The Wicked Pavilion

by 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. Dennis Orphen, the writer from Dawn Powell's "Turn, Magic Wheel," makes an appearance here, as does Andy Callingham, Powell's thinly disguised Ernest Hemingway. The climax of this mercilessly funny novel comes with a party which, remarked Gore Vidal, "resembles Proust's last roundup," and where one of the partygoers observes, "There are some people here who have been dead twenty years."
"For decades Dawn Powell was always just on the verge of ceasing to be a cult and becoming a major religion." -"- Gore Vidal" "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Classics, Literary Fiction, American, Novels, Literature

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Dawn Powell was an American writer of satirical novels and stories that manage to be barbed and sensitive at the same time.

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful Powell party, this time without absinthe. Her Robert Altmanesque ensemble includes 3 artists, 2 heiresses (one seemingly based on Peggy Guggenheim), a romantic couple who can't quite get together, and assorted New Yorkers of good and bad will struggling to stay afloat. Powell is in a gentler mood here. She gives her lovers a finale embrace (that's a surprise) and lets others believe there might be a silver lining, even if it's tissue. Still, her wit crackles. Of a loud blabby richy who interrupts everyone, Powell writes: "She not only let her hair down in public but pulled out everyone else's hairpins as well." There's the grubby publisher, known as The Bore, who reaches "for his wallet cautiously as if it might bite his hand." And the dimwit art reporter whose boss gave him his beat because "inexperience and ignorance would not be noticed."

In a few deft strokes Powell accurately sends up journalism and, shortly, art critics and collectors who really don't know much about anything. The stories interlock, but the focus is on 2 starving artists who forge paintings for a 3d who was killed in a car crash, and get to stay alive. As usual in a Powell novel, as in her own life, there's constant anxiety about money.

Cafe Julien on E 9th St near Washington Sq, in Greenwich Village, provides the social hub. It's where artists, writers, actors, designers, hustlers of all kinds hang out -- like the Flore or Deux Magots in Paris. Modeled on the actual Cafe Lafayette, 30 E 9th, it's a home for the lost and found, the venerable and vulnerable, the brave and spirited and conniving. Powell lived across the street, but the Cafe was hit by the wrecking ball in 1954, when the novel ends, and so does an era. In its place now stands an exceedingly ugly 50s pile. This is 2 blocks from me and I feel sad about Powell and a cafe I never knew when I walk by. Powell asks, "There must be some place, a halfway house in time where the runners may pause and ask why they run, what is the prize and is it the prize they really want?"

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This late-career Powell novel is in keeping with her typically lighthearted approach towards awful people; 'awful' in the sense that those Powell chooses to zero in on tend to be 'users'. 'TWP' is largely populated with opportunists: those who use others for upward mobility, steady / quick cash, status, or maybe just because they're bored / lonely (and because they can).

Overall, the behavior patterns on display here aren't admirable. Yet there are also times when they're just petty (out of insecurity). At other times they're pointedly vengeful (even if / when passive-aggressive).

The cast of characters here pretty much know each other extremely well. Coincidences run amok and most of the people we are introduced to keep on meeting each other with stunning, revolving door regularity. (So not only is there more opportunism, there's also more free-floating guilt from familiarity.)

There are a few subplots involving mutual-support friendships - and one hilarious excavation of a decades-long competition between a spendthrift socialite and her father-of-four-daughters brother who is inactively gay.:

He was well aware that many men of his quixotic moods preferred young boys, but he dreaded to expose his inexperience to one of his own sex, and after certain cautious experiments realized that his anemic lusts were canceled by his overpowering fear of gossip.

Powell is well-versed in the foolish notions of desire.:

It is curious that some men lust all their lives for a woman who leaves them unsated. They are challenged by visions of unexplored delights ahead.

The actual plot may be thin but Powell gets quite a lot of mileage out of it.: What happens when a bunch of people in a certain, tight circle cluster like bees around honey when they hit on a way to capitalize on a dead artist's art? To make the proceedings even less Noel Coward-ish, Powell seems less concerned with her dramatis personae and much more emotionally invested in the central place where everybody congregates: The Cafè Julien.

The cafè comes to reflect an entire post-WWII era. The reader may come to reflect less on the patrons and more on the cafè's ability to charm... while it can.

