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The Happy Island
IN THIS ACIDIC, provocative, and–for its time–daring novel, Dawn Powell set out to write the story of "the bachelors of New York in the Satyricon style." The time is the late 1930s, and the young taciturn playwright, Jefferson Abbott, arrives in New York by bus from Silver City, Ohio and looks up his childhood sweetheart, Prudence Bly, who has since become a celebrated nightclub singer. When his play flops, the upright and uptight Abbott is undaunted, eventually returning to Ohio and persuading Prudence to join him there to take up a life of drudgery as mate to this always self-serious artist. Prudence, needless to say, finally escapes back to the city and her circle of friends, the disparate characters who give the book its true texture and, wrote one reviewer at the time, "are involved in such a series of promiscuities, adulteries, double-crossings, neo-perversions and Krafft-Ebbing exercises as would make the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah seem like mere suburbs of li’l old New York."
The Happy Island has had its admirers over the years (Gore Vidal called this one of his favorite Powell novels), and to be found here are surely some of Powell’s most biting one-liners. But the book may not be for every taste, and the succinct notice that appeared in The New Yorker upon first publication might stand as a warning to some "Night-club life of New York. Plenty of heavy drinking, perfumed love affairs, and in general the doings of a pretty worthless and ornery lot of people. Miss Powell serves it up with a dash of wit and for good measure throws in a couple of boys named Bert and Willy, who nearly steal the show from the main characters."
The Happy Island has had its admirers over the years (Gore Vidal called this one of his favorite Powell novels), and to be found here are surely some of Powell’s most biting one-liners. But the book may not be for every taste, and the succinct notice that appeared in The New Yorker upon first publication might stand as a warning to some "Night-club life of New York. Plenty of heavy drinking, perfumed love affairs, and in general the doings of a pretty worthless and ornery lot of people. Miss Powell serves it up with a dash of wit and for good measure throws in a couple of boys named Bert and Willy, who nearly steal the show from the main characters."
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
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About the author
Dawn Powell
43 books338 followersDawn Powell was an American writer of satirical novels and stories that manage to be barbed and sensitive at the same time.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 29, 2016
Dawn Powell's The Happy Island (1938) is among the first books written after Roman antiquity that is peopled with gay and bisexual characters but is neither a hate tract, a psychological study, an apologia, a plea for tolerance, nor an under-the-counter titillation.
—From the introduction by Tim Page
I chose that opening quote because while reading the book itself that feature didn't scream out & that attests to the truth of Tim Page's assertion—Dawn Powell doesn't play to the gallery; she writes the book she wants to, the way she wants to. Period.
So I started the new year with good intentions—read a comedy by a female writer. Now how many excellent comedies have been written by women? Luckily I was carrying The Happy Island with me because no matter what her subject matter, at writing level, Dawn Powell never disappoints.
In The Locusts Have No Kings, she skewered the intelligentsia, here, her focus is on the shallow entertainment industry in the late 1930s New York—the theatre circuit, radio shows, nightclubs—the inveterate players & their satellites involved in it. It's a world intimately known to her and just as intimately rendered here.
Overall it feels as if the society columns are being given a literary treatment here & if page three people and their lifestyle fascinate you, you'll enjoy this book.
Powell's aim was to write the story of "the bachelors of New York in the Satyricon style." I've not yet read the Petronius classic, only seen Fellini's loose version of it but yes, Powell definitely captures the bizarre & licentious aspects of it rather well. The Happy Island of the title is the bubble in which the well heeled move about "with a canapé in one hand and a dry martini in the other." It takes an outsider (always a mid-westerner & a writer) to burst that bubble. But Powell rescues the book with her highly ironic twist to the "happily-ever-after" fantasy—loved the feminist angle that raised my initial three star ranking to four.
This review here really conveys the book's sparkling frothy spirit.
January 1, 2017
Dawn Powell is an NYC Eye & Ear specialist who examines vanities at the fair. Her protagonist, an outsider, is (usually) fr Ohio, her home state -- an alien who never grasps the calculations & hypocrisies of vanity fair. This Altmanesque criss-cross of sexio-socio hopefuls includes a playwright, cabaret chanteuse, media star, alkie musician, rich fart & his rentboy who fancies writing a cookbook ("vegetables ought to be fresh"), and a museum mouthpiece who bows to a 'Dragon Lady' to snatch free trips abroad.
