Turn, Magic Wheel [Paperback]

Dawn Powell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

Dennis Orphen, in writing a novel, has stolen the life story of his friend, Effie Callingham, the former wife of a famous, Hemingway-like novelist, Andrew Callingham. Orphen’s betrayal is not the only one, nor the worst one, in this hilarious satire of the New York literary scene. (Powell personally considered this to be her best New York novel.) Powell takes revenge here on all publishers, and her baffoonish MacTweed is a comic invention worthy of Dickens. And as always in Powell’s New York novels, the city itself becomes a central character: “On the glittering black pavement legs hurried by with umbrella tops, taxis skidded along the curb, their wheels swishing through the puddles, raindrops bounced like dice in the gutter.” Powell’s famous wit was never sharper than here, but Turn, Magic Wheel is also one of the most poignant and heart-wrenching of her novels.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A gleaming, brittle and slightly brutal New York novel
. . . each chapter slips us into the consciousness and conversations of a group of New Yorkers and keeps them afloat on the sounds and sensations, the dash, squalor and ugly beauty of the city.”
– Margo Jefferson, The New York Times (1994)

“Give us your lonely, your misunderstood, your sexually malcontent, your stubborn provincial dreams: responding to this siren call, Dawn Powell stayed loyal to New York with an ardor beside which that of celebrants like Scott Fitzgerald and E. B. White appear fickle.”
– John Updike, The New Yorker (1995)

About the Author

Ten years after Steerforth launched the Dawn Powell revival, her five best-selling novels are being reissued in newly designed Zoland Books editions with Reading Group Guides inside.

Late in life, out of luck and fashion, Henry James predicted a day when all of his neglected novels would kick off their headstones, one after another. As the twentieth century came to an end, the works of Dawn Powell managed the same magnificent task.
When Powell died in 1965, virtually all her books were out of print. Not a single historical survey of American literature mentioned her, even in passing. And so she slept, seemingly destined to be forgotten – or, to put it more exactly, never to be remembered.
How things have changed! Twelve of Powell’s novels have now been reissued, along with editions of her plays, diaries, letters, and short stories. She has joined the Library of America, admitted to the illustrious company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Edith Wharton. She is taught in college and read with delight on vacation. For the contemporary poet and novelist Lisa Zeidner, writing in The New York Times Book Review, Powell “is wittier than Dorothy Parker, dissects the rich better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, is more plaintive than Willa Cather in her evocation of the heartland, and has a more supple control of satirical voice than Evelyn Waugh.” For his part, Gore Vidal offered a simple reason for Powell’s sudden popularity: “We are catching up to her.”

Tim Page, Powell’s biographer, from his new foreword to My Home Is Far Away,
Dawn Powell was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, 1896, the second of three daughters. Her father was a traveling salesman, and her mother died a few days after Dawn turned seven. After enduring great cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, Dawn ran away at the age of thirteen and eventually arrived at the home of her maternal aunt, who served hot meals to travelers emerging from the train station across the street. Dawn worked her way through college and made it to New York. There she married a young advertising executive and had one child, a boy who suffered from autism, then an unknown condition.
Powell referred to herself as a “permanent visitor” in her adopted Manhattan and brought to her writing a perspective gained from her upbringing in Middle America. She knew many of the great writers of her time, and Diana Trilling famously said it was Dawn “who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit.” Ernest Hemingway called her his “favorite living writer.” She was one of America’s great novelists, and yet when she died in 1965 she was buried in an unmarked grave in New York’s Potter’s Field.

Her books live, and with these newly designed editions, with their reading group guides inside, more people than ever before will be able to hear Dawn’s distinctive voice.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883642728
• ISBN-13: 978-1883642723
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tart New York Love Story, December 2, 2002

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turn, Magic Wheel (Paperback)

In this novel, written in 1936, Dawn Powell began a series of books satirizing literary life in New York City. Powells' biographer, Tim Page, has written of this book that "if there is another novel that manages simultaneously to be so funny and so sad, so riotous and so realistic, so acute and yet so accepting in the portrayal of flawed humankind, I have not yet found it." This is high praise for an obscure novel, but it is deserved.

The protagonist of the book is Dennis Orphen, a young man who, modelled on Dawn Powell herself, has left midwest Ohio to come to New York City in search of a literary career and of excitement.

Orphen begins as a "proletarian" leftist type of writer but soon achieves some popular acclaim. He then publishes a novel, "The Hunter's Wife" which satrizes sharply a famous American writer who has long lived abroad, Andrew Callingham (a Hemingway-like figure.) Orphen has learned about the details of Calligham's life through his three-year affair with Effie, Callingham's first wife whom Callingham had left 18 years earlier. (Effie is much older than Orphen.) Effie is despondent over the revelations in Orphen's book. Orphen also has affairs with other women, particularly a young married woman named Corrine, who loves Orphen but also loves her good if boring home with her husband.

The book is full of pictures of New York City streets, bars, homes and characters. It satirizes the literary establishment and literary tastes of the day unmercifully. The plot in the story turns on Orphen's attempt to reconcile what he has done as a writer -- written a fine novel -- with the betrayal of Effie. He needs to sort out his feeling for her and for Corrine.

Effie too needs to sort out her feelings towards Orphen and towards Callingham, her long-gone husband. She has the opportunity to do so when Callingham returns briefly to New York City. The title of the book, "Turn, Magic Wheel", is taken from an epigraph of Theocritus: "Turn, magic wheel, Bring homeward him I love" and is suggestive of the plot.

Some readers see this book is sharp, unremitting satire. I find it much more. It tells an unconventional love story lived by people with unconventional sexual mores. Dawn Powell brings real sympathy and understanding to the characters and their situation. The book is a beautiful portrait of New York City of the mid-1930's. It captures the allure of leaving one's youth in the midwest and seeking life in the excitement of Manhattan. Powell is a writer who deserves the acclaim she has recently received.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Good Powell Book, February 13, 2000

By 

Gerard Hildebrand - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turn, Magic Wheel (Paperback)

Turn, Magic Wheel provides the expected Powell wit and Powell plot and every sentence is read-out-loud perfect. This time, she places her characters in a tangled web surrounding the publication of Dennis Orphan's novel. His novel is based on the life of his only real friend who is an ex-wife of a Hemingway-type writer. Turn, Magic Wheel does not, however, match Powell's later works such as The Golden Spur or The Wicked Pavilions. Powell does not yet seem to have completely found her narrative voice and this leads to some hurky-jerk story telling. At times it seems as though she hasn't decided whether she wants to be a witty Henry James or, well, Dawn Powell.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty, contemporary and FABULOUS!, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Turn, Magic Wheel (Paperback)

I feel as if I know every single character in this raucous evocation of New York night-life as it was 60 years ago. Dawn Powell is a genius and this may be her greatest book.