Dawn Powell--a vital part of literary Greenwich Village from the 1920s
through the 1960s--was the tirelessly observant chronicler of two very
different worlds: the small-town Ohio where she grew up and the
sophisticated Manhattan to which she gravitated. If her Ohio novels are
more melancholy and compassionate, her Manhattan novels, exuberant and
incisive, sparkle with a cast of writers, show people, businessmen, and
hustling hangers-on. All show rich characterization and a flair for the
gist of complex social situations. A playful satirist, an unsentimental
observer of failed hopes and misguided longings, Dawn Powell is a
literary rediscovery of rare importance. In this, one of two volumes
collecting nine novels, The Library of America presents the best of
Powell's fiction.
Dance Night (1930), Powell's own favorite among her works, is a
surprisingly frank treatment of obsessive longing set in an Ohio factory
town during the 1920s. Come Back to Sorrento (1932; originally
published as The Tenth Moon), a compelling study of frustrated
aspirations, tells the story of a woman whose friendship with a music
teacher awakens her sense of her life's wasted potential.
With Turn, Magic, Wheel (1936), a whirlwind tour of Manhattan's
literary world, Powell reinvented herself as a satirical writer. Her
treatment of the "city of perpetual distraction" captures the allure of
Manhattan with a lightness and wit to be found in all her New York
novels. Angels on Toast (1940), whose farcical pace recalls screwball
comedy, is a shrewd portrait of the adulterous misadventures of two
salesmen. In A Time To Be Born (1942), set during the months before
America's entry into World War II, Powell portrays the monstrously
egotistical Amanda Keeler Evans--one of her most wickedly barbed
creations.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
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