Turn, Magic Wheel

Rating:
Summary: Witty, contemporary and FABULOUS!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Tart New York Love Story
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Another Good Powell Book
Review: 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.