Amid the pageantry & puppetry, no one has a serious thought, because their serio thoughts are cliches like "Am I getting the most of my life?" says Powell. In her examining chamber "men are sensitive about how their wives are treated by their lovers" -- especially if a job is at stake. "Why do you tell me this?" groans a gay-pal to his wounded songbirdie femme, destined for a lez romp. "I'll tell the whole thing at dinner -- if there's a pause in the conversation." New love, blue love? No. Only "tired love, and it has no magic."
In vanity fair, flattery succeeds. "You never looked lovelier," a former beau tells an exflame, but he's thinking: "Her looks are quite gone." Unaware, naturally, she's thinking, aah, yes: "It's heaven to have one you can believe."
There's much brilliance here. There's also too much Muchness. Too many players. Too many intertangled stories. No POV character. But the author's worldliness outweighs her scrambled plotting for, as one GR Friend says, Dawn Powell is addictive. Example: the death of a host at his own party -- wherein he's carried to a bedroom as if drunk -- is sublime comedy. Humor's an anesthetic, asserts Powell, "laughing gas while your guts are jerked out."
She makes Mrs. Parker seem like a kvetch.
Amid the pageantry & puppetry, no one has a serious thought, because their serio thoughts are cliches like "Am I getting the most of my life?" says Powell. In her examining chamber "men are sensitive about how their wives are treated by their lovers" -- especially if a job is at stake. "Why do you tell me this?" groans a gay-pal to his wounded songbirdie femme, destined for a lez romp. "I'll tell the whole thing at dinner -- if there's a pause in the conversation." New love, blue love? No. Only "tired love, and it has no magic."
In vanity fair, flattery succeeds. "You never looked lovelier," a former beau tells an exflame, but he's thinking: "Her looks are quite gone." Unaware, naturally, she's thinking, aah, yes: "It's heaven to have one you can believe."
There's much brilliance here. There's also too much Muchness. Too many players. Too many intertangled stories. No POV character. But the author's worldliness outweighs her scrambled plotting for, as one GR Friend says, Dawn Powell is addictive. Example: the death of a host at his own party -- wherein he's carried to a bedroom as if drunk -- is sublime comedy. Humor's an anesthetic, asserts Powell, "laughing gas while your guts are jerked out."
She makes Mrs. Parker seem like a kvetch.
January 28, 2024
Alas.... one of Powell's least interesting novels.
Basically, it follows a group of interconnected malcontents - deluded to varying degrees - who suffer from not being on to themselves. Powell records them as they each make their wayward way, bouncing off each other without ever sticking (and usually only serving to offend).
You'll be hard-pressed in finding a single likable character. That, in itself, is not so unusual for Powell; parading the easily mocked tends to be her stock-in-trade - at least in her New York books. But, here, she hasn't given us anyone who stands in as a kind of anchor of sanity and compassion. Overall, this book is peopled with characters it would be better to steer clear of.
Of course, there's also the falsely peppy protagonist - Prudence Bly - somewhat of a withering chanteuse. But, strangely, Pru is largely peripheral in her own story. Throughout, she remains on the sidelines; smart-mouthed but unhappy, unfulfilled, likely to keep her directionless life going in circles.
I'm surprised that I read this through to the end. But Powell does have a unique command of language, so that carries her along, even if here it's in less than fine form.
To a degree, the story is intermittently saved by way of the darkly comic wit that can serve Powell well. She also doles out the occasional potent insight:
It's weird sensing when a writer is not that into what she's writing - yet feels compelled to finish what she started. But then again... writers write.
Basically, it follows a group of interconnected malcontents - deluded to varying degrees - who suffer from not being on to themselves. Powell records them as they each make their wayward way, bouncing off each other without ever sticking (and usually only serving to offend).