I really enjoyed this novel and I laughed a lot. Powell's wit is infectious; her skill in observation is irresistible. 'TWP' is just about on a par with the author's (exquisite) 'A Time to Be Born' and 'The Golden Spur'.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

We were playing pool by candlelight when the cops busted in hollering and waving flashlights. I suppose they thought we'd broken in. In fact the power had just gone out, and eternal bartender Rose set them straight, after which they settled down with us.

This was the heyday of the Waltham Tavern, a dingy hole in the South End of Boston and my own downmarket Cafe Julien, which a disparate group of secret alcoholic suits, trucker hat wearers both ironic and non-, and a drag queen made our own for several years until it was abruptly shut down because it turns out that it was some sort of mob-related front for an Oxycontin ring, which I never had any idea about but does help explain why we were only sporadically expected to pay for our drinks and in fact once Rose was out of beer altogether and we had to go to the liquor store and supply our own.

Dawn Powell is a bit of a cult secret herself, a shadow Dorothy Parker, one of those referred to as a "writer's writer," which means that if you are pretentious you can drag her out to one-up anyone who dares to like anyone as obvious as Dorothy Parker. The standard line comes from Diana Trilling, who called her "the answer to the old question 'Who really makes the jokes that Dorothy Parker gets the credit for?'" Which is a dick thing to say but also very clever, so here we are. She's not quite as quotable as Parker, but she does have the advantage of having actually written novels, fifteen of them in fact, of which this and A Time To Be Born are the best-known, which isn't saying much. So she's really more of an answer to the question, "I love Dorothy Parker but I read everything she wrote in like a day, where is more?"

1954's Wicked Pavilion centers around that afore-mentioned Cafe Julien, a fictionalized version of the legendary Cafe Brevoort, or the Cafe Lafayette, or both, and a good name for your wifi network. Its regulars cycle in and out of the book: star-crossed lovers Rick Prescott and Ellenora Carsdale, who meet there randomly and at great intervals; awful dowager Elsie Hookley and her reluctant protege Jerry Dulaine; and a trio of artists, one of whom has found success by dying, the other two also finding success in his death, and whose story Patricia Highsmith ripped off for her second Ripley book. It's sharp and very funny. "Once you have made up your mind to drop a person," thinks Elsie, "it is most inconsiderate of them not to come within dropping distance."

Look, I love Dorothy Parker, and let's not forget where we are when we're even having a conversation about her.

Most people in the entire world: never heard of her.
Americans who went to college: "Something about a dirty joke involving martinis?"
Particularly well-read people: "Oh yes, I love Dorothy Parker!"
Like ten people, all of whom theoretically are into swinging but have only actually done it once and it was honestly less 'swinging' and more 'both of us cheated on each other at the same party': "Yes, but have you read Dawn Powell?"

I don't know what kind of fuckin' world we're in where loving Dorothy Parker is boring and we have to go finding some more obscure person to love just to prove our lit cred. Can we not love them both? Yes we can, and now I do.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was more a series of related stories than a developed novel, but it was still fine. Containing some of the best satire I have ever read, it portrays a group of high society and art world characters as they go about their avaricious, self-centered lives. Some sections are forgettable, but others contain passages of truly inspired wickedness. A high class party girl gets hauled off to a drunk tank with a bunch of prostitutes. A cranky artist inadvertantly fakes his death and then his work and life become much more significant than before. A wealthy brother and sister engage in an endless struggle while never losing their sense of propriety. Great fun, but with an element of sadness as well.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

How could I have forgotten to have rated this book? I loved this book so much, but it's fallen into a weird category. I have other books of hers but I don't know when I will ever read them, I feel like they need to be saved so that I can enjoy them at some point in the future. Richard Powers is like this for me too, and in a way Raymond Chandler, but I think with him I have given into the need to read most of them by now, and I've only gotten one or two left.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satire And Disillusion

Dawn Powell (1897-1965) grew up in rural Ohio, but spent most of her adult life in New York City. Although little known during her lifetime, her reputation has blossomed in recent years. "The Wicked Pavilion" is her next-to-last novel. It was written in 1954 and is set in New York City in the late 1940's.

