Word: widmerpool
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Widmerpool, a figure of fun reappearing in this novel as the "new man" of modern Britain. In the course of the plot he is taught that marriage is not an exact science but, as Foch said of war, "a terrible and passionate drama." Widmerpool is a bouncing, uncivilized young City type whose political sagacity is expressed in his plan for averting World War II, then looming. The plan: give the Order of the Garter to Hermann Göring ("After all, it is what such things...
...Nicholas Jenkins, the novel's narrator and a movie scriptwriter (as Powell himself once was), whose humor is a soft blackjack. When Widmerpool asks him what would be a suitable name under which to register for a "clandestine weekend" at a country hotel, Jenkins replies: "Mr. and the Honourable Mrs. Smith...
...Kenneth Widmerpool, who first appeared in the series as a clodhopping schoolboy, the butt of Jenkins' witty friends. But now those friends are ruined, bitter, broke or drunk. But Widmerpool, the earnest bore, alone seems to be making a go of it in a suddenly makeshift world. He works in a financial house that specializes in discounting bills. Widmerpool's job as a bill-broker becomes a symbol of Author Powell's thesis...
Exit, Empire. Widmerpool, however, is in the midst of the Acceptance World without understanding it. At the Old School's annual Old Boys' dinner, Widmerpool, as the man of the '30s, horrifies all by making a long, uninvited speech on economics. The old housemaster, a neurotic, twisted pillar of the Old Order, salutes the onset of economics by suffering a stroke, and the Old Boys disband to their dim and several destinies...