The Hudson Review, Inc

Bennett Award Acceptance Speech, 1984Author(s): Anthony PowellSource: The Hudson Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter, 1984-1985), pp. 534+536Published by: The Hudson Review, IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3851243 .

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ANTHONY POWELL

Bennett Award Acceptance Speech, 1984

Editors of The Hudson Review and assembled friends, In expressing my appreciation to The Hudson Review as donors

of this handsome award to commemorate Joseph Bennett, who, with Mr. Frederick Morgan, present with us here today, was one of the founders of the Review, I must say at once that it has long been one of my fantasies that the telephone would ring some sleepy summer afternoon, I should pick up the receiver, and a friendly voice would say: "Mr. Powell, we have decided to give you ten thou- sand pounds."

Something not so very far from that happened a month or two ago, proving that daydreams at times come true. At about half-past three, or quarter to four, when I was reading a book to be reviewed for my fortnightly stint in The Daily Telegraph, Fred Morgan from New York made this agreeable announcement.

I recall a popular song of my undergraduate days which went "When it's night-time in Italy. It's Wednesday over here," a truth one cannot learn too early in life, and I suppose in New York the hour was approaching ten o'clock in the morning, the moment when Mr. Morgan is accustomed to break such news.

A peculiar romance has for me always attached to the great river after which The Hudson Review is named. I wonder how many of those present at this luncheon felt the same thrill, as I did, as a child, at that opening sentence: "Whoever has made a voyage up The Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains."

I always used to feel a strange excitement when I read, or proba- bly had read to me, those words, introducing the river with its plain English name, and the mountains which, in contrast, sound so exot- ic and mysterious.

I have seen the Kaatskills only once, with their ever changing col- ours and seemingly ever changing shapes, then from a long way off on a picnic in Connecticut, but when I look back on my own life I often feel that, like Rip Van Winkle, I too was in the Kaatskill Mountains, with those odd personages dressed in strange outland- ish fashion, playing ninepins, and taking frequent refreshment from their keg of excellent liquor.

I feel that, like Rip Van Winkle, I too sampled that keg, with the curious result that I woke up many years later among people even

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536 THE HUDSON REVIEW 536 THE HUDSON REVIEW

more outlandishly dressed, than formerly, playing nothing so hum- drum as ninepins, and in general too remote from the world Rip Van Winkle remembered. I always, for example, sensed a particular sympathy for him, when, suffering from a twenty-years old hang- over, Rip Van Winkle was pursued by a crowd-which no doubt included literary members of the Left Wing establishment-shout- ing: "A tory! A tory! . . . hustle him . . . away with him!"

I do not lightly invoke an American author in recording my thanks for this both flattering and substantial recognition from a transatlantic source. I am particularly glad to recall that the Ameri- can writers who emerged after the first war-notably Cummings, Hemingway, Fitzgerald-were the young writers who opened my eyes to what was then a new sort of writing.

The Hudson Review was founded in 1948, after another world war, to give opportunity for a new generation, thirty years later, to show its mettle in writing. In doing that it is generally agreed that the Review radiantly succeeded, and no one is more grateful to The Hudson Review and its editors than myself today at this luncheon to celebrate by this prize the memory of its co-founder Joseph Ben- nett.

The above comments were made by Anthony Powell upon being presented with the 1984 Bennett Award at a luncheon at the U.S. Embassy in London on October 25, 1984.

Letter to the Editors To the Editors,

Between your moving the Bennett Award to London (just for this one time, I hope) and my own recent travels abroad, I know my congratulations to the Review on this year's Bennett Award are a little late. But I prefer to think I am getting in the last word!

For all our fame as the headquarters city of the electronic media, New York continues to be distinguished as the home base of the American publishing industry, too-and guards that distinction just as proudly. For all its problems, that industry is still the most diverse and dynamic in the world; and The Hudson Review, an intellectual pathfinder for more than three decades, is a key reason why. From the many thought-provoking pieces published in your pages by writers of international renown to your selection of the estimable British author Anthony Powell as this year's Bennett Award-winner, it is clear the tradition continues.

more outlandishly dressed, than formerly, playing nothing so hum- drum as ninepins, and in general too remote from the world Rip Van Winkle remembered. I always, for example, sensed a particular sympathy for him, when, suffering from a twenty-years old hang- over, Rip Van Winkle was pursued by a crowd-which no doubt included literary members of the Left Wing establishment-shout- ing: "A tory! A tory! . . . hustle him . . . away with him!"

I do not lightly invoke an American author in recording my thanks for this both flattering and substantial recognition from a transatlantic source. I am particularly glad to recall that the Ameri- can writers who emerged after the first war-notably Cummings, Hemingway, Fitzgerald-were the young writers who opened my eyes to what was then a new sort of writing.

The Hudson Review was founded in 1948, after another world war, to give opportunity for a new generation, thirty years later, to show its mettle in writing. In doing that it is generally agreed that the Review radiantly succeeded, and no one is more grateful to The Hudson Review and its editors than myself today at this luncheon to celebrate by this prize the memory of its co-founder Joseph Ben- nett.

The above comments were made by Anthony Powell upon being presented with the 1984 Bennett Award at a luncheon at the U.S. Embassy in London on October 25, 1984.

Letter to the Editors To the Editors,

Between your moving the Bennett Award to London (just for this one time, I hope) and my own recent travels abroad, I know my congratulations to the Review on this year's Bennett Award are a little late. But I prefer to think I am getting in the last word!

For all our fame as the headquarters city of the electronic media, New York continues to be distinguished as the home base of the American publishing industry, too-and guards that distinction just as proudly. For all its problems, that industry is still the most diverse and dynamic in the world; and The Hudson Review, an intellectual pathfinder for more than three decades, is a key reason why. From the many thought-provoking pieces published in your pages by writers of international renown to your selection of the estimable British author Anthony Powell as this year's Bennett Award-winner, it is clear the tradition continues.

EDWARD I. KOCH, MAYOR EDWARD I. KOCH, MAYOR New York City New York City

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