There is an author whose books seem to have been tailor-made for Bette Davis. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they were published when Ms. Davis was still alive and well and shining like the star that she was... Hollywood was one giant collective idiot. I'm blaming Hollywood (in part) for Dawn Powell not being a household name, because after reading her novels and diaries she really should be to literature what Davis is to film.

And if I blame Hollywood, and book critics and publishers of her era, and Gore Vidal for not deciding to sing his friend's praises until 20 years after she died, then I must also give equal time to praise and thank Tim Page. Tim Page is a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic with a passion for Powell that almost defies explanation. Page edited her diaries (1995) and letters (1999), and wrote her biography (1998). A small Vermont publisher, Steerforth Press, also deserves our admiration for beautifully republishing her finest novels and plays. Now it is time to find other passionate readers to help fan the flames of this passion. (What better place than Tart City, I ask you?)

If you are asking yourself, "Who is Dawn Powell?," allow me to introduce you to one of the great American novelists of this century. During her lifetime she wrote 16 novels, 10 plays, numerous short stories, and too-numerous-to-mention magazine articles. While her books were not incredibly popular while she was alive, she was not totally ignored, either. Critics were kind, but much of her work was brushed aside and deemed not serious enough for the literary elite. Gore Vidal sarcastically notes in an introduction to her novel, Angels on Toast, "Apparently to be serious a novel must be about very serious ­ even solemn ­ people rendered in a very solemn ­ even serious ­ manner. Wit? What is that?"

Wit, in Powell's case, was truth.

Powell escaped a rather hellish childhood in Ohio (her mother apparently died from a botched abortion, her stepmother was an abusive, unbalanced woman). After graduating from Lake Erie College in 1918, she immediately moved and adopted New York City as her home. She became a fixture in the bohemian crowd of the time. John Dos Passos would be a lifelong friend; Hemingway would call her "his favorite living writer." Life would never be easy. Alcohol played too much a part of her life, and she was plagued by medical problems. Her husband, Joseph Gousha, was an advertising executive and alcoholic, whose absence in her diaries is quite remarkable. Her son was autistic (but born before autism was properly diagnosed) and spent most of his life institutionalized. It is generally believed she had a tumultuous 4-year affair in the early 1930's with playwright John Howard Lawson (one of the infamous Hollywood Ten, briefly jailed in 1950). The absence of Lawson in her diaries seems more deliberate than remarkable.

Perhaps one of her greatest tributes was recently repeated in a Boston Globe article, which quotes the literary critic Diana Trilling as saying about Powell: "[She's] Our best answer to the familiar question, 'Who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit?' "

Powell was rather apolitical, and this too accounts for her relative obscurity. It also figures perfectly in her writing. Unlike her celebrated contemporaries, Powell's satire and biting wit were directed at everyone. She also may have just been too busy making a living to enjoy a career based not only on talent, but celebrity. It did not escape her that many of her friends were biting the hands that fed them in a never-ending quest to be blasé. Powell took aim not just at the rich, but the poor, and (horrors), the middle class. This is an important point to remember when reading one of her novels, because they do not lack romance. They are written in a simple, straightforward manner, and it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. It is also easy to misjudge them as simplistic. And then, she hits you: with the punch line (she is a master of the punch line), or the joke, or even...the dismay. The following passage from Dance Night helps to illustrate the point:

"'Isn't it swell, Morry?' gurgled Grace. 'I'm having a lot of fun, aren't you?' Now that the dance had started it was all too easy, easier than the lesson, for in this crowd your feet were not observed. Then in his arms Grace changed curiously. She was not the Bauers' waitress at all, a thin blonde with glasses, but a stranger, a stranger who belonged mysteriously to dancehalls and to music and perfume.

'Like Lillian Russell,' Morry thought and if he just kept looking at Grace's curious blue eyes it almost seemed that she had on a silver dress."

I'm not really giving anything away, but will Grace and Morry dance off into the sunset? Her characters, honest to a fault, do not always end up where you might assume they're headed. Think of Bette Davis in the role of Grace. And then think of Bette Davis' come-hither look to a fearful, dreading Morry, framed by the glow of a gaslight in a boarding house hallway, and not a brilliant sunset.

Her skills as a playwright shine in her novels. They are incredibly visual experiences. Dance Night, Angels on Toast, A Time to Be Born-all could be performed on a stage, as brilliant ensemble pieces, unless, like in some great comedy, a minor character steals the show. I understand David Mamet has bought the film rights to two of her books. The thought of a film version without Bette may make me melancholic, but then again someone like Dawn Powell would cringe at my piteous behavior.

Following her wit, the second greatest gift Dawn Powell left us was her sense of place. If one is feeling nostalgic for an America that no longer exists, for a Greenwich Village of the 30's and 40's, or a mill town in the midwest, one need look no further than the pages of her novels or diaries. This puts me in a bit of a quandary, however, wondering if she would appreciate my sentimental regard for her writing. On one of her darker days she wrote in her diary,

January 2, 1941

"The avoidance of contemporary manners in modern writing. In the last century, Thackary, Dickens, Edith Wharton, James, all wrote of their own times and we have reliable records. Now we have only the escapists, who write of happenings a hundred or three hundred years ago, false to history, false to human nature. Among contemporary writers, only John O'Hara writes of one very small section of 52nd Street or Broadway. We have Hemingway, who writes of a fictional movie hero in Spain with the language neither Spanish nor English. When someone wishes to write of this age -- as I do and have done -- critics shy off, the public shies off. "Where's our Story Book?" they cry. "Where are our Story Book People?" This is obviously an age that Can't Take It."

To satisfy my own dilemma, it helps to state that sentiment is directed at her work as a whole. One comes away from a Powell novel feeling not sentimental, but appreciative of her ability to evoke the realism of her time. And she may forgive, if it means her name finally finds a place in an American Lit. class, or if her diaries are studied by lovers of that extraordinary era in our literary history. She may forgive if her current publisher is correct, that "Dawn Powell has indeed 'arrived' to take her deserved place in American letters."

I hope I have helped to spark an interest in this gifted writer. Her name says it all. It is time to come out of the darkness, to let the light shine on one more woman whose talents and contributions did not receive the acclaim they deserved. I will tempt you with one more quote from her diaries:

"A novel is like a gland pill -- it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person."

Fasten your seatbelts. Read Dawn Powell.

Carleen M. Loper is a circulation librarian in Duxbury, MA who writes a humor column in her library's quarterly newsletter and lives with her own Mr. Right (Jim) in Wareham, MA. She is a regular contributor of opinions, short stories and humor to Tart City. Which is why we just love her.