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Daisy Kenyon
From jacket flap:
"Three people, Daisy Kenyon, Dan O'Mara, and Peter Lapham, are trying to find happiness and a way of life in the confused world of this decade. Daisy is thirty-two, attractive, and single. Dan, her lover, is a Fordham Irishman, who has risen to the top of his profession but who finds little satisfaction in his private life. Peter Lapham edits a magazine for which Daisy has done illustrations and, meeting her in his work, falls violently in love. Their story is told against a political and economic background where people and events that have become familiar pass in review while Daisy struggles to rationalize the problems brought about by her attachment to the two men."
"Three people, Daisy Kenyon, Dan O'Mara, and Peter Lapham, are trying to find happiness and a way of life in the confused world of this decade. Daisy is thirty-two, attractive, and single. Dan, her lover, is a Fordham Irishman, who has risen to the top of his profession but who finds little satisfaction in his private life. Peter Lapham edits a magazine for which Daisy has done illustrations and, meeting her in his work, falls violently in love. Their story is told against a political and economic background where people and events that have become familiar pass in review while Daisy struggles to rationalize the problems brought about by her attachment to the two men."
- GenresFiction
277 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1945
3 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Janeway
55 books5 followersAmerican author and critic born Elizabeth Ames Hall. When her family fell on hard times during the Depression, Janeway was forced to end her Swarthmore College education and help support the family by creating bargain basement sale slogans (she graduated from Barnard College just a few years later, in 1935).
Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts).
The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other luminaries of the day.
At the behest of labor organizer Walter Reuther, she aided General Motors workers with their mid-1940s strike against the company.
Her 1949 novel The Question of Gregory attracted attention due to the eerie similarities between Gregory and James Forrestal, a Defense Secretary and acquaintance of the Janeways who committed suicide. Janeway denied any connection between fact and fiction; she said the real theme of the book was "liberals in trouble".
In all, Janeway wrote seven novels; one, 1945's Daisy Kenyon, was made into a film starring Joan Crawford. For a time she was a reviewer for the New York Times. In that capacity she introduced writer Anthony Powell and served as a champion of controversial works such as Lolita. She was also a reviewer for Ms. magazine.
From 1965-1969 she served as president of the Authors Guild, addressing lawmakers about copyright protection and other matters.
Many of Janeway's early works focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society. In the early 1970s, she began a more explicitly feminist path with works such as Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study of Social Mythology. She befriended Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Kate Millet and was strongly in favor of abortion rights. Janeway continued to write and go on lecture tours. She learned to speak Russian so that she could visit the Soviet Union.
Janeway was a judge for the National Book Awards in 1955 and for the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. She was an executive of International PEN. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, her alma mater Barnard College awarded Janeway its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
Intent on becoming an author, Janeway took the same creative writing class again and again to help hone her craft. While working on her first novel, The Walsh Girls, she met and married Eliot Janeway, economic adviser to Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (he was known as "Calamity Janeway" for his pessimistic economic forecasts).
The Janeways mingled with United States Supreme Court justices and many other luminaries of the day.
At the behest of labor organizer Walter Reuther, she aided General Motors workers with their mid-1940s strike against the company.
Her 1949 novel The Question of Gregory attracted attention due to the eerie similarities between Gregory and James Forrestal, a Defense Secretary and acquaintance of the Janeways who committed suicide. Janeway denied any connection between fact and fiction; she said the real theme of the book was "liberals in trouble".
In all, Janeway wrote seven novels; one, 1945's Daisy Kenyon, was made into a film starring Joan Crawford. For a time she was a reviewer for the New York Times. In that capacity she introduced writer Anthony Powell and served as a champion of controversial works such as Lolita. She was also a reviewer for Ms. magazine.
From 1965-1969 she served as president of the Authors Guild, addressing lawmakers about copyright protection and other matters.
Many of Janeway's early works focused on the family situation, with occasional glimpses at the struggles of women in modern society. In the early 1970s, she began a more explicitly feminist path with works such as Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study of Social Mythology. She befriended Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Kate Millet and was strongly in favor of abortion rights. Janeway continued to write and go on lecture tours. She learned to speak Russian so that she could visit the Soviet Union.
Janeway was a judge for the National Book Awards in 1955 and for the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. She was an executive of International PEN. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, her alma mater Barnard College awarded Janeway its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 12, 2015
I have a strong attraction to the 1940's. The fashions, hairstyles, music, films of that signal decade resonate aesthetically and psychologically with me. Amongst books popular during that time span I have discovered many wonderful writers, such as Olive Higgins Prouty, John Marquand, Louise Dickinson Rich, and Ben Ames Williams. Now I add Elizabeth Janeway to that list. I came to Daisy Kenyon through the 1947 film of the same name, starring Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, and Henry Fonda as the three protagonists. The film fascinated me and led me to its source.