The "Wicked Pavilion" in the novel is the Cafe Julien, on Washington Square in Grenwich Village. It is a haunt for failed artists, lovers, bohemians, mid-towners, and those on the make. The novel centers around three groups of characters: a) a group of three failed artist friends, Dazell, Ben and Maurius and their agents and hangers-on. Much of the story centers upon the apparent death of Marius and the instant celebrity and inflation of his reputation that follows in its wake; b) Rick and Elleanora, on-again off-again lovers who meet and carry on their relationship over the years in the Cafe Julien; c)Elsie and Jerry. Elsie is an elderly woman from a wealthy Boston family who befriends Jerry a struggling model and would -be kept woman who spends a night in a mental institution with prostitutes. The three stories are interrelated, but the plot does not fit together altogether well and is the weakest part of this still excellent novel.

The book is biting precise, well-observed satire. The characters in the book, both male and female, are predominantly people who have come to New York from the Midwest in search of adventure, art, success, a new life -- much as Dawn Powell herself did. The dream of New York as a "happy city" remains but it becomes covered in Powell's work with disillusion, failure, and cynicism. The artists lack talent, the lovers lack passion, and everyone is on the make. Still, at the end of the book, the Cafe Julien is torn down and Powell makes us feel how an era is at an end.

The book begins with a short chapter, an essay in fact, called "entrance" which sets the stage for the disillusion we see in the course of the book. It also sets out, as satire will do, an ideal which the world the book shows us only parodies. Powell writes"

"But there were many who were bewildered by the moral mechanics of the age just as there are those who can never learn a game no matter how long they've been obliged to play it or how many times they've read the rules and paid the forfeits. If this is the way the world is turning around, they say, then by all means let it stop turning, let us get off the cosmic Ferris wheel into space. Allow us the boon of standing still till the vertigo passes, give us a respite to gather together the scraps of what was once us -- the old longings for what? for whom" that give us our wings and the chart for our tomorrows."

This book gives a picture of a New York City that physically is no longer and perhaps always lived as a vision and ideal. The book is sharp, cutting and funny in its picture of what Powell portrays as a fallen reality.

Robin Friedman

[Manray9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dawn Powell provides a distinctive example of mid-20th century American literature. Rachel Syme was spot on in The New Yorker that Powell "...wrote with the kind of highly attuned, neurotic, slashing wit that others in the business love—she struck out at her craft, her contemporaries, and her own ambitions, and she aimed for the heart... Powell was a master of urban observation."

The Café Julien and its denizens are very "New York." I loved the line from an artsy party: "There are some people here who have been dead twenty years." I came to Powell through the endorsement of Gore Vidal and agree she deserves wider recognition today for her skill with characters and dialogue. The Wicked Pavilion earned Four Stars from me.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edges on Dawn Powell's novel are sharp enough to cut. No one in this satire of 40's New York escapes her critical gaze. All the characters are morally bankrupt sell-outs and hypocrites, or else they're lunch for the carnivores. All the same, I didn't detest anyone enough to stop reading. Somehow, Powell makes you feel, just a little, for even her shallowest, most venal characters. While her cynicism can be exhausting, I enjoyed her writing very much and look forward to reading more from this underrated author.
"Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out."

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No matter what else we talk about it's a person's financial status that forms his point of view about everything else"

Likely deserves a higher rating than I'm giving it I just chose a p bad time to pick this up cuz I unexpectedly got sick[er than normal]+ haven't really been able to read more than a few mins a day due to construction going on around here and a book with pacing like this deserves a quick read, I will probably have to come back to this and read it in under a week like I had planned. BUT I already know it is a total banger and lands squarely in the realm of satire that actually works for me. "Wicked" is a very appropriate choice of words for such a riotous depiction of breakneck-paced New York socialite shenanigans, but for all its caustic wit and bitterness it never feels Overly Cruel which is rly important I think... there's a sense of counterintuitive Lightness to this that could have undermined the actual plot proceedings, and I think that's an angle you could easily criticize it from considering the kind of unsavory people Powell chooses to follow here, but it's hard to fault it when it creates something as aesthetically pleasing - a sort of faux-realistic comedy of almost cartoonish Rich Person Antics against the backdrop of an extremely lively and organically rendered vision of NYC [this thing replicates the natural beat and cadence in a way only someone organically and intimately familiar with it can], with still some love and empathy left over even after Powell spends so much time gleefully eviscerating her subjects. I really love all the subtly implemented references to Roman decadence and its counterpart in the modern day where the upper crust of the west is just as indulgent and cruel as its ancient progenitors, I mean at the end of the day getting enjoyment out of this kind of satire is almost like modern day gladiatorial spectacle in a way. The stylistic dialogue is also of note and super compelling - the cultural backdrop of events necessitates all these characters having similar learned speech patterns, but there's always distinct personality brimming in every single one. Overall I think this bookends the best but it's entertaining all the way through and even at its lull points is never uninteresting, especially with such tight pacing. Heard that Powell goes darker in her other books too so choosing this one was probably a good primer.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

yes.