You'll be hard-pressed in finding a single likable character. That, in itself, is not so unusual for Powell; parading the easily mocked tends to be her stock-in-trade - at least in her New York books. But, here, she hasn't given us anyone who stands in as a kind of anchor of sanity and compassion. Overall, this book is peopled with characters it would be better to steer clear of.
Of course, there's also the falsely peppy protagonist - Prudence Bly - somewhat of a withering chanteuse. But, strangely, Pru is largely peripheral in her own story. Throughout, she remains on the sidelines; smart-mouthed but unhappy, unfulfilled, likely to keep her directionless life going in circles.
I'm surprised that I read this through to the end. But Powell does have a unique command of language, so that carries her along, even if here it's in less than fine form.
To a degree, the story is intermittently saved by way of the darkly comic wit that can serve Powell well. She also doles out the occasional potent insight:
"Charm's just a lot of work to get something that isn't worth anything anyway or charm wouldn't get it."In this edition's introduction, we're told that the author herself didn't like this novel. While it's true that someone responsible for a work isn't always its best judge, in this case it seems the creator was up to the task of proper assessment.
It's weird sensing when a writer is not that into what she's writing - yet feels compelled to finish what she started. But then again... writers write.
December 8, 2025
Mid-America Meets The Wicked City
The novels of Dawn Powell (1896-1965)have an autobigraphical tone. Powell grew up in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, but left this small midwestern town to seek her career in New York City. She wrote "The Wicked City" in 1938, and the novel captures both the allure and the disappointment of fast-paced sophisticated New York. Although the satire is sharp and biting, Powell shows considerable ambivalence for both the small town she left and the cosmopolitanism she adopted.
"The Happy Island" opens with its protagonist, Jefferson Abbott, arriving in the New York City bus terminal from Silver City, Ohio to make his career as a budding playwright. Jefferson is serious, stodgy in character and is taken aback by what he sees as the frivolity and shallowness of the New York cultural and entertainment community on which he hopes to make his mark. In New York, he meets another transplant from Silver City and an old flame, Prudence Bly. Prudence has survived the and mastered New York show business to a degree. She is a successful nightclub singer with many contacts. As adolescents in Silver City, (16 years before the story begins) Jefferson and Prudence had a teenage romance. When the pair was caught necking behind the railroad, Prudence received the sobriquet "Tracks" from the mocking young men of Silver City. In New York, Jefferson remains attracted to Prudence but dismayed by the life she is leading as a nightclub singer and socialite.
The plot of "The Happy Island" centers around the relationship between Jefferson and Prudence and in the contrast between New York City, New York and Silver City, Ohio. But as elsewhere in Powell, the plot of the book is the least of its attractions. The value of the book lies in its depiction of the places and people of New York City, in Powell's writing style, and in her sharp, caustic one-liners. There is an underlying sense of morality lost.
The book features a plethora of characters from the New York entertainment and literary scene. In particular, this book is somewhat unusual because several of the characters in the book are gay or bisexual, and Powell presents these characters without any particular moralizing. The moral tone of the book, though, is sharp and critical. In general, the characters in the book exhibit the morals of the barnyard. Infidelity, promiscuity, and double-crossing are the rules of the day. Together with the sexual double and triple dealing, Powell emphasizes parties and alcohol. She is good at describing party scenes and even better at emphasizing the dependence of her characters on booze. One can sympathize with some of Jefferson Abbott's reaction to this environment.
With all its sharpness, irony and satire, New York City is presented with a certain magic and allure. It is the dream of a new life and of opportunity, for Powell and for many others. Inflated hopes and ideals too often lead to cynicism, as I think this book and other books by Powell suggest. In the introduction to this book, Tim Page concludes that "The Happy Island" is a relatively minor novel of Dawn Powell. That may be, but there is still much in the book to reward the reader.
Robin Friedman
The novels of Dawn Powell (1896-1965)have an autobigraphical tone. Powell grew up in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, but left this small midwestern town to seek her career in New York City. She wrote "The Wicked City" in 1938, and the novel captures both the allure and the disappointment of fast-paced sophisticated New York. Although the satire is sharp and biting, Powell shows considerable ambivalence for both the small town she left and the cosmopolitanism she adopted.
"The Happy Island" opens with its protagonist, Jefferson Abbott, arriving in the New York City bus terminal from Silver City, Ohio to make his career as a budding playwright. Jefferson is serious, stodgy in character and is taken aback by what he sees as the frivolity and shallowness of the New York cultural and entertainment community on which he hopes to make his mark. In New York, he meets another transplant from Silver City and an old flame, Prudence Bly. Prudence has survived the and mastered New York show business to a degree. She is a successful nightclub singer with many contacts. As adolescents in Silver City, (16 years before the story begins) Jefferson and Prudence had a teenage romance. When the pair was caught necking behind the railroad, Prudence received the sobriquet "Tracks" from the mocking young men of Silver City. In New York, Jefferson remains attracted to Prudence but dismayed by the life she is leading as a nightclub singer and socialite.
The plot of "The Happy Island" centers around the relationship between Jefferson and Prudence and in the contrast between New York City, New York and Silver City, Ohio. But as elsewhere in Powell, the plot of the book is the least of its attractions. The value of the book lies in its depiction of the places and people of New York City, in Powell's writing style, and in her sharp, caustic one-liners. There is an underlying sense of morality lost.
The book features a plethora of characters from the New York entertainment and literary scene. In particular, this book is somewhat unusual because several of the characters in the book are gay or bisexual, and Powell presents these characters without any particular moralizing. The moral tone of the book, though, is sharp and critical. In general, the characters in the book exhibit the morals of the barnyard. Infidelity, promiscuity, and double-crossing are the rules of the day. Together with the sexual double and triple dealing, Powell emphasizes parties and alcohol. She is good at describing party scenes and even better at emphasizing the dependence of her characters on booze. One can sympathize with some of Jefferson Abbott's reaction to this environment.
With all its sharpness, irony and satire, New York City is presented with a certain magic and allure. It is the dream of a new life and of opportunity, for Powell and for many others. Inflated hopes and ideals too often lead to cynicism, as I think this book and other books by Powell suggest. In the introduction to this book, Tim Page concludes that "The Happy Island" is a relatively minor novel of Dawn Powell. That may be, but there is still much in the book to reward the reader.
Robin Friedman
May 1, 2012
Never have I read a book that successfully seems to be inside and outside its characters at the same time. It's bitterly funny and achingly sad simultaneously. Powell allows you to judge her characters but somehow gets you to feel for them even if you don't particularly like them. The tone is mercurical and a little dangerous. She can jump plot forward in a paragraph and spend an entire chapter on a dinner party. It can switch from breathlessly romantic to painfully cynical on the same page. Amd though this book was writen some eighty years ago I kept turning the pages in fear thinking "what's she going to say about me". Powell's people may seem shallow but they cast very long and human shadows. Practically perfect.
July 6, 2019
I understand why this particular Powell novel is not for everybody. The usual balance between the compassionate sensitivity and barbed satire goes full tilt into a territory that is more caustic and oftentimes bitter. A lot of the satire here is as dark and cutting as the discussions about Hitler or the scene in the abortion clinic in A Time To Be Born, but Powell's tone here is more merciless.
And I like that. I enjoyed her prose in this one thoroughly: it has a kind of idyllic, formal bent to it redolent of some of the passages in My Home Is Far Away, and it bolsters the misanthropy. The jokes are funny as hell, and there are a lot of them. A lot, a lot, a lot. I laughed out loud so much.
I also understand that the kaleidoscopic rotisserie of characters - all either exploiting each other, fucking each other, getting involved in tetrahedral trysts and fourth-dimensional love n-gons - can be a bit confusing, and I understand the complaint about the flatness of some of the characters. But I think Powell is using that flatness and romantic interchangeability to underscore a point about how the pursuit of validation in a climate such as that does reduce a person to a sort of over-clever-with-nothing-underneath brute. The main character gets to choose between two different types of sheer monotony not just geographically but, in a way, spiritually. By the time the main character (without spoiling anything) completely changes her environment, she finds an iota of depth that her over-acculturation to cynicism finds too difficult to bear.
The ending is killer, the skewering is killer, and the internal monologue given to Prudence by the book's end is classic. Tim Page is correct in noting that this book has numerous homosexuals in it without the judgment bearing down on them for their homosexuality specifically. And for this I have to give Powell an extra shout-out. They end up being reluctant and sometimes lonely accessories to some of these caustic personages but Powell never once lowers herself to poking fun at their identities. All the glorious humor is above that, and it's 1938. This book offers a different angle to Dawn Powell than the ones offered by the more prominent books, and ultimately the reason it feels extra special to me is that special blend of queerness and darkness. Loved seeing Dawn be a cranky little shit from beginning to end. God bless her. Oh, and Gore Vidal for calling this book out as a marvel and a success.
And I like that. I enjoyed her prose in this one thoroughly: it has a kind of idyllic, formal bent to it redolent of some of the passages in My Home Is Far Away, and it bolsters the misanthropy. The jokes are funny as hell, and there are a lot of them. A lot, a lot, a lot. I laughed out loud so much.
I also understand that the kaleidoscopic rotisserie of characters - all either exploiting each other, fucking each other, getting involved in tetrahedral trysts and fourth-dimensional love n-gons - can be a bit confusing, and I understand the complaint about the flatness of some of the characters. But I think Powell is using that flatness and romantic interchangeability to underscore a point about how the pursuit of validation in a climate such as that does reduce a person to a sort of over-clever-with-nothing-underneath brute. The main character gets to choose between two different types of sheer monotony not just geographically but, in a way, spiritually. By the time the main character (without spoiling anything) completely changes her environment, she finds an iota of depth that her over-acculturation to cynicism finds too difficult to bear.
The ending is killer, the skewering is killer, and the internal monologue given to Prudence by the book's end is classic. Tim Page is correct in noting that this book has numerous homosexuals in it without the judgment bearing down on them for their homosexuality specifically. And for this I have to give Powell an extra shout-out. They end up being reluctant and sometimes lonely accessories to some of these caustic personages but Powell never once lowers herself to poking fun at their identities. All the glorious humor is above that, and it's 1938. This book offers a different angle to Dawn Powell than the ones offered by the more prominent books, and ultimately the reason it feels extra special to me is that special blend of queerness and darkness. Loved seeing Dawn be a cranky little shit from beginning to end. God bless her. Oh, and Gore Vidal for calling this book out as a marvel and a success.
November 7, 2018
Possibly my favorite Dawn Powell yet, even if it didn't make the Library of America cut; or maybe it's my favorite just because it's the most recent one I've read?
September 18, 2021
Dawn Powell once again Graces readers with her stinky characters from new york. As is noted in nearly every introduction to her books, Powell said to her detractors who complained about her mopey creepy characters, "I write from real life." Because the characters in this book are "artists", in other words playwrights, nightclub entertainers, "professional beauties", they are more shallow, backstabbing, and negative than your average Greenwich village pendejo.
Prudence Bly is the protagonist here, and a more shallow, minimally-talented, two-faced character you couldn't ask for.
She hails from Silver City, Ohio, where she thinks they're all a bunch of country squares. But her old beau from the old hometown has come to New York for his chance to make it as a playwright.
He can't stand her or her phony crowd, and refuses to have anything to do with her, though she tries her very best to rekindle their romance.
Here is ol' Prudence in a nutshell:
"as James pinkney had once said to a small gathering of backbiters, prudence Bly was not a person so much as a conspiracy. She was guarded by those who knew her as jealously as the sucker list of a benevolent organization. In her hotel, doorman, Bellboys, chambermaids -- all felt part of the conspiracy of prudence-against-the-world; they read the papers for news of her and like her own close friends followed her progress as if she were a baseball tournament. In her they dimly felt they had a valuable machine gun, a weapon against society, their private egos were Avenged by her destructive wit, they crowed over her ability to mow down large and small potatoes with the barbed word, for among the fallen were sure to be a rival or, better still, a friend."
"Dol" short for something or other, is a gay character with enough money to buy the company of young men. But he had to put up with their ignorant young personalities. He invites his latest favorite, Bert Willy, to the opera, but is disappointed when Bert refuses. So Bert can only find Jean Nelson, a so-called"professional beauty" airhead.
I cracked up at the author's description of young women clamoring for attention and their strange penchant for calling themselves "little."
"Dol was excited and happy now translating music this way, and looking about the opera house he thought why this was his home, this was where his happiest hours had been spent, these walls surely loved him as he loved them, here was where his noblest thoughts had been born, here had taken place his first superb moment -- yes, it had been Caruso's samson, and he knew it had been worth living for. Here was his home. When he died, he would be brought here to die with Tristan and Isolde; he would die to great music. He walked about smiling during the intermission, not recognizing those who spoke to him in the lounge, hardly knowing jean, who shook a reproachful finger at him from a table of friends sufficiently respectable to be in the process of being snapped by a Journal photographer. All the rest of the evening Jean kept her hand through his arm, and his whole body recoiled from her fragrant proximity. he looked about him at boxes of debutantes in pretty pastels set like Easter baskets about the Horseshoe and he hated them all, their colors screamed above the singing, he hated all women for they are the enemies of peace, they must crash through Beauty with a shrill cry of 'me! Me! Little tiny me! Listen! Look! Me!' He forgave Jeff Abbott and Bert for not coming with him, for at least they had the taste to stay away when they were not interested rather than coming to compete. Indeed he loved everyone who had stayed away tonight, for at least they not did not obstruct his joy.
'Where shall we go now?' Asked Jean, snuggling back in his car. 'Didn't mary whitsey's hair look marvelous? I wish you could have seen her before guillaume took her in hand!'
'I'll take you home,' said dol.
He could not wait to get her out of his sight. He wanted to go home, even if Bert was not there, even if the fresh case of cognac was not there, he wanted to get home quickly before a pretty lady's chatter had pecked to bits his lovely evening."
Dol throws a party, as he is won't to do regularly, and the guests' reaction to his tragedy spells out in large letters how loathsome of a crowd he ran with. (He certainly didn't get his ashes scattered at the Tristan and Isolde opera.)
"As usual at these affairs dol sat in the big yellow Wing chair by the fire, smiling fixidly and ignoring his guests. But today of all days his smile was too fixed, his stupefaction so obvious that Neal and Jean came over to nudge him into consciousness and found that he had not passed out as they had unfairly suspected, the man was merely dead. The afternoon had gone so wrong from the very beginning that for the host to drop dead was exactly what might have been expected. Stifling her first outcry, Jean Nelson remembered her manners in time to summon the caterers and they lifted dol as inconspicuously as possible into his bedroom, and the guests were not subjected to any mortification other than the usual one of seeing their host seemingly pass out before they did. Bert Willy was the only one to sense something wrong and run into the bedroom, bursting into helpless baby sobs at the side of the haughty purple face on the bed among all the silver foxes and sables. 'hush, hush,' Neal kept saying though this only brought more and more rasping Cries from the thin, fair-haired boy.
'I won't hush! You -- none of you were good enough for him, that's what! I don't care, he was good, and I was going to tell him about cracking up his car last night, honest I was, I was going to tell him tonight I was sorry. Now he's dead! I won't hush!'
Even with the doctor's entrance explained as merely precautionary, The whisper crept around that something had happened, something almost as dreadful as arch Gleason's presence, and one by one Mrs Miller yanked out the furs and purses from under the still head and passed them out the door to the Disturbed ladies scuttling away from the vaguely sinister place; the fire still blazed under the chafing dishes, les and the boys had started the endless repetition of 'I love a hunting horn,' the waiter's doggedly passed their trays of dainties to the remaining few, but no one ate, no one drank except Arch gleason, and he wolfed whole platters, he drank from bottles unable to wait for service, and his wheezy rasping voice went on and on telling of bigger, better parties than this where he had been the host, and people listened, waiting with eyes on the closed bedroom door to know the story, something to tell at dinner, something sensational."
Prudence returns home to Silver City in the end, surprisingly, but she won't be there to stay for ol' Jeff Abbott.
Prudence Bly is the protagonist here, and a more shallow, minimally-talented, two-faced character you couldn't ask for.
She hails from Silver City, Ohio, where she thinks they're all a bunch of country squares. But her old beau from the old hometown has come to New York for his chance to make it as a playwright.