Daisy Kenyon was published in 1945, at war's end, but much of the action takes place in 1940 and 1941, before the US has entered what appears to nearly all the novel's characters to be an inevitable global conflict. The characters are not particularly young, but mature men and women with strong personalities and decided histories. Daisy is 32, a fashion and commercial artist. Her work is not glamourized; perhaps it's greatest boon is that she enjoys it, and the hours are flexible. She scrambles for jobs, but has made herself more and more secure over the eight years she has been in New York. Those eight years have been dominated by her relationship to her married lover, Dan O'Mara, a hard-working, hard-drinking, deep-thinking Wall Street lawyer in his early forties, with a near-hysterical wife at home in their plush Manhattan apartment, and two adolescent girls he dotes on. The hopelessness of the situation is apparent from page one of the novel, as is Daisy's growing recognition that she must extricate herself from it, although she truly loves Dan. The writing is discreet but the mutual physical passion palpable, conveyed in a sentence or two of action far more effective than a page of explicit description would have been.
Dialogue is compelling in pace and cadence and true to the characters; the use of strong language from Dan surprised me in a book from 1945. Much of the entire novel is built on extended conversations between players, and they are riveting both in range and scope (discussions of the coming war and Dan's efforts to secure a new superior fighter engine for the Army Air Corps; juxtaposed with intense, searching verbal explorations between romantic players). Into these restless, on-the-edge situations - world teetering on the brink of war, Daisy knowing she must end it with Dan and claim a more satisfying life for herself - enters Peter Lapham. Because Daisy and Dan can't be seen in public together, Daisy goes out with other men on occasion - to movies, dinner, or dancing. Pete is one such beau, the art editor of one of the magazines Daisy works for. He is someone to pass the time with until Dan can show up again - but while they are out Daisy notes what a good time she is having with him, and that, tellingly, "They dance well together." They stay out until nearly dawn, and she asks Peter to call her later in the weekend and take her to a football game. He neglects to do so, and she is surprised by how much this hurts. But soon Peter is back, and Daisy must make the choice between clinging to an unsatisfying past or moving forward to the possibility of future happiness. (This is a subtle echo of the larger theme of the book; some refuse to believe war is really coming to the US and prefer to cling to neutrality.) One of the truly interesting things about reading Daisy Kenyon is that it now feels like historical fiction, peopled as it is with references to FDR, James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, which lend additional freshness and veracity to the telling. (I researched both of these latter men, and learnt that both died young in 1949, Forrestal by his own hand, and Stettinius of heart attack, the strain of the war exacting two more victims.)
It is here that the film and novel deviate, and dramatically. I can't imagine that Elizabeth Janeway was happy with what Hollywood did to the middle and concluding portions of her novel; they obviously did not have faith that the sheer power of her storytelling would compel the viewer the way the reader was compelled - this was a best seller, and justly so. The interior world of Daisy, Dan, and to a lesser extent, Peter, is so richly drawn that we feel ourselves changing along with them - coming to the same conclusions, making the same discoveries about self and others. I cannot praise this excellent novel enough, and promise it will repay your efforts to find and read it.
Daisy Kenyon was published in 1945, at war's end, but much of the action takes place in 1940 and 1941, before the US has entered what appears to nearly all the novel's characters to be an inevitable global conflict. The characters are not particularly young, but mature men and women with strong personalities and decided histories. Daisy is 32, a fashion and commercial artist. Her work is not glamourized; perhaps it's greatest boon is that she enjoys it, and the hours are flexible. She scrambles for jobs, but has made herself more and more secure over the eight years she has been in New York. Those eight years have been dominated by her relationship to her married lover, Dan O'Mara, a hard-working, hard-drinking, deep-thinking Wall Street lawyer in his early forties, with a near-hysterical wife at home in their plush Manhattan apartment, and two adolescent girls he dotes on. The hopelessness of the situation is apparent from page one of the novel, as is Daisy's growing recognition that she must extricate herself from it, although she truly loves Dan. The writing is discreet but the mutual physical passion palpable, conveyed in a sentence or two of action far more effective than a page of explicit description would have been.
Dialogue is compelling in pace and cadence and true to the characters; the use of strong language from Dan surprised me in a book from 1945. Much of the entire novel is built on extended conversations between players, and they are riveting both in range and scope (discussions of the coming war and Dan's efforts to secure a new superior fighter engine for the Army Air Corps; juxtaposed with intense, searching verbal explorations between romantic players). Into these restless, on-the-edge situations - world teetering on the brink of war, Daisy knowing she must end it with Dan and claim a more satisfying life for herself - enters Peter Lapham. Because Daisy and Dan can't be seen in public together, Daisy goes out with other men on occasion - to movies, dinner, or dancing. Pete is one such beau, the art editor of one of the magazines Daisy works for. He is someone to pass the time with until Dan can show up again - but while they are out Daisy notes what a good time she is having with him, and that, tellingly, "They dance well together." They stay out until nearly dawn, and she asks Peter to call her later in the weekend and take her to a football game. He neglects to do so, and she is surprised by how much this hurts. But soon Peter is back, and Daisy must make the choice between clinging to an unsatisfying past or moving forward to the possibility of future happiness. (This is a subtle echo of the larger theme of the book; some refuse to believe war is really coming to the US and prefer to cling to neutrality.) One of the truly interesting things about reading Daisy Kenyon is that it now feels like historical fiction, peopled as it is with references to FDR, James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, which lend additional freshness and veracity to the telling. (I researched both of these latter men, and learnt that both died young in 1949, Forrestal by his own hand, and Stettinius of heart attack, the strain of the war exacting two more victims.)