This actually started off a little slow for me, though I think it's more me than the book: I'd just come off a giant Gaddis novel and more episodic scenes of artists bumming around New York didn't grab me straight out.

But in fact the book, though it does have a largish cast of characters, is much less episodic than I thought it would be, and parts were tremendously funny.

I actually read this in a library of america edition which also has three other of her books, and now I feel quite pleased to have purchased this edition instead of the wicked pavilion lonely all by itself. I'll be coming back for more, I think, once the summer reading projects are over.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glorious. The main setting is the Cafe Julien, a fantastically realized louche restaurant in Greenwich Village, rendered so realistically that I immediately wanted to book a table there and order a large pernod. Powell introduces a whole cast of regulars -- artists, businessmen, hat check girls, etc., and I was prepared for an enjoyable series of humorous sketches about them all. But Powell is much more ambitious than that, tying the characters together in surprising ways and boldly using flashbacks and flash forwards to whisk the reader along to some very unexpected places. There are some unforgettable comic set pieces, but Powell's theme is mortality, as all things, even the Cafe itself, must pass. Her writing reminded me of Evelyn Waugh, though her humor is warmer (I mean, how can it not be), but her style is really one-of-a-kind, keeping me chuckling and gasping for all 308 pages.
This edition has a wonderful introduction by Gore Vidal, a friend of Powell's who wishes she had been more popular. You tell 'em, Gore. Powell died in 1965, but she was fairly prolific, and I can't wait to read more.

[John David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I pointed out in my 2019 review of Powell’s “The Locusts Have No King” (available here: https://tinyurl.com/hx8w5b4e), the extent to which anyone at all knows Dawn Powell’s name is due almost exclusively to Gore Vidal’s 1988 glowingly appreciative essay about her in the New York Review of Books. She had a good amount of critical recognition in her own time – she had her praises sung by no less than Edmund Wilson and Ernest Hemingway - but almost no commercial success. This was largely because she ran afoul too many influential socialites whose idea of revenge was making sure that she never got read or reviewed by a broader public.

Powell’s novels occupy a unique place in twentieth-century American letters: they are novels of manners that have the patina of 1940s or 1950s high film noir mixed with the relentlessly biting social criticism of someone like H.L. Mencken. Her casts of characters are always self-deluded outcasts, cranks, and shysters who nevertheless life their lives thinking that their comeuppance is right around the corner – and it never is.

The novel follows a small group of Café Julien ingenues and their acolytes: Rick - young, green, and in the military - and Ellenora first meet at the Café Julien (the titular “wicked pavilion”), setting the scene for the rest of the book. They quickly fall in love, but despite Rick’s efforts in tracking her down, their relationship flails and Rick goes off to fight in World War II.

Through Rick and Ellenora, we meet Dalzell Sloan and Ben Forrester who try to milk their dead friend Marius, a fellow artist, for all he’s worth. “The greatest favor Marius, the man, had ever done for Marius, the artist, was to die at exactly the right moment.” Powell takes unalloyed delight in sticking it to art critics, dealers, and self-styled aesthetes. She has particular fun with a character named Briggs, a hack newspaper reporter who has been given an assignment on Marius’ work. “Briggs had hoped for assignments in the field of sports but the editor felt that literary training and education were required for that, whereas art was a department where inexperience and ignorance would not be noticed.”

We meet Elsie and Jerry, who never fail to out-do each other in their cattiness to claw their way atop the New York social latter. Elsie becomes from a family of Boston brahmins and has a brother, Wharton, who is trying to bilk her of her inheritance. Despite being a model in a previous life, Jerry is now getting old and wants to get married. She finds a man, lays a suitable trap to lure him, but only succeeds in having the IRS discover she’s behind in back taxes and is teetering on the edge of financial doom. The characters find themselves interwoven throughout each other’s lives, inside and outside of Café Julien, inevitably meeting failure, heartbreak and despondency at the tip of Powell’s poison pen.