He can't stand her or her phony crowd, and refuses to have anything to do with her, though she tries her very best to rekindle their romance.
Here is ol' Prudence in a nutshell:
"as James pinkney had once said to a small gathering of backbiters, prudence Bly was not a person so much as a conspiracy. She was guarded by those who knew her as jealously as the sucker list of a benevolent organization. In her hotel, doorman, Bellboys, chambermaids -- all felt part of the conspiracy of prudence-against-the-world; they read the papers for news of her and like her own close friends followed her progress as if she were a baseball tournament. In her they dimly felt they had a valuable machine gun, a weapon against society, their private egos were Avenged by her destructive wit, they crowed over her ability to mow down large and small potatoes with the barbed word, for among the fallen were sure to be a rival or, better still, a friend."
"Dol" short for something or other, is a gay character with enough money to buy the company of young men. But he had to put up with their ignorant young personalities. He invites his latest favorite, Bert Willy, to the opera, but is disappointed when Bert refuses. So Bert can only find Jean Nelson, a so-called"professional beauty" airhead.
I cracked up at the author's description of young women clamoring for attention and their strange penchant for calling themselves "little."
"Dol was excited and happy now translating music this way, and looking about the opera house he thought why this was his home, this was where his happiest hours had been spent, these walls surely loved him as he loved them, here was where his noblest thoughts had been born, here had taken place his first superb moment -- yes, it had been Caruso's samson, and he knew it had been worth living for. Here was his home. When he died, he would be brought here to die with Tristan and Isolde; he would die to great music. He walked about smiling during the intermission, not recognizing those who spoke to him in the lounge, hardly knowing jean, who shook a reproachful finger at him from a table of friends sufficiently respectable to be in the process of being snapped by a Journal photographer. All the rest of the evening Jean kept her hand through his arm, and his whole body recoiled from her fragrant proximity. he looked about him at boxes of debutantes in pretty pastels set like Easter baskets about the Horseshoe and he hated them all, their colors screamed above the singing, he hated all women for they are the enemies of peace, they must crash through Beauty with a shrill cry of 'me! Me! Little tiny me! Listen! Look! Me!' He forgave Jeff Abbott and Bert for not coming with him, for at least they had the taste to stay away when they were not interested rather than coming to compete. Indeed he loved everyone who had stayed away tonight, for at least they not did not obstruct his joy.
'Where shall we go now?' Asked Jean, snuggling back in his car. 'Didn't mary whitsey's hair look marvelous? I wish you could have seen her before guillaume took her in hand!'
'I'll take you home,' said dol.
He could not wait to get her out of his sight. He wanted to go home, even if Bert was not there, even if the fresh case of cognac was not there, he wanted to get home quickly before a pretty lady's chatter had pecked to bits his lovely evening."
Dol throws a party, as he is won't to do regularly, and the guests' reaction to his tragedy spells out in large letters how loathsome of a crowd he ran with. (He certainly didn't get his ashes scattered at the Tristan and Isolde opera.)
"As usual at these affairs dol sat in the big yellow Wing chair by the fire, smiling fixidly and ignoring his guests. But today of all days his smile was too fixed, his stupefaction so obvious that Neal and Jean came over to nudge him into consciousness and found that he had not passed out as they had unfairly suspected, the man was merely dead. The afternoon had gone so wrong from the very beginning that for the host to drop dead was exactly what might have been expected. Stifling her first outcry, Jean Nelson remembered her manners in time to summon the caterers and they lifted dol as inconspicuously as possible into his bedroom, and the guests were not subjected to any mortification other than the usual one of seeing their host seemingly pass out before they did. Bert Willy was the only one to sense something wrong and run into the bedroom, bursting into helpless baby sobs at the side of the haughty purple face on the bed among all the silver foxes and sables. 'hush, hush,' Neal kept saying though this only brought more and more rasping Cries from the thin, fair-haired boy.
'I won't hush! You -- none of you were good enough for him, that's what! I don't care, he was good, and I was going to tell him about cracking up his car last night, honest I was, I was going to tell him tonight I was sorry. Now he's dead! I won't hush!'
Even with the doctor's entrance explained as merely precautionary, The whisper crept around that something had happened, something almost as dreadful as arch Gleason's presence, and one by one Mrs Miller yanked out the furs and purses from under the still head and passed them out the door to the Disturbed ladies scuttling away from the vaguely sinister place; the fire still blazed under the chafing dishes, les and the boys had started the endless repetition of 'I love a hunting horn,' the waiter's doggedly passed their trays of dainties to the remaining few, but no one ate, no one drank except Arch gleason, and he wolfed whole platters, he drank from bottles unable to wait for service, and his wheezy rasping voice went on and on telling of bigger, better parties than this where he had been the host, and people listened, waiting with eyes on the closed bedroom door to know the story, something to tell at dinner, something sensational."
Prudence returns home to Silver City in the end, surprisingly, but she won't be there to stay for ol' Jeff Abbott.
October 22, 2023
I think this has displaced The Wicked Pavilion as my favorite of Dawn Powell’s New York novels. The satire is biting, but there’s a humanity to her caricatures. And Powell is at the top of her form with her witty quips and observations of human nature. Such as her description of playwright Neal Fellows: “… for he was a man who must have one-man women and plenty of them.” And this description of his entrance to a party after having seduced the wife of a bland businessman who had haplessly been drawn into the society of witty vapid entertainers and dandies with entourages of admiring young boys: “He looked about for his little West Side couple, and was glad to see Nora safely engaged by her husband, so that he might pay court to Jean Nelson, whose lovely white sheath gown was so shoulder-less, backless, sleeveless and chest-less that every man present was eager to probe her mind.”
There were times I found myself chuckling out loud at the foibles of these denizens of the New York theatre set in the 1930s, but also times when the banality and existential melancholy of the human condition crept to the surface with poignant effect.
There were times I found myself chuckling out loud at the foibles of these denizens of the New York theatre set in the 1930s, but also times when the banality and existential melancholy of the human condition crept to the surface with poignant effect.
December 9, 2022
1938 novel about high society in New York, centered on writers and singers. It' set during that strange time in the Depression when people with money had a number of flat-broke hangers-on: Think of one of those Astaire films where Fred is broke but dressed to the nines, slumming with high society. That's this book, but with more bite to it.
It's interesting that there are a number of gay characters but not much is made of it. There's a LOT of sleeping around, it seems to relieve the boredom. At least there's a mention of contraceptives, which is more than most novels about random sex have.
Powell is amusing in a Dorothy Parker kind of way, but a lot of the humor has aged. Still, there were some parts that made me laugh out loud.
It's interesting that there are a number of gay characters but not much is made of it. There's a LOT of sleeping around, it seems to relieve the boredom. At least there's a mention of contraceptives, which is more than most novels about random sex have.
Powell is amusing in a Dorothy Parker kind of way, but a lot of the humor has aged. Still, there were some parts that made me laugh out loud.
November 15, 2007
I didn't actually finish this book, but I know I'm not going to read any more of it. Dawn Powell is great, and I've loved a lot of her books, but this one was a misfire for her - the satire is a little too bitter, it's overpopulated with incompletely sketched characters, and the narrative thread is too weak. There's nothing to hold on to here. She did name-check Williams College on page 152, which was sort of amusing.
I believe this was the last of her books to be reissued, with good reason - even the introduction seemed to apologize for it.
I bought this paperback at a stoop sale in Greenpoint last year.
I believe this was the last of her books to be reissued, with good reason - even the introduction seemed to apologize for it.
I bought this paperback at a stoop sale in Greenpoint last year.
May 8, 2012
It's darker than many of the others. But I think I was in a dark mood when I read it, so it suited me just fine. The characters are all a little sadly shallow but that's the point, I think. The sentences are not shallow, though. They cut deep and no other writer makes me feel New York the way Dawn Powell does.
September 26, 2007
The main character is an Ohio farm girl turned Manhattan scene-ster, circa 1920. I didn't like it as much as the other books of Powell's that I read, but the ending was great.
January 16, 2013
Mouaifff, c'est un peu drôle et un peu ennuyeux aussi...
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