I admit, I'm starting to flag on the Powell memoirs. On the upside, it turns out that he visited California and watched a movie just across the road from where I live--really, he could have seen what is now my apartment, walked under my windows. And Powell's uncanny ability to meet and befriend important writers before he'd written anything particularly important is very impressive, particularly his hanging out F. Scott Fitz. On the downside, much of the stuff on his war years is very dull compared to the brilliance of the war sections in DMOT. Anyone who tells you that nonfiction is more gripping than fiction because it's 'real' has plainly not compared this with 'Military Philosophers.' But it's a pleasant read, and there's no shortage of Olde Englishe eccentricities.

One odd thing I did get out of this volume, though, is that Powell as memoirist is not much different from the narrator of DMOT: they're both almost completely effaced, and function as little more than the cracker on which we can pile the cheese of people and events of the twentieth century. That's not a bad thing, it might even be a good thing, and it beats the pants off memoirs which are all about the author's psychological hang-ups. ( )