It is here that the film and novel deviate, and dramatically. I can't imagine that Elizabeth Janeway was happy with what Hollywood did to the middle and concluding portions of her novel; they obviously did not have faith that the sheer power of her storytelling would compel the viewer the way the reader was compelled - this was a best seller, and justly so. The interior world of Daisy, Dan, and to a lesser extent, Peter, is so richly drawn that we feel ourselves changing along with them - coming to the same conclusions, making the same discoveries about self and others. I cannot praise this excellent novel enough, and promise it will repay your efforts to find and read it.
May 30, 2018
My copy dates from 1945, the year of first publication, printed with narrow margins to make the most efficient use of the publisher's paper ration. The dust jacket offers the title as Daisy Kenyon: An Historical Novel of 1940 - 1942; the subtitle, an odd one for a book published in 1945, does not appear on the title page or anywhere else inside the book itself.
October 1940
At 32, Daisy Kenyon appears to be a fully liberated woman, supporting herself as a successful illustrator, living independently in New York City. She has engaged in an eight year affair with a wealthy married man, Dan O'Mara, but dates other men and has an active social life exclusive of Dan. The novel opens with the unexpected encounter between Dan and a new acquaintance of Daisy, Pete Lapham, a widower who will prove significant in Daisy's life.
Postscript After reading Janeway's obituary, I decided that I have been unfair in thinking that Daisy's internalization of responsibility for male violence is condoned by the author. Rather, Daisy's situation at the novel's end might be summed up by the title of one of Janeway's alter books, Man's World, Women's Place. (Though this other obituary with the quote, "as recently as 1969 she termed the women's movement 'frivolous and gestural'" may indicate a coversion to feminism long after this novel was written. ) In it's way, Daisy Kenyon is a horror story.
October 1940
At 32, Daisy Kenyon appears to be a fully liberated woman, supporting herself as a successful illustrator, living independently in New York City. She has engaged in an eight year affair with a wealthy married man, Dan O'Mara, but dates other men and has an active social life exclusive of Dan. The novel opens with the unexpected encounter between Dan and a new acquaintance of Daisy, Pete Lapham, a widower who will prove significant in Daisy's life.
Postscript After reading Janeway's obituary, I decided that I have been unfair in thinking that Daisy's internalization of responsibility for male violence is condoned by the author. Rather, Daisy's situation at the novel's end might be summed up by the title of one of Janeway's alter books, Man's World, Women's Place. (Though this other obituary with the quote, "as recently as 1969 she termed the women's movement 'frivolous and gestural'" may indicate a coversion to feminism long after this novel was written. ) In it's way, Daisy Kenyon is a horror story.
April 12, 2024
After enjoying the movie based on this novel for years, I decided to go to the source. I bought an edition published in the 1940s so, I feel completely in the era. So far I recognize some of the dialogue that is lifted verbatim from the novel. Also there is much material that was left out of the movie. I can see why.
June 18, 2017
This could have been just another potboiler, a love triangle with all its predictable problems, but Elizabeth Janeway's writing raises it to another level. We are confronted with the big questions: what is love, how does it change us, how can we make it last? The story takes place in 1941, before Pearl Harbor brought the US into WWII, so it has political overtones, but it remains quite relevant today. I look forward to seeing the movie, starring Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda, to get Hollywood's version of the book.
October 21, 2016
Commercial artist Daisy Kenyon is involved with married lawyer, and hopes someday to marry him, if he ever divorces his wife. She meets returning veteran, a decent and caring man, whom she does not love, but who offers her love and a more hopeful relationship. She marries him... just as Dan gets a divorce.
February 24, 2022
We discussed Daisy Kenyon in an episode of Fadeout Books.
Amelia thought this was stagnant. 3 stars
Maggie liked Daisy Kenyon more with each passing chapter. 4 stars.
Miranda struggled with the text but may revisit it someday. 2.5 stars
Lydia wants to read even more novels about women in their 30s+. 3.5 stars.
Amelia thought this was stagnant. 3 stars
Maggie liked Daisy Kenyon more with each passing chapter. 4 stars.
Miranda struggled with the text but may revisit it someday. 2.5 stars
Lydia wants to read even more novels about women in their 30s+. 3.5 stars.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews