“I want this new novel to be delicate and cutting—nothing will cut New York but a diamond,” Dawn Powell wrote in her diary. It is a fitting observation. When I read the novels of Powell, I imagine her writing as though carving a diamond out of the rough. It takes a particular kind of skill to be as precise as Powell is. She cuts and cleaves at her characters until their facets shine, and her prose has the same effect—cool, hard, and glittering. Powell’s New York is laid out before her readers with such specificity. It is an atmosphere full of clandestine studios, subterranean bars, and the swanky apartments of New York’s elite.
When I find myself in the city and venture into one of those dark restaurants that people speak of as institutions, there is a moment through the blur of martinis, when I am transported into Powell’s New York. Often, these “institutions” have white tablecloths, and behind the bar, old men who possess an air of having seen things. The menu and décor have little concern for what goes on outside of its doors. No trends or stylish gimmicks can survive under the dim lights and on carpeted floors, for this kind of place is in an era of its own. If I stick around long enough, I overhear the servers trade tantalizing anecdotes about their regulars. Often these stories revolve around people colliding and causing friction with each other by chance and over decades. This timeless scenario shares the rhythm of a Dawn Powell novel. She illustrates a social milieu and then examines the ripples in the pond once a pebble is thrown. Gore Vidalwrites in his twelve-thousand-word opus on Powell, “The habitués all know one another in that context and, often, no other: parallel lives that are contiguous only in the confines of a cozy bar.”
