewhere, too. And those are just the human characters. Powys, a mystical pantheist, tells of the thoughts and dreams of trees, rocks, the Sun, a stalk of lemon verbena. The novel’s climax is an apocalyptic flood—told from the point of view of the flood.
I have a challenge: read the first paragraph. Yes, it is bombastic and syntactically challenged. But if it makes you laugh, read on. Your reward will be the experience of what George Steiner calls “the only novel produced by an English writer than can fairly be compared with the fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.” It throbs with life: myth, sex, nature, greed, dualism, mysticism. Let me know if you make it to the end.
I’ve read the whole thing. It’s all that, and then some. I have some experience of the area, having visited several times and climbed the Tor more than once. But nothing can prepare you for the universe that Powys builds. After a certain point, your defenses just get beaten down and you take it as it comes ;-)
A fantastic read, in every sense of the word. I’m re-reading it now and trying to take it slow. It really is one of those books you have to immerse yourself in.
There’s a Reader’s Companion available from the Powys Society, for those wanting a hand with the dialect, and so on: http://www.powys-society.org/pdf/Gcompanion.pdf
I’m reading it now. I read Wolf Solent first, so I had a taste. I have never read an author like this, except Hardy comes close in some ways. I love it.
Hello Penny,
You are not alone in your enthusiasm.
Why not join the Powys Society and find lots of people who would be happy to discuss the works of John Cowper Powys with you.
You would be very welcome.
http://www.powys-society.org/
Anna
Read Glastonbury Romance many years ago, and some time before I die, I’d like to do it again. It reads like a combination of Joseph Campbell, Umberto Ecco, and Robert Graves. Unique. Indescribable. Rich. What a shame the book doesn’t have a wider following.
Hello Penelope
I got to half way in my early twenties… well maybe less but I never forgot my attempt.
I’m 54 now and giving it another try.
I’ll come back if i finish
Best
Jan
I’ve lived with ‘A Glastonbury Romance’ for more than 50 years, and, currently, I’m reading it for at least the 5th or 6th time.
It’s extraordinary. The characters in the book are so utterly real that when we lived in that part of the world, I found visiting Glastonbury a decidedly creepy experience; it felt as if I was going to meet Sam Dekker … or John Crow … or (with luck!) Percy Spear or Crummie Geard round the next corner. Likewise, the descriptions of the natural world are absolutely stunning.
Yet the whole thing is based on a world view which (let’s face it!) with all its cosmic consciousnesses is just plain daft. On the other hand, if you try to imagine the book with the characters and the nature writing left in place, but with the daft bits expunged … well, as far as I can see, it just wouldn’t work.
So, I give up: to me it’s an extraordinary, inexplicable masterpiece.
And I certainly share Penelope’s sorrow at not being able to get other people to share one’s pleasure in it.
[…] Des Lewis A very instating blog about THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE: https://bfgb.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/a-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/ […]
Thanks Penelope,
Loved your review.
It’s about 21 years since I read it, discovered it through Colin Wilson’s craft of the Novel. To misquote Mervyn Peake “Powys is the greatest writer the world has never known.” The novel is just huge in every sense of the word, I love that opening paragraph, getting past that is a rite of passage, you know you’re stepping into a world full of invisible currents and incredible characters, this is a conscious universe and it is a deep drink from the cup of the grail.
It’s fantastic coming across other lovers of this gargantuan work.
I’ve been hoping to buy an ebook version as it is too big to easily carry around. If anyone knows if it is available let me know.