As Fran Lebowitz has already said about Powell, there are conflicting strains in her writing. She is deeply tied to America (she was born and raised in the Midwest). But upon moving to New York City, she began writing novels whose caustic cynicism was simply too much – too honest. Americans never like to be told that their life means little in the grand scheme of things; we specialize in exalting ourselves and being the first to prop up our own sense of grandeur. We love redemption, we love Horatio Alger stories. But Powell’s works are ensemble send-ups of the parvenus, artists manque, and bland elites Americans love to imitate. Dawn Powell’s novels are where redemption goes to die a slow, painful death. That, above anything else, might be the biggest reason behind her perennial lack of popularity. But it’s why I love her.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness, what a delightful treat. Witty, often laugh-out-loud funny, moving, and rife with masterful prose. Powell is a virtuoso with tone and gentle shifts in language: she has Proust's knack for hilarious dinner parties, George Eliot's knack for succinctly describing the complicated and insightful dynamics between her characters, and for me is one of the most amusing users of free indirect speech I've yet read. The Wicked Pavilion makes so many points so beautifully, not just about art but about high society, about love, about the notion of place informing one's character, and more. There's so much wonderful stuff packed into this story that I immediately felt myself succumbing to Powell Fever, and bought The Locusts Have No King and Turn On, Magic Wheel at a moment's notice.

I adored this book and can't wait for more Dawn Powell. Thank you Francine Prose for the recommendation at LA Book Fest!

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally dipping my toes into Dawn Powell's work, courtesy of the bargain bins at work: so far, so entertaining. Powell weaves a farcical tapestry of Post WWII Manhattan (with excursions into Queens and Staten Island) in that period just before Abstract Expressionism and Bebop ushered in the full flowering of The American Century: the artists, critics, and patrons are centered in figurative and Ashcan School art, and are perhaps starting to sense their impending irrelevance. The narrative follows several protagonists as they cross paths at venerable Greenwich Village institution, the Cafe Julien, a somewhat dilapidated refuge for artists, scenesters, and the tourists who come to gawp at them (sort of a precursor to Max's Kansas City of the '70's): and a more unlikable cast of characters it would be hard to imagine. Withal, their trials and tribulations make for some highly entertaining reading.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powell on New York is sort of like Edith Wharton but with a wicked sense of humor and a cocktail. She’s very good on money and how it makes the world go round, especially for working girls. A series of linked biographical episodes of characters connected through the art and society hangout, the Cafe Julien. Some of the relationships are more interesting than others - I thought the Rick-Elenore relationship that starts things off was dull. It’s fantastic though on Elsie and her brother Wharton (of the Boston Hooksleys). There’s also the cult of the late painter Marius and his fame and fortune - now that he’s safely dead. The art world always makes you shake your head.

Also: the title could be better. Powell’s titles are a weakness; I wonder if they were hers or an editor’s.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

My edition of this dates from a 1980s rediscovery of the perennially underappreciated Dawn Powell, and has an introduction by Gore Vidal (as opposed to the more recent rediscovery spearheaded by Tim Page) - Vidal's not-quite-scholarly introduction involves lots of stories about drinking with her and e.e. cummings, roman à clef clues about who various characters are based on and so on.
The story itself is a satire of Bohemian artistic life in Greenwich Village in the 1940s. She is funny and maps out a distinctively precise territory - a little depressing at times in its cynicism, though she does tie up almost enough loose ends more or less happily to satisfy a Restoration dramatist.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an author I was unfamiliar with before discovering this book and I was impressed. It has the same kind of swagger you might find in, say, Hemingway's autobiographical "A Moveable Feast" but in NY in the late 40s. Artists and writers float between a world of money and creative destitution, scamming their ways when at all possible.It details debauchery and the dark side of humanity while being absolutely snarky and witty.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good mid-century American fiction -- though, oddly, the cover copy on the edition I have kinda spoils something. (To the extent that they can be spoiled -- this could fairly be called a comedy of manners, so we're not in THE USUAL SUSPECTS territory here.)

