The Golden Spur

Rating:
Summary: A Peek Behind The Pipe Dreams, Darkly
Review: Fine, funny literary satire of "bohemian" New York centered around Greenwich Village. This is Dawn Powell's last novel, published in 1962. Like The Fool in "King Lear," Dawn Powell punctures the absurd self-deceptions of numerous tinpot Lears (to the reader's vast delight). I found the writing wonderful, the wit fantastic and relentless; there are great lines on every page.

Here is a vast canvas of eagre "real" New Yorkers, fresh from the provinces (small town, or boring suburb), people who want to to shed their past, to hide their ignorance and laugh at the squares (not them! of course): people who "want to be what everyone else wanted them to be" in Manhattan.

Powell is excellent at looking behind peoples' pipe dreams. You'll recognize people and types you've encountered in real life as you read this book. You'll see their dreams, and you'll see the reality they hide from. Here's the person, "with her refined Carolina accent, which she kept up like her grandfather's shotgun;" here's the young lady dimpled with pride at "the generous picnic of her decolletage." And here are the "old has-beens, needling me for making it when they never could with their genius." The tone is perfect throughout; I was not surprised to read that Powell's favourite writers included Aristophanes and Petronius, two of the greatest satirists in history. She fits write into that tradition. The only negative thing to say about this book is that the types it describes will not appreciate it. But the detached reader, of even mild self-confidence, and a love of the Roman greats, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Bellow and Vidal - a love of Truth over Cant - will enjoy Dawn Powell enormously.

In the end the book is a vast panorama of the New York of the 60's (and today), wonderfully evocative of the pull that city can have on all types of people, and beautifully descriptive of the reality of a decision to move there, for so many.

This Steerforth edition of *The Golden Spur* was brought out by Tim Page, who has seen many Powell books back into print. Good of him; but his introductions to her work (*The Happy Isle*, her *Diaries*, and in his biography of her) I found anemic and vague; he seems to have difficulty coming to grips with Powell's great powers as a satirist , is shy of its implications and tries to turn Powell into a much more sentimental writer than, as a clear-eyed realist, she is. I recommend Gore Vidal's 1987 essay (its in his collection "United States") which has a lot of information about Powell and gets (I think) the experience of reading Powell exactly right.

Try Powell's "Happy Island," The Wicked Pavillion," and, indeed, all her New York novels if you like this one.

Rating:
Summary: Hmm..........
Review: I've edited a number of Powell's books -- and this is one of her best (although not quite on a level with "Turn, Magic Wheel," "A Time To Be Born," or "Come Back To Sorrento.")

I did find it a little amusing to read the review of my supposed "introduction" to this edition, and to find it called "vague" and "anemic." It's actually much worse than that -- as I wrote no introduction to "The Golden Spur" whatsoever!

Note to budding critics -- it's always a good idea to read a book before printing a review.

Rating:
Summary: A Rediscovered American Writer
Review: One of the joys of reading is the opportunity of finding for oneself authors that have long been obscure or overlooked. I came to Dawn Powell's work with expectations of such a reward. I knew that the Library of America had saw fit to publish two volumes of her work and that Tim Page, Washington Post classical music critic, had edited the volumes and written a biography. I was eager to learn more.

Dawn Powell grew up in rural Ohio and moved to Greenwich Village as a young woman and lived a bohemian life. She wrote 15 novels between the 1930s and the early 1960s mostly set in rurual Ohio and Greenwich Village, which were little noted during her life. She has been "rediscovered" and praised highly by some.

Dawn Powell's "The Golden Spur" was her last novel and the first book of hers I read. The book tells the story of Jonathan Jamison who, at the age of 26 leaves his Ohio home in search of his father in Greenwich Village. Jonathan's mother had worked as a typist briefly in the Village before she returned home and married what she found a rather conventional man. She delivered prematurely and told Jonathan that his true father was in New York. And Jonathan goes to search for his father --- and himself.

The book centers around The Golden Spur, a bar in Greenwich Village frequented by artists and literary types. (It had been frequented by Jonathan's mother in her New York days). We meet a cast of characters who become involved with Jonathan, including Hugow, the bohemian modern painter of questionable talent, a succession of Hugow's former lovers, some of whom are bedded by Johnathan, failed literary critics, academics, has-beens and never wases. We also meet an elderly woman named Claire Van Orphen, the writer for whom Johnathan's mother worked briefly. She befriends Johnathan and is instrumental in his search.

I couldn't recommend reading this book for the story-line. It is muddled and hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, I came away from the book thinking that my search to discover a new author had been rewarded.

This book is written in a beautiful clear prose. Each line tells and each word is in place. It is a joy to read. The satire in the book is uncompromising and biting. Because the book is a satire, the characters are somewhat one-sided. In addition, I get the impression that Dawn Powell put some part of herself (but not her whole character) in each of the people in her book-- the young person (Jonathan Jamison) leaving rural Ohio for a new life in New York City, the young sexually active women in the Village, the struggling artists, the aging unsucessful writer to take some examples. Thus I found the characterization effective.

The book works better as a series of minature episodes than as a connected novel. Each scene is tightly written and convincing written, as I indicated, in a lively and supple style. I got absorbed in the book page by page and incident by incident. Possibly as a result of this, there were times when I lost the thread of the story and the interrelationship of the characters.

The best part of the book, besides the writing style, is the picture drawn of Greenwich Village. The picture of life in the bars and of artists, some good some not-so-good, struggling in flats with their women, their friends and their agents is precious. Dawn Powell knew the life she described. Again, most of the characters, from the young man, Jonathan Jamison, through the women, through the ageing Ms. Van Orphen, were aspects of Dawn Powell herself, transmitted into one character or the other.

This is a frothy, light book not without its flaws. But I came away with the sense of discovery for which I had hoped. Dawn Powell deserves to be read.