The Stoical Dawn Powell
Dear Lisa,
I think Dawn Powell would be delighted to know that her
work means something to yet another novelist with such a sharp, funny, and
clear-headed perspective on human dreams and human foibles. And how appropriate
for us to be discussing a volume of letters in this format!
You ask me how "solid" the Powell revival is. Gosh, I
wish I knew. I'd like to hope that she'll sell out edition after edition for
years to come, but I'm an old-fashioned journalist and allergic to hype.
Moreover, I now have a vested interest in this matter--I've spent about seven
years with this lady now--so I want to be objective in my prognostications.
We may be certain of a few things, the most important
of which is that Powell will never be forgotten again. The days when I would
enter secondhand stores, ask for one of her books, and have the proprietor tell
me that he'd "never heard of Donald Powell" are gone for good. (So, alas, are
the days when you would regularly run into Dawn's novels at thrift sales and in
the dustiest corners of secondhand book stores, priced at less than a dollar a
volume--which is how I build up most of my collection.)
From this point on, anybody who undertakes any sort of
American literary history will have to come to terms with Powell's
achievement--15 more-or-less mature novels; close to a dozen plays, hundreds of
short stories, book reviews, and occasional pieces; a magnificent diary that
spans 35 years; and well over a thousand letters. She's a part of our history
now, but also--in a manner that is quite unusual for an author dead more than
three decades--part of our daily life, too.
One of the best things about the Powell revival is that
it has been pretty much spontaneous--a sort of mass uprising of support. Her
books sold so poorly when they were originally issued that she is, in some
sense, brand new. We read her because she's good company (the "death of the
author" indeed!), and then we tell our friends, who spread the word. Powell
needs no explication; rather, her wit makes us laugh, her characters are likely
to be people we know (in their late-20 th -century incarnations), and her honesty and emotional courage
can take our mutual breath away. No rose-colored glasses for this woman.
You mention her "optimism"; I would prefer the word
"cheer," for I think Powell was deeply pessimistic in many ways--in the grand
old Stoical manner--and that it was this pessimism that permitted her to throw
herself into life and living with such abandon.
Do I make myself obscure? Then let me put it another
way. Powell was absolutely anti-utopian--skeptical of politics, indifferent to
religion, scornful of "happy endings" great and small, in marriages as in
revolutions. At bottom, her view of the world is bleak, blunt, unsparing, and
fundamentally tragic. She offers no great hopes, encourages no daydreams,
realizes that life is at best a Sisyphean effort for serious people and that
most of us will never get that rock halfway up the hill to begin with. And so
she laughs (at least in part) because crying is a bore and a bring-down and
does nobody any good. How much more sane--how much more adult --to accept one's fate, get over it, buck up, and join the
party. It'll be closing time soon enough.
Which book to read first? The generic answer is
A Time To Be Born (1942)--a dazzling and unsettling
evocation of New York City on the verge of World War II, which grabs and holds
from Paragraph 1. Still, in many ways, I think Turn,
Magic Wheel (1936) is even more perfect--a fleet-footed satire of literary
life and celebrity authors (namely Ernest H.), and one of Powell's few
"modernist" books. Then there is Come Back to
Sorrento (1932), a simple, direct, and achingly beautiful study of two
would-be artists in a stultifying small town that cannot comprehend their
dreams and ambitions ( Come Back to Sorrento , by the
way, is one of the very few books written before the gay-lib movement that
features homosexual characters and is neither a soggy plea for understanding, a
mockery or hate tract, a clinical case study, or anything other than an
intricate and compassionate rendering of some fellow human beings).
Powell's own favorite among her books was
Dance Night (1930), a grim slice of life set in a
small Midwestern industrial city. My Home Is Far
Away is a thinly disguised autobiographical novel about Powell's
near-Dickensian childhood and unspeakably horrible stepmother--very moving.
Some day it will make a great movie (indeed--shameless plug here--my friend M.
George Stevenson and I have finished a screenplay and are shopping it
around).
Save The Diaries of Dawn
Powell (1995) for last. I think this is her greatest achievement--Petronius
meets Marcus Aurelius in mid-century New York--but it is best appreciated after
some immersion in her life and work. My publishers will kill me if I don't
mention my own biography of D.P., new in paperback from Henry Holt Owl.
But I've hardly begun to answer your questions! I'll
try to do better next time.
Your pen pal,
Tim
