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John Cowper Powys. Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages. Wilbur T. Albrecht, ed. Hamilton, N.Y. Colgate University Press (Syracuse University Press, distr.). 1994. xxii + 873 pages. $48.95.
If Mary Renault had written Porius, the narration would have been more graceful, more mythic, and shorn of philosophical debates about good and evil and the deities that stand guard at each terminus. If Gore Vidal had written Porius, it would have been a best seller, a companion novel to Julian and Creation. This is not to say that John Cowper Powys has written an inferior work; far from it. But in attempting to encompass a lifetime of thinking into a...