Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Vintage (1990), 306 pages
Description
The 'Wicked Pavilion' of the title is the Cafe Julien, where everybody who is anybody goes to recover from failed love affairs and to pursue new ones, to cadge money, to hatch plots, and to puncture one another's reputation. Dennis Orphen, the writer from Dawn Powell's Turn, Magic Wheel, makes an appearance here, as does Andy Callingham, Powell's thinly disguised Ernest Hemingway.
Media reviews
New York Review of Books
Powell has now become masterful in her setting of scenes. The essays-preludes, overtures-are both witty and sadly wise. She also got the number to Eisenhower's America, as she brings together in this penultimate rout all sorts of earlier figures, now grown old...
A secondary plot gives
Show More
considerable pleasure even though Powell lifted it from a movie of the day called Holy Matrimony (1943) with Monty Woolley and Gracie Fields, from Arnold Bennett's novel Buried Alive. The plot that Powell took is an old one: a painter, bored with life or whatever, decides to play dead. The value of his pictures promptly goes so high that he is tempted to keep on painting after "death." Show Less
New York Times
For her picaresque morality Miss Powell has assembled her customary cast. This time, it features a middle-aged heiress who subsidizes painters--not to encourage their genius on canvas but their industry as lovers... Miss Powell can sound the tiniest Tom Collins ice cube clink as a knell of doom.
Show More
She can retranslate the "hello-darling!" hug into an overture of malice. The pompous must wilt under the volleys of her wit, since no pretense escapes her. Yet, strangely, disappointingly, it is often shadows we laugh at and not human beings.
Why should that be? For one thing, her brilliances are random, incomplete. Just as she seems on the point of demolishing a charlatan, she packs up her dynamite kit and begins affixing charges elsewhere. Her forte is not the dramatically sustained scene but a sparkling miscellany of needle-prickly essays. But what appears most fundamentally lacking is the sense of outrage which serves as engine to even the most sophisticated satirist. Miss Powell does not possess the pure indignation that moves Evelyn Waugh to his absurdities and forced Orwell into his haunting contortions. Her verbal equipment is probably unsurpassed among writers of her genre--but she views the antics of humanity with too surgical a calm. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
The first word that comes to mind when I think of The Wicked Pavilion is snarky. To flesh that out, it is a snarky satire about New York in all its glory. This is the second postwar satire Powell published and with every intent, laid bare all of Greenwich Village's shortcomings. Set mostly in Cafe
Show More
Julien, Pavilion's characters are all hot messes. Unsuccessful in romance and unsuccessful at success they spend a great deal of time whining and complaining to and about each other. Show Less
LibraryThing member m.belljackson
Uneven story telling of lonely, unlikeable, morbidly self-pitying character writers and painters made for disappointing reading.
A protracted and silly ending follows the angst and ennui.
Still worse is the Introduction by Gore Vidal, one of those truly awful ones that reveal the entire plot of the
A protracted and silly ending follows the angst and ennui.
Still worse is the Introduction by Gore Vidal, one of those truly awful ones that reveal the entire plot of the
Show More
book. Show Less
LibraryThing member burritapal
The wicked Pavilion centers around a place in New York called the Cafe Julien; it's in a hotel, and it also has a dining room and a banquet room. But most of the action centers around the cafe.
There're so many characters that it's hard to keep track of them all. I'll name several of them: there's
There're three artists, rather despicable characters: Dalzel Sloane, Ben Forrester, and Marius. They are always in need of money, always having problems with dealers, and always breaking up with, and getting new girlfriends, which interferes with their work. Marius dies, and as often happens when an artist dies, his work is suddenly in great demand, and everybody wants to share anecdotes of being his best friend.
There's a hilarious scene where Cynthia Earle, a wealthy sponsor of artists, has a party to make a recording for posterity of those who had been closest to Marius, giving their best memories of him. The m.c. doesn't know enough about the recorder, and whispered gossiping and snide, jealous murmurs come out louder than the eulogies:
"Dalzell sloane, ben, briggs, Okie and severgney had stayed on for one more run-through although it was after 2:00. Cynthia had graciously brought out her best Brandy when the other guests left, for the evening had proved most unnerving for all. in the first playback private whispers and asides had come booming out drowning proper speeches and a dozen quarrels had started because someone waiting to hear his own pretty speech heard instead malicious remarks about himself made at the same time. almost everyone had stalked out either wounded to the quick or eager to report the fiasco. careful editing must be done by a chosen few, Cynthia had declared, and here they were, ears critically cocked, eyes on