Amazon.com Review
The resurrection of the great dualistic novelist
Dawn Powell(1864-1965)--who chronicled both Greenwich Village cafe society (hilariously) and small-town Ohio life (poignantly)--was initially sparked by a 1987 Gore Vidal essay that led to the reissue of several Powell novels. In the 1990s,
Washington Post music critic Tim Page revivified her further. Page wrote essays about Powell, penned introductions for new reprints of her titles, and, with Powell family members, hired a lawyer and sued Powell's ineffectual literary executor for the release of the writer's amazing collection of papers. From there, he edited and guided
The Diaries of Dawn Powell, which assured her standing as primary wit and social chronicler of the 20th century.
But Powell still had no biography; now Page has taken care of that, too. Dawn Powell: A Biography is the first published account of her life story, as chronicled via letters, diary entries, and reminiscences from surviving relatives and friends. Apart from some sentimental, long-winded slides describing Powell's troubled Ohio youth ("the happiest moments of her childhood were those idyllic times when she was hidden away by herself, in treetops, thickets, or attic rooms, pencil in hand, observing people, places, and events and recording everything in her notebooks"), Page's tone in this book is serious, studious, and well balanced. More detective than literary critic, Page eschews literary analysis in favor of neatly organized discussions of each of her 15 novels, setting his own textual synopses against Powell's diary entries and public and private reviews of each title (her friends Edmund Wilson and John Dos Passos frequently offered unpublished critiques).
Page doesn't justify Powell's questionable decisions (marrying Joseph Gousha, a heavy alcoholic; institutionalizing her afflicted son), nor does he ignore her less admirable qualities (her own heavy drinking, her apathy towards politics and social causes). He consults doctors about the family illnesses (Powell's son Jojo was likely autistic, not retarded; Powell's belief that the tumor she suffered in her 50s was a vestigial twin is instead attributed to a rare tumor called a teratoma). He reveals her true age (a year older than she claimed). He states her likely lovers (almost certainly radical playwright John Howard Lawson, possibly writer Coburn Gilman). He tracks down a life's worth of wild freelance jobs and job offers (analyzing songs for a radio show, which she took; writing a treatment of Frank L. Baum's Wizard of Oz, which she declined). He also, slightly abashedly, refutes his own earlier published claim that she spent a portion of her later years homeless, explaining instead that facts show that she and her husband actually lived in a series of residential hotels in Manhattan during that time.
Well-balanced, to the point of being dispassionate, this biography speaks to the converted. If you're not yet a Powell fan, grab her diaries and novels first. --Jean Lenihan
From Publishers Weekly
Buried in New York City's potter's field, Hart Island, Powell had just one thing in common with the other people buried there?bad luck. The substance of this meticulously researched, well-written and sympathetic portrayal of Powell's life is how this talented and ambitious young country girl from Ohio made her way to Greenwich Village in 1918 and, over a span of 47 years, became the noted author of some 15 novels and more than 100 short stories, plays, poems, diaries and articles, only to be buried in a pauper's grave. Powell was largely forgotten until 1987, when Gore Vidal wrote an article about her in the New York Review of Books that led to the rediscovery and reprinting of her books. Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning classical music critic at the Washington Post and a longtime writer on Glenn Gould, became an early and devoted literary champion and started work on this biography in 1991. The principal theme of Powell's novels reflects on her own experiences in Ohio and New York, about young provincials and worldly sophisticates, life in fleabag hotels and Park Avenue splendor, innocence and sophistication. She was witty and satirical, and wrote with an underplayed irony that was often mistaken for a lack of feeling. Powell's personal life was marked by tragedy: her 40-year marriage to a hard-drinking advertising executive was colored by her affairs and the birth of a mentally and emotionally impaired son. But throughout a restless and troubled life, Powell remained true to her art. In this first ever biography, she is well served by Page, who does a superb job establishing her right to an honored place in the pantheon of American letters. Editor, Ray Roberts; agent, Melanie Jackson.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