[Veronica Hodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

God I love Dawn Powell.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of vaguely related portraits (sketches, incidents, unfinished short stories perhaps) of Manhattanites, mostly wealthy, artistic or artistically adjacent, in vague or potential relationships but never quite connecting. Every page was interesting, well written, and with enough snark to puncture several egos. Yet there was little reason to move on to the next page, which was more of the same but without tension or suspense. Some writers can create forward motion in a plotless novel, but I needed a story arc here. Nevertheless this is masterful and eviscerating satire, though Powell actually seems fond of her people. Having completed the book I see better how the various parts fit together, but it doesn't remedy how slow this read was for me. Still, the tasty writing in The Wicked Pavilion has whetted my appetite for more Powell, who I'd never heard of before a couple of weeks ago.

[Ana Galvan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing read. The vibrant characters carry the plot seamlessly.

[Doug Bolden · Rating 4 out of 5]

"[Dawn Powell's] verbal equipment is probably unsurpassed among writers of her genre — but she views the antics of humanity with too surgical a calm."

That is from Frederic Morton's 1964 review of The Wicked Pavilion (titled, perhaps tellingly, "And Where Went Love?"). As a quote, it is insightful but terribly wrong. There is very little in this book that is calm. It is a sea of bubbles and islands floating up and popping and intersecting in a myriad of ways. Plot is secondary, here. This is a novel of motions, events, and general directions.

Vectors.

This is season four of a six season show. And the season is abridged. People, their art, their machinations, their fortunes, their misfortunes, and their relationships all start in varying ways and are told to varying degrees and effectively none of these elements is given any real resolution. Two people in a room might turn into pages worth of exposition about either or both's past. Five people in a room might be a madcap drunken escapade or an excuse to meander about the nature of art. It is a series of still lives where the final paintings are less important than the random chatter of the models.

All the while driven forth by a constant series of ironic juxtapositions and gleeful contradictions that dance from insightful to humorous to mean. Every line is a judgement but every judgement is commiseration. Schadenfreude stands shoulder to shoulder with a shared embrace of the universal experience. A few examples:

- [On one character's desire to be seduced, sort of] She intended to resist stalwartly of course, but she was desperately eager for the opportunity to show her strength.

-[An artist on one of his oldest friends] Marius is my dear friend, Ben must have said just as Dalzell had, and he is a fine painter, but what has he got that I haven’t got except a coffin? The feeling had lasted with Dalzell for days after the first funeral fanfare in the papers, a perfectly ridiculous resentment at Marius for “selling out,” quite as if he had started toadying to patrons and critics, dropping his old friends merely for the publicity and success of death.

-[On one character's feeling about women] Wharton could look at this soothing idealization and flatter himself on being superior to all women for he had produced four himself...

These sorts of quotes are never-ending. It is almost exhausting.

Jerry Dulaine, the young attractive woman from nowhere who manages to convince a lot of people that she is quite something [in terms of this novel, this means that she is quite something] who ends up in a love affair with a man who seems to want no love from her. There is the art critic, Alfred Briggs, who was hired because he knew nothing about art [and is later fired because he learns too much]. Briggs, by the way, introduced 2/3s the way through and well past the point where good sense would dictate adding in more characters, is probably the best character in the novel.

The painter, Marius, whose death is about as close to a central plot as this novel has, is cherished posthumously for painting realistic scenes with no artistic embellishment. In a museum, one person remarks "This new generation was brought up on Picasso and Modigliani and they think women have three heads and two guitars. Naturally when they see Marius’ paintings they are all bowled over." In the background, folks looking upon the paintings rave that the painting is about an actual room and that there is a girl painted realistically in a rocking chair. The reader is also told that his art is so indistinguishable from certain others that their own works are considered to be his in the buying and bidding war to own a piece of his legacy.

Maybe this is the calm that Morton chastises? Powell is attacking the art world by cherishing it for its idiocy: we are all idiots so why shouldn't we like stupid fads? See something like where Wharton's homosexuality is given as a [to him] justification for marrying a young, foreign girl that he can raise like a sometimes sexually available daughter [some tongue-in-cheekness here suggests they only had sex four times and have four daughters to show for it]. It helps him to avoid gossip while also giving him the ability to act as mother. There is the scene where Jerry is arrested for drunken and drugged misconduct after a night out on the town because it is assumed she is a prostitute while the men around her are not likewise caught. It is a brief interlude of sharp feminism in a novel where later some woman or another might treated as an idiot for wanting control of her own finances.

These terrible little kafka-esque tragedies and gothic monstrosities are written about right next to academic absurdities. Time is out of whack. Events are in an order but days or weeks pass between sections and long reminisces means a later scene might be entirely set in the past.

