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Sunday, Monday, and Always: Stories by Dawn Powell
In addition to the novels and the diaries that have won her posthumous acclaim, Dawn Powell wrote hundreds of short stories over the course of half a century. Sunday, Monday and Always , initially published in 1952, was the author's own personal selection of her best work in the form. This new, expanded edition of Sunday, Monday, and Always includes four additional short pieces written after the original collection was printed.
"What Are You Doing in my Dreams?" is an uncommonly moving autobiographical sketch that may serve as a pocket sketch for all of Powell's art. All the familiar elements are here - life and death; Ohio and New York; the awkward, hungry country girl and the city sophisticate; romantic yearning and realist self-deprecation - brought together one last time at the close of a half-century of meditation.
The haunting vignette entitled "The Elopers," is based on the author's own experiences with her much loved, much troubled son. An early gem from The New Yorker, "Can't We Cry A Little?" has never before been reprinted, and "Dinner on the Rocks," a typically riotous send-up of Manhattan manners, was one of Powell's last stories.
Sunday, Monday, and Always promises to introduce Powell's many admirers to a new facet of her extraordinary talent.
"What Are You Doing in my Dreams?" is an uncommonly moving autobiographical sketch that may serve as a pocket sketch for all of Powell's art. All the familiar elements are here - life and death; Ohio and New York; the awkward, hungry country girl and the city sophisticate; romantic yearning and realist self-deprecation - brought together one last time at the close of a half-century of meditation.
The haunting vignette entitled "The Elopers," is based on the author's own experiences with her much loved, much troubled son. An early gem from The New Yorker, "Can't We Cry A Little?" has never before been reprinted, and "Dinner on the Rocks," a typically riotous send-up of Manhattan manners, was one of Powell's last stories.
Sunday, Monday, and Always promises to introduce Powell's many admirers to a new facet of her extraordinary talent.
220 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1999
3 people are currently reading
577 people want to read
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 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 30, 2024
Remembering (as I tend to do) that reading is a boon in turbulent times (esp., say, in times of Insurrection), I took a day off from news coverage to read this marvelous collection of stories by a writer I very much admire.
I'd read some of Powell's novels but I'm not sure I knew that she also wrote short stories - which, as it turns out, are every bit as good as her novels. According to the succinct introduction by editor Tim Page, Powell apparently thought less of her work in the shorter form. She had discovered at the time, however, that such efforts had the potential of being lucrative (a fact helpful to those who concentrated largely on novels). She was surprised in realizing that, in spite of her disregard for capsulized storytelling, a short story was usually a toss-off job for her.
But this collection reveals that ultimately there was nothing glib about her respect for the form.
A short story does not actually have to be all that short. Other writers have shown that such stories can be as long as novellas. But that's where Powell is a purist. All of the stories here run a matter of pages each. In writing them, Powell introduced the set-up (almost always with a knockout opening sentence that grabs the reader immediately), said what she had to say rather swiftly, and then wrapped up with a flourish.
As a result, what we have here are mainly keen studies of people in very specific social situations. The focus is on female protagonists but men are occasionally peppered into the leading light as well. Using a wide canvas of situations, Powell's single plot points bounce from sudden reversals to surprising revelations to unanticipated shifts in character. ~ which means every story in this volume has its own particular punch.
~ as well as Powell's trademark wit, which the writer makes reference to in one of my favorite treats in the collection, 'Deenie' (which relates what happens when, in running into an irksome former schoolmate, a woman learns a lot about *herself*):
However she uses it, Powell's wit is never of the garden variety-variety. She's simply a funny lady - as shown also in 'The Pilgrim':
I'd read some of Powell's novels but I'm not sure I knew that she also wrote short stories - which, as it turns out, are every bit as good as her novels. According to the succinct introduction by editor Tim Page, Powell apparently thought less of her work in the shorter form. She had discovered at the time, however, that such efforts had the potential of being lucrative (a fact helpful to those who concentrated largely on novels). She was surprised in realizing that, in spite of her disregard for capsulized storytelling, a short story was usually a toss-off job for her.
