I read 500 pages and gave up because I did not like the characters. ( )

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Powys-Les-enchantements-de-Glastonbury/75443

> Un roman titanesque par l'un des plus vastes écrivains de ce siècle : le pouvoir spirituel (du Graal, nous sommes au pays de Galles) s'y oppose à l'éternité matérialiste en une fresque hallucinante de vérité.
—Nouvelles Clés

> LES ENCHANTEMENTS DE GLASTONBURY, de John Cowper Powys, Biblios/Gallimard, 1434 pages. — Né en Angleterre en 1872, John Cowper Powys aura entrepris l'oeuvre de sa vie — Les enchantements de Glastonbury — alors qu’il avait plus de 40 ans. Dans sa préface, Catherine Lépront observe : « Tout se déroule dans le seul lieu de Glastonbury, parcelle de l’univers devenue, après les manoeuvres électorales des révolutionnaires, une « commune » (mais au sens de la Commune de Paris), une réalisation d’utopistes politiques qui se révéleront toutefois des tyrans au même titre que le tyran Philip Crow qu’ils combattent ». Les enchantements de Glastonbury, c’est le roman-témoin de l’Angleterre du début du siècle.
—Le devoir, 18 janvier 1992

I finally gave up on this book after 3 attempts, about 10 years apart -- sure some of the descriptions are beautiful, even memorable, but Powys at times uses 10 adjectives when he could use 2, and the story plods EVER so slowly...I just couldn't drag any farther through it than about 250 pages. ( )

Powys' masterwork. ( )

Hello David Lynch? Or David Milch? Are you listening? John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance is a novel that calls for transfiguration into a television drama series. But only at the hands of a writer/director who has a certain witchy twitchy je ne sais quoi. Glastonbury Tor! A Druid isle of the dead? The final resting place of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail? A Camelot waiting for Arthur's return? Just think, if Lynch transformed the rainsodden gloomfilled backwoods of the Pacific Northwest into a mystico-wonderland of Black Lodges and log ladies, then what could he do with this rich historical nexus?

Powys's novel, like Middlemarch, is an intricate detailed portrait of British village. The story concerns a clash of political, economic and spiritual interests in a quirky struggle for power. A capitalist, a trio of commune organizers, and an evangelist preacher hold very opposing and ambitious visions for Glastonbury's future. Should the village become a model of economic development (i.e. mining and factories), a paragon of communalism on the order of Robert Owen's New Harmony, or a tourist attraction with deeply spiritual overtones like Lourdes? On a personal level, the players and their paramours and families are every bit as eccentric and lusty as any of the denizens of Twin Peaks. Romantic interests overlap and are entangled in myriad ways that flirt with lesbianism, incest, and sadism. Everyone knows everyone's business and yet all are just a bit cloaked in shadow at the same time.

The main problem for a reader of the novel (as opposed to a viewer of the cinematic work I envision) is Powys prolix attempt to capture a pagan mystic sensibility and establish it as a mood and background element. Call it his paen to "the First Cause". In cinema this type of work can be done convincingly with lighting, camera angles, and music. With prose, the job is infinitely more difficult. Consider the opening sentence of this 1100 page tome:

"At the striking of noon on a certain fifth of March, there occurred within a causal radius of Brandon railway station and yet beyond the deepest pools of emptiness between the uttermost stellar systems one of those infinitesimal ripples in the creative silence of the First Cause which always occur when an exceptional stir of heightened consciousness agitates any living organism in this astronomical universe."

This import is something David Lynch could convey with red drapes, a dwarf, and the Beatles played backwards. With Powys, you sometimes long, upon third reading of a sentence, for a simple "Once upon a time". However, with a few hundred pages, that difficulty passes. In fact, when I finished the book, I felt ready to read it again. After three mere weeks, I was comfortable with its rhythms and nuances.

Oh - one final note to David Lynch about that movie version, I'm pretty sure that many of the male roles could be played, in Peter Sellers fashion, by Steve Buscemi, the exception being Mr. Geard who could only be played by Joachim Phoenix. Oh - and Natalie Portman must play either Crummie or Nell. And Laura Dern, as always, will be fine. ( )