The Locusts Have No King (Paperback)

~ (Author) "WHEREVER he went that night people insisted on confiding in him..." (more)
Key Phrases: Tyson Bricker, Frederick Olliver, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the literary circles of Powell's (1897-1965) post-WW II Manhattan, "art is a cigarette ad," money and insincerity go hand-in-hand, a friend is an opportunity to talk about oneself,stet comma for clarity/pk and the word identifying what lovers do for each other is "punish." Frederick Olliver, a poor and introverted medievalist, loves Lyle Gaynor, married socialite and successful playwright. But each mistakes every offer of affection for malice, and eventually takes on the worst aspects of the other's character, reversing socioeconomic standing as well. This long-out-of-print novel, first published in 1948, displays Powell's ear for incriminating dialogue and gift for comic exaggeration, but her pacing is as inexorable as that of a factory, mass-producing ironic situations until the reader is no longer amused. The cynicism fuelling Powell's wit is undercut by the ultimate romanticism of her plot.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Powell's brutal parody of New York intelligentsia was briefly brought back into print by the short-lived Yarrow Press in 1990 (Classic Returns, LJ 2/1/90), marking the first of many of her titles to be reprinted by several publishers. LJ's reviewer praised the book for its "crisp, terse prose" and its "sharply and concisely sketched characters" (LJ 4/15/48). This is one of Powell's finest novels and better than anything currently on the best sellers lists.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: STEERFORTH PRESS (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883642426
• ISBN-13: 978-1883642426
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,006,081 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When a "Real" New Yorker Is Just a Provincial, June 30, 2002

By A Customer

This is a fine, funny satire of New York literary life, and of the thousands of "real New Yorkers" who arrive from their small town or boring suburb and don't write that great novel, or make it big in the theatre, but live the literary lifestyle and are, in fact, "pretentiously bohemian, loudly literary" - in fact, not very likable. You've met people like this, and thanks to the talent of Dawn Powell you can laugh your head off about them.

Here's the guy who tells you "The reason I never went in for painting is I'd want to do it so much better than anyone else." Here's the woman whose "voice showed such cautiously refined diction as to hint at some fatal native coarseness." Here's the folks at a party "generously happy in the pleasure their company was surely giving." And here's the stranger who bends your ear with: "My great ambition has always prevented me from doing anything."

A great piece of description comes during Powell's depiction of a night school for recently-arrived "real" New Yorkers afraid of revealing their ignorance: "There were courses in Radio Appreciation," and such like, leaving the narrator "marvelling afresh that so many grown up, self-supporting people should be eagre to spend money studying not a subject itself but methods to conceal their ignorance of it."

The whole novel is a vast canvas of such scenes and throughout Powell is painting a absorbing picture of 1940's New York (and the New York of today!). One thing Powell is excellent at, in a way Eugene O'neill is, too, is in stripping away the pipe dreams that people veil their lives with, and showing the reader the real, stark truth. Her satire is worthy of Saul Bellow and Gore Vidal; indeed of Aristophanes and Petronius - the latter two writers she loved (she was friends with Vidal, too, in the New York of the 40's and 50's). If you like this one, try her Happy Island, and indeed, all her New York novels.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A challenging read, November 22, 2000

By	Richard LeComte "richlec" (Tuscaloosa, AL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The novel explores a world the movies managed to miss -- the working bohemian class of the late 1940s. The narrator is extremely chatty, and there's a lot of telling instead of showing. But the effort is worth it. The two main characters -- an itinerant scholar and a playwright who props up her physically challenged husband -- are not too sympathetic, but at the end you're glad that they end up the way they do. Intertwined into the plot are some great observations on a world long plowed under by the Donald and the Rudy.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mildly amusing but disappointing satire, July 20, 1998

By	Kyle M. Norwood (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

This satire of the New York publishing scene is full of stunning insights, to wit: publishers can be crassly commercial; the success of a book can depend more on who's pushing it than on its quality; book people can be snobbish, etc. Powell can write amusingly, but she has such distaste for her own characters that they never come to life. Her prose should have gone on a low-cholesterol diet: some of her sentences get clotted up with their own cleverness. This is the only book of Powell's that I've read; a friend told me that her books set in the midwest are better (i.e., *Dance Night*).