Gore Vidal quotes her as saying, "[The Middle Class's] ways of speech, their personal habits, the peculiarities of their thinking are considered fair game. I go outside the rules with my stuff because I can’t help believing that the middle class is funny, too." His long essay about her writings is worth reading because it is even more surreal to see this nothing-by-way-of-everything novel is the product of an author who ended up forgotten in a potter's field. Her books were out of print. Her executrix essentially wanted nothing to do with her. Fans had to fight hard to bring her back into popular discourse and despite years of doing so, there's a long way to go. Vidal chastises the general reading public for not appreciating her insightful wit. "The fact is that Americans have never been able to deal with wit. Wit gives away the scam. Wit blows the cool of those who are forever expressing a sense of hoked-up outrage. Wit, deployed by a woman with surgical calm, is a brutal assault upon nature — that is, Man."

Fittingly, this novel is fairly timeless but also deeply a byproduct of its time. There is little, outside of maybe the exact nature of some of New York's by-ways, that does resonate about as well now as it did then, but then there are moments and asides that catch the reader's eye. Such as when someone mentions being in a dianetics class.

I greatly enjoyed this one. I spent a long time on it because I would go back and reread large sections because sometimes singular lines or remarks would later be visited in further details. I am not sure if I am driven to read more of Powell's work, but this one was nice while it lasted.

[Seymour Glass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shout out to the goodreads legend that is Karen for gifting me this little hidden treasure! I'm always intrigued by stories of old New York and I was even more intrigued when both Karen and Greg said they loved this one. I was pleasantly surprised by how funny this one was; so sharp and sardonic in a Cornelia Otis Skinner way which always seems so unlikely to me from old books. I don't know why, it's not as if humour was invented in the nineties or something but the idea we have of the prim and proper Olden Days doesn't seem to fit with comedy which makes it all the more pleasurable to find.

Lots of cleverly interweaving plots here with trips to a terrifying mental hospital, high society drawing rooms and the dens of poverty-stricken artists. Totally absorbing and some of the best writing I've come across. I was so struck by the way she describes an old Great Dane rising to greet his owner as standing with "athritic chilvalry". The fact that Powell is not more well-known is a crime and yet another indictment of our sexist society which doesn't properly value the artistic contributions of women. I blame Donald Trump. For this and so much more. DAWN POWELL FOR PRESIDENT. I don't know where I was going with this.

[Emily Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dawn Powell gets to the heart of the intersecting lives of artists like nobody else. She understands the awfulness and the beauty. This book is unflinching and biting but also beautiful. I feel like I went to the cafe that is the center of the book and but also long for something like it because I didn't go to that cafe. Where is today's Cafe Julian? I've thought of this book a lot since I finished it a few weeks ago. I keep revisiting it in my mind the way these characters revisit the cafe that is no longer.

[Alvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wicked Pavillion starts out a bit slow and even a bit dull, but builds into something terrific, albeit uneven until the end. Powell's social observation is brilliant and her understanding of human nature acute, but the novel suffers greatly from an overabundance of characters and overcomplicated plot.

[Navida · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sensorial experience of 1940's NYC. Vivid and fascinating - a peek at life that no longer exists. Where was the "real" Cafe Julien? I'd like to just stand where it stood and let Dawn Powell's characters float through my imagination again!

[Chris Sulavik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anything by Dawn Powell impresses, though thought this one had a bit too much caricature, and too less pitch-perfect satire. But very revealing in the chronicling of the transformation of Greenwich Village at mid-century.

[Timothy Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent New York story teller of early 20th Century telling an excellent New York story. What's not to like?