But this collection reveals that ultimately there was nothing glib about her respect for the form.
A short story does not actually have to be all that short. Other writers have shown that such stories can be as long as novellas. But that's where Powell is a purist. All of the stories here run a matter of pages each. In writing them, Powell introduced the set-up (almost always with a knockout opening sentence that grabs the reader immediately), said what she had to say rather swiftly, and then wrapped up with a flourish.
As a result, what we have here are mainly keen studies of people in very specific social situations. The focus is on female protagonists but men are occasionally peppered into the leading light as well. Using a wide canvas of situations, Powell's single plot points bounce from sudden reversals to surprising revelations to unanticipated shifts in character. ~ which means every story in this volume has its own particular punch.
~ as well as Powell's trademark wit, which the writer makes reference to in one of my favorite treats in the collection, 'Deenie' (which relates what happens when, in running into an irksome former schoolmate, a woman learns a lot about *herself*):
"I like more of a dry wit," Deenie said, pursing her lips as if she were a wit-taster and could detect the degree of moisture in any clever phrase, domestic or imported.Powell's wit sometimes arrives in the form of a loaded, razor-sharp shift - such as when she concludes 'Adam' with:
Virginia might be leaving Mark, but Adam wasn't.- or when, almost out-of-nowhere (in a story I won't spoil by naming - but which may contain the volume's best writing), a comedy of manners culminates as a murder story.
However she uses it, Powell's wit is never of the garden variety-variety. She's simply a funny lady - as shown also in 'The Pilgrim':
She said I would have loved Russia under the Czar. Things were very different, everyone spoke French and people were not killed for little trivial things, they were only sent to Siberia.After finishing each story, I sat back for some minutes to let each one reverberate. What echoed most was the genuine richness of a master storyteller.
April 27, 2017
Why isnt Dawn Powell well-known? "She doesn't stimulate feminine daydreams," wrote Edmund Wilson in the early 60s, "Women can't identify with her heroines." 100% right. This holds true today. Hell, you can't ID w her men either. She offers no Lily Bart or Kate Nolan or 2d Mrs deWinter; forget Jake Barnes, Nick Carraway or Larry Darrell. Basically, the American novel is a middle-brow thing for middle-brow readers (which GR revs prove). Dawn Powell (1896-1965), a cosmopolite from Ohio who lived her adult life in NYCs Greenwich Village, offers no daydreams for anyone. Her characters are all Outsiders, disconnected, bruised but always hopeful (for the main chance), and yet they continue valiantly, hilariously -- trying to keep emotions untangled, living dispassionately.
Author of a dozen novels, many stories and plays, Powell is a consummate artist of (mostly) mordant comedy and we all know that American readers cannot deal with wit. Like critic Diana Trilling, they have suburban minds.
These stories, which should be read after you've finished at least 2 of her novels, convey her life and inner thoughts. "I'm not a family person," says a character in the story, What were you doing in my Dreams? "So the past is dead, and Ohio is gone. Today is here. New York is here. I never went back to funerals. The dead all come to me. Do you know how some people's lives seem to stop like a clock at a certain mark?" Yes, when they were captain of the football team or starred in the school play, she adds, these frozen people repeating old stories and anecdotes. Do we know em? You bet.
In Dinner on the Rocks, Powell observes that the social world is divided between hosts and guests. Alice & Herbert Dyckmann were hosts. "If guests appeared to enjoy drinking, they offer very little. If dismayed at the sight of a cocktail shaker, they press them to indulge." Dining w friends, if the party is lively, "they must quiver with disapproval. When canapes are passed, they smilingly refuse." You see, "It was an actual pain for the Dyckmanns to see the reins of hostmanship in any other hands but theirs." Bad manners didn't vex them; they "wanted a chance to criticize an event."
