Dawn Powell

"The wicked pavilion of the title is the Cafe Julien where everybody who is anybody goes to recover from failed love affairs and to pursue new ones, to cadge money, to hatch plots, and to puncture one another's reputation."--Back cover.

Eighteen short stories are mostly about disillusioned or defeated people.

One of the permanent masterpieces of childhood, comparable with David Copperfield, What Maisie Knew and the early reminiscences of Colette" (New York Times Book Review). In this family chronicle set at the turn of the century, and the most autobiographical of Powell's novels, young Marcia Willard's family struggles to keep up with the changing times and Marcia endures disillusionment and cruelty to forge a survivor's sense of independence.

Written between the 1930s and the 1950s, the novels of Dawn Powell evoke a time when an artist manqué could come to New York with no money and improvise a life there within days; an era when even the most melancholy hotel housed a population of genteel eccentrics. They are comic masterpieces, inhabited by charming hacks, hustlers, and poseurs, deliciously venal men, Machiavellian women, and monstrous children. In the world of Angels on Toast (1940), everyone is triumphantly on the make. Lou Donovan, the entrepreneur who ricochets frantically between his well-connected wife, his disreputable ex, and his dangerously greedy mistress. Trina Kameray, the exotic adventuress whose job title is as phony as her accent. T.V. Truesdale, the man with the aristocratic manner, the fourteen-dollar suit, and the hyperactive eye for the main chance. The deals and machinations of these characters make this novel dizzyingly fast-paced and deliriously entertaining.

Young playwright Jefferson Abbott arrives in New York City and is astonished with his childhood sweetheart, Prudence Bly, now a nightclub singer, and her circle of friends and their activities.

Dennis Orphen, in writing a novel, has stolen the life story of his friend, Effie Callingham, the former wife of a famous, Hemingway-like novelist, Andrew Callingham. Orphen’s betrayal is not the only one, nor the worst one, in this hilarious satire of the New York literary scene. (Powell personally considered this to be her best New York novel.) Powell takes revenge here on all publishers, and her baffoonish MacTweed is a comic invention worthy of Dickens. And as always in Powell’s New York novels, the city itself becomes a central character: “On the glittering black pavement legs hurried by with umbrella tops, taxis skidded along the curb, their wheels swishing through the puddles, raindrops bounced like dice in the gutter.” Powell’s famous wit was never sharper than here, but Turn, Magic Wheel is also one of the most poignant and heart-wrenching of her novels.

"Christopher Bennett grew up ambitious, bright, and hardworking on an Ohio farm. His first wage-earning job was in a foundry. An imposing physical specimen, a World War I volunteer, and a square shooter, he rises to levels of wealth and power generally open only to the East Coast-educated sons of corporate vice presidents. When he ultimately earns the position of general manager at a steel corporation, it never occurs to him that he has deserted his heritage. In his mind's eye, he is more than just a friend of the workers, he is one. He doesn't see that success has changed him and that the workers are no longer his friends. It takes an angry strike, a violent attack, and the Great Depression to bring him back to reality, to reveal that a life of simplicity is the only life congruous with nature. The Story of a Country Boy was first published in 1934 and has been out of print for more than sixty years."--BOOK JACKET.

The Bride's House is the story of a woman who loves two men but finds happiness with neither. Sophie is eager for her marriage to the stable Lynn, believing he will be her anchor, help her in containing what she knows to be her restless and passionate nature. But then she encounters Jerome and allows herself to be seduced, and the novel becomes a study of "good" and "bad" as defined by the conventions of time and place - shortly before the turn of the century in rural Ohio. Dawn Powell's portrait of Sophie - a woman who is sharply aware of her own needs and inner-conflicts - is a surprisingly modern one in a novel written nearly seventy years ago. In his introduction, Powell's biographer, Tim Page, suggests that Sophie's struggle and her ambivalence may have mirrored the married Powell's involvement with the playwright John Howard Lawson at the time she was writing The Bride's House.