[Reet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The wicked Pavilion centers around a place in New York called the Cafe Julien; it's in a hotel, and it also has a dining room and a banquet room. But most of the action centers around the cafe.
There're so many characters that it's hard to keep track of them all. I'll name several of them: there's Rick Prescott, and there's ellenora: these two love each other, but they never get past having dates in the cafe. He keeps offending her with his presumptuousness, but he's too stupid to figure it out.
There're three artists, rather despicable characters: Dalzel Sloane, Ben Forrester, and Marius. They are always in need of money, always having problems with dealers, and always breaking up with, and getting new girlfriends, which interferes with their work. Marius dies, and as often happens when an artist dies, his work is suddenly in great demand, and everybody wants to share anecdotes of being his best friend.
There's a hilarious scene where Cynthia Earle, a wealthy sponsor of artists, has a party to make a recording for posterity of those who had been closest to Marius, giving their best memories of him. The m.c. doesn't know enough about the recorder, and whispered gossiping and snide, jealous murmurs come out louder than the eulogies:
"Dalzell sloane, ben, briggs, Okie and severgney had stayed on for one more run-through although it was after 2:00. Cynthia had graciously brought out her best Brandy when the other guests left, for the evening had proved most unnerving for all. in the first playback private whispers and asides had come booming out drowning proper speeches and a dozen quarrels had started because someone waiting to hear his own pretty speech heard instead malicious remarks about himself made at the same time. almost everyone had stalked out either wounded to the quick or eager to report the fiasco. careful editing must be done by a chosen few, Cynthia had declared, and here they were, ears critically cocked, eyes on the Martell bottle. The machine whirred and voices came crackling out like popcorn.
'she's a ghoul--'
Dalzel and Ben think up a scheme to make money off Marius' death. Powell's contempt for the artists' circle and their sponsors comes through loud and clear.
there's Jerry Dulaine, a model who is not as much in demand with clients as she once was. Elsie Hookley, who lives in Jerry's building, comes from a wealthy Boston family, and was once married to a European baron. She enjoys how her bohemian lifestyle prickles her brother Wharton, who is staid and stuffy.
Jerry is depressed after her failed dinner party for Collier McGrew, the bigwig she's trying to"catch." She's considering a bottle of sleeping pills when a stood-up Rick comes over to her place and they decide to go out on the town. She wakes up in a strange room, and Rick is nowhere in sight:
"Her room would be a mess, she knew that from the fierce throbbing in her head which meant that she had drunk too much of something terrible, and of course her clothes would be thrown all over the place and probably the lamp turned over. But this bulb in the ceiling? the pale woman with long red braids lying in the other bed? The funny looking windows with no curtains – dungeon like windows – yes, with bars. suddenly a struck her that she must have done it – taking poison or dope pills just as she had been afraid she might. This was no dream, this was a hospital . How had it happened, how long ago, and where? Frightened, she sat up in bed abruptly and the sudden motion made her sick. She leaped up to go to the bathroom but the door was shut."

There's much more fun and frolics and plenty of schadenfreude at pretentious people's comeuppances. Powell has a delicious talent for showing up the phoniness of New York's rich and her presentation of humans whose only concern in life is how they appear to others is good fun. Makes for much laugh-out-loud moments.

[LW · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dat begon traag, met het meant-to-be koppel dat je als lezer op slag haat, hij een zelfingenomen alpha male en zij te trienemieterig voor iemand van haar intelligentie, maar na hen wordt het satire en psychologisch inzicht en zijn we vertrokken, de has-been schilder is interessanter dan de onbeschreven pagina’s van de twee jonge mensen, en het wordt voor mij nog interessanter bij de niet meer zo jonge ingenue Jerry en haar oudere sponsor Tess Elsie en haar queeste om een grote vis binnen te halen. Maar uiteindelijk gebeurt er niets met de vis, ze haalt hem binnen en ook weer niet want hij heeft blijkbaar geen seksuele interesse in haar (en hij is niet ‘queer’ dus dat woord werd in 1954 al duidelijk gebruikt voor homo’s) en er zit wel een verhaal in over hoe iedereen behalve de kunstenaar zelf geld aan hem verdient, maar uiteindelijk ben ik op het eind van het verhaal niet veel verder. Hoe komt dat? Powell kan schrijven, ze is grappig, er zitten veel inzichten in, de verhalen haken in elkaar (daar ben ik nog het meest van onder de indruk) maar vermoedelijk zijn er te veel personages, te veel lijnen die wel in elkaar haken maar niet versmelten. Wat ga ik volgende week nog onthouden? In de mate dat ik niet meer weet welke Powells ik wel en niet gelezen heb, niet veel. Als vrouw is ze ook niet mals voor andere vrouwen. Het is geen genderboek, het is een klassenboek, het contrast is tussen rijk en arm, niet tussen mannen en vrouwen. Daarom is ze ook zo hard voor Cynthia Earle, de Peggy Guggenheim die artiesten sponsort maar er in ruil ook mee in bed kruipt. Of is ze niet hard, is de mening die van de mannen in het boek?