After her mother died at a young age, Powell's stepmum abused her physically, and she ran away, thereafter living with rels until she moved to NYC c 1918. (She must have had great scorn for her father). Her marriage to a would-be poet, who became a drunk, lasted while she never stopped writing, writing to keep them alive, along w a retarded son who once beat her so badly that she was hospitalized. He later was put in a state hospital. And yet, miraculously, she continued to produce her stunning social "studies" with a brilliant awareness of upper and lower NY bohemia....and the fakirs, fans and climbers therein.
Dawn Powell is not soothing. But she is, as Gore Vidal wrote, "Our finest comic novelist," and, for those bores who make gender lists, she's a woman. My favorite novel of hers: The Happy Island.
Author of a dozen novels, many stories and plays, Powell is a consummate artist of (mostly) mordant comedy and we all know that American readers cannot deal with wit. Like critic Diana Trilling, they have suburban minds.
These stories, which should be read after you've finished at least 2 of her novels, convey her life and inner thoughts. "I'm not a family person," says a character in the story, What were you doing in my Dreams? "So the past is dead, and Ohio is gone. Today is here. New York is here. I never went back to funerals. The dead all come to me. Do you know how some people's lives seem to stop like a clock at a certain mark?" Yes, when they were captain of the football team or starred in the school play, she adds, these frozen people repeating old stories and anecdotes. Do we know em? You bet.
In Dinner on the Rocks, Powell observes that the social world is divided between hosts and guests. Alice & Herbert Dyckmann were hosts. "If guests appeared to enjoy drinking, they offer very little. If dismayed at the sight of a cocktail shaker, they press them to indulge." Dining w friends, if the party is lively, "they must quiver with disapproval. When canapes are passed, they smilingly refuse." You see, "It was an actual pain for the Dyckmanns to see the reins of hostmanship in any other hands but theirs." Bad manners didn't vex them; they "wanted a chance to criticize an event."
After her mother died at a young age, Powell's stepmum abused her physically, and she ran away, thereafter living with rels until she moved to NYC c 1918. (She must have had great scorn for her father). Her marriage to a would-be poet, who became a drunk, lasted while she never stopped writing, writing to keep them alive, along w a retarded son who once beat her so badly that she was hospitalized. He later was put in a state hospital. And yet, miraculously, she continued to produce her stunning social "studies" with a brilliant awareness of upper and lower NY bohemia....and the fakirs, fans and climbers therein.
Dawn Powell is not soothing. But she is, as Gore Vidal wrote, "Our finest comic novelist," and, for those bores who make gender lists, she's a woman. My favorite novel of hers: The Happy Island.
July 4, 2015
The best time to run away is September. When you run away in July the good people are off someplace else. Their daughters or wives are on guard, and one of them will be blocking the front door, arms folded, yelling at you, "Where do you think you're going, missy, with that suitcase?" .. What you have to do is walk right on down the street, keeping your eyes straight ahead, pretending you're on your way someplace a lot better.Let's start by saying that this is period fiction, though just a few decades off of our own era. But that it is lit from within by a kind of fearless, jolly acceptance of the grand-scale American come-what-may that the future will bring. We know that it wasn't to be, but that doesn't stop the effortless forward motion in the lives visited in these stories. Let's also say that this is very close to a five-star outing, and that I'll be reading everything I can find by Ms Powell in the near future.
The author has assembled a whole company of F.Scott Fitzgerald characters, and maybe a few from the films of Preston Sturges; somehow, though, the proceedings owe nothing to either of those sources. These are frank, sublime, but always droll-- stories that straddle both sides of the fence; desolation where there might have been success, humor where there might have been tears. They are stories from when 'The City' was still a cross-section of urbanizing rurals, before there were suburbs, when innocence and experience met in head-on collisions.
In this collection we have characters named Deenie, Fletch, Velma-- echoes of another era, but placed in context by the author: the fast & frivolous, the walking wounded, the jaded & faded. We're in the pre-Noir condition of classical Americana where the rationale and the foundation are beginning to splinter at the edges.