Originally published as The Tenth Month, Come Back to Sorrento joins My Home Is Far Away and Dance Night as the third of Dawn Powell's so-called "Ohio novels" to be re-issued. Here Powell turns her attention to those certain rare souls who have the secret of finding their lives glamorous and themselves magnificent under the most humble conditions. Connie Benjamin, the village shoemaker's wife, was raised in a wealthy household and had pretensions toward an operatic career. Blaine Decker, the new high school music teacher, is a homosexual in a closeted era who once spent time abroad studying piano. The two are drawn together into a powerful friendship of dependence, each sustaining the other in a conviction of superiority and translating the surface monotony of their lives into a drama richer than reality.

Contents The girls in their summer dresses by Irwin Shaw Over the river and through the wood by John O'Hara The secret life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber The net by Robert M. Coates Home atmosphere by Sally Benson A toast to Captain Jerk by Russell Maloney Kroy Wen by Kay Boyle Nice girl by Sherwood Anderson HYMAN KAPLA*N, samaritan by Leonard Q. Ross Prelude to reunion by Oliver La Farge A small day by Erskine Caldwell Midsummer by Nancy Hale The door by E.B. White Tourist home by Benedict Thielen Arrangement in black and white by Dorothy Parker The courtship of Milton Barker by Wolcott Gibbs Homecoming by William Maxwell Only the dead know Brooklyn by Thomas Wolfe The works by Nathan Asch Do you like it here? by John O'Hara Conversation piece by Louise Bogan The fury by Robert M. Coates Venetian perspective by Janet Flanner Ping-pong by St. Clair McKelway The three veterans by Leane Zugsmith Wet Saturday by John Collier Soldiers of the republic by Dorothy Parker Houseparty by Walter Bernstein All the years of her life by Morley Callaghan The explorers by Jerome Weidman The old lady by Thyra Samter Winslow A matter of pride by Christopher La Farge Love in the snow by Joel Sayre. Profession : housewife by Sally Benson The great manta by Edwin Corle My sister Frances by Emily Hahn Accident near Charlottesburg by William A. Krauss In honor of their daughter by John Mosher The test by Angelica Gibbs Goodbye, Shirley Temple by Joseph Mitchell Honors and awards by James Reid Parker Pastoral at Mr. Piper's by Mollie Panter-Downes Man and woman by Erskine Caldwell Main currents of American thought by Irwin Shaw The knife by Brendan Gill The pelican's shadow by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Incident on a street corner by Albert Maltz Such a pretty day by Dawn Powell Portrait of ladies by Mark Shorer Parochial school by Paul Horgan I am waiting by Christopher Isherwood A letter from the Bronx by Arthur Kober Little woman by Sally Benson The apostate by George Milburn Sailor off the Bremen by Irwin Shaw Barmecide's feast by Marc Connelly Fish story by Donald Moffat I've got an anchor on my chest by R.H. Newman The happiest days by John Cheever Black boy by Kay Boyle The nice Judge Trowbridge by Richard Lockridge Love in Brooklyn by Daniel Fuchs The great-grandmother by Nancy Hale Chutzbah by Jerome Weidman Mr. Palmer's party by Tess Slesinger A different world by Robert M. Coates Are we leaving tomorrow? by John O'Hara The getaway by Dorothy Thomas.

"Selected Letters of Dawn Powell, 1913-1965 traces a writer's fifty-two-year journey from her childhood in a small Ohio town to the glitter of Manhattan cosmopolitan life."--BOOK JACKET. "Living most of her life in Greenwich Village, Powell supported herself as a writer through the Depression and two world wars while nursing an autistic son, an alcoholic husband, and her own parade of illnesses. In her correspondence we find the record of a life that produced fifteen novels, ten plays, and more than one hundred stories."--BOOK JACKET. "Letters to such luminaries as Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, and the legendary editor Max Perkins are filled with gossip and literary commentary; they also provide and in-depth look at Powell's own writing-in-progress and the events and ideas that obsessed her."--BOOK JACKET.

Satire on New York night life and literary crowd.

When Dawn Powell died thirty years ago she left a shelf of books and some impassioned fans. The novels, plays, and stories that won Powell a unique reputation in American letters are now joined by her diaries, here published for the first time. Readers familiar with Powell's work will delight in hearing her distinctive voice in this brilliant account of her writing life. The diaries are also of vital interest for what they add to cultural history - for Powell's many encounters with artists, musicians, and writers of the period.