Dawn Powell: A Biography - Hardcover

Page, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080505068X ISBN 13: 9780805050684

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 1998

Synopsis

The first biography and the definitive story of a restored American literary treasure.

Perhaps the biggest mystery of Dawn Powell's life is the fact that when she died, all of her books were out of print. She seemed destined to be forgotten. Powell had come to New York City at the age of twenty-one, a gifted and ambitious young woman from a small-town in Ohio. There she lived, usually in some form of domestic uncertainty, for the next forty-seven years. But she always managed to maintain the fresh perspective of a "permanent visitor," exalting the multiplicity and sheer sensory overload of Manhattan. This is what she distilled into her extensive and impressive body of work: her poems, stories, articles, plays, and her dizzying and inventive novels. In Dawn Powell: A Biography, Tim Page gracefully and intelligently explores all the fascinating ironies and often sad complexities of Powell's life and work. Gore Vidal once referred to her as "our best comic novelist," deserving to be as widely read as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. This biography will be a capstone to her triumphant rise from the ashes of near oblivion and her establishment among the giants of twentieth-century American literature.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Page is chief music critic for The Washington Post, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1997. A graduate of Columbia University, Page is the executor of Dawn Powell's publishing rights and the editor of The Diaries of Dawn Powell. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Reviews

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.

Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for the Washington Post and editor of two books about Powell, Dawn Powell at Her Best (Steerforth, 1994) and The Diaries of Dawn Powell (LJ 10/15/95), has after seven years of extensive research completed her biography. Powell (1896-1965) lived her adult life in New York City and included Malcolm Cowley, Dorothy Parker, and John Dos Passos among her friends. A prolific writer with 16 novels and countless freelance stories and magazine pieces to her credit, Powell boasted a bright, hard wit and perceptive observation but never attained the financial security or lasting recognition of her more celebrated contemporaries. Page's crusade is to rescue Powell from literary obscurity and spur interest in her writings. His biography is immensely readable; Powell's life makes interesting copy, and Page can tell a good story. For comprehensive American literature or women's studies collections.?Denise S. Sticha, Seton Hill Coll., Greensburg, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080505068X
• ISBN 13: 9780805050684
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 362