It was invariably at this point, as the lost shore was drifting away softly into the distance like a vagabond glacier and the ship definitely committed to some opposite goal, that Mrs. Delcart had a momentary crise. Why had she left the West, why was she traveling east, (or vice versa)--and why Mallorca or Mexico or the Bahamas of all places? Never could she honestly say it was because she liked to travel for she'd never had time between trips to think out exactly what she did like; certainly she hated all the countries that had ever served her as destination as much as she'd ever disliked her homeland. it was more than probable that Mrs. Delcart was one of those people who travel out of sheer nervousness when it would be far better for all concerned if they just stayed at home and twitched.
For Powell, there is always the unspoken sense behind the narrative-- of empathy, yes, but also-- of 'well, that's the way the cookie crumbles'.
Short fiction as it was meant to be, an insight here, a bellylaugh there, and occasionally, a short, sharp, slap.
May 15, 2011
Dawn Powell's writing takes a scalpel to the pretensions of the Bohemian literary and artistic life in New York in the mid-20th century, but you won't be surprised to hear that 50 years after her last published work, it's a world that still seems very familiar. All these quite short stories paint a sharp portrait of a striving actor or writer whose accomplishments are typically much slenderer than they would like but have to be presented in the most impressive light to the (frequently indifferent) folks back home in their provincial towns of origin.
Not often uplifting, many of the stories are emotionally moving rather than cynical; at best people learn to content themselves with the small accomplishments that tend to characterize a real life, instead of imagined glory.
One first-person story follows a man with some unspecified Hollywood connections through a family party, rooms full of hardly recognized second cousins and uncles, in search of a former sweetheart, as he ponders how his life might have been different had they stayed together, only to have it finally revealed he is at her wake. At one point, he is quickly described with a phrase I will quote at the next opportunity - "He could pass for thirty-five unless someone that age was around".
Not often uplifting, many of the stories are emotionally moving rather than cynical; at best people learn to content themselves with the small accomplishments that tend to characterize a real life, instead of imagined glory.
One first-person story follows a man with some unspecified Hollywood connections through a family party, rooms full of hardly recognized second cousins and uncles, in search of a former sweetheart, as he ponders how his life might have been different had they stayed together, only to have it finally revealed he is at her wake. At one point, he is quickly described with a phrase I will quote at the next opportunity - "He could pass for thirty-five unless someone that age was around".
March 5, 2015
Dawn Powell is supposed to be one of our great underrated writers. This book of short stories is all that our library has of her work. She is definitely witty and biting and comes up with a number of sentences that I wanted to write down so that I could remember them. Several of the stories are about people bearing up under cruel circumstances or under delusions. This might have appealed to me much more in my cynical high school or college days, but now I can only take so much of this brittleness.
April 23, 2021
After hearing the "forgotten writer" comments, I was really let down to page through this collection. It seems like third-rate Thurber stories about well-off people with plenty of domestic help and a selection of furs to wear out for drinks. Sometimes she doesn't even give the maid or cook a gender, referring to them as "the servant." The slapstick element makes for fairly entertaining light reading, but there's no cultural gravitas beneath it.
Read
November 2, 2025A Time to be Born
March 7, 2007
So, er, she's like the rich man's Dorothy Parker? I get it.
January 28, 2009
The short story "What are you doing in my dreams" is worth the price of the book.
Read
July 8, 2009Sunday, Monday, and Always - Dawn Powell (1896–1965)
Another short story collection in my quest to read forgotten/unknown authors.
Another short story collection in my quest to read forgotten/unknown authors.
February 4, 2013
Some stories are definitely stronger than others, but I love Powell's writing.
March 17, 2016
Dawn Powell is an excellent writer and I am perplexed about why she is no widely known. In these stories she masters getting into the psyche of the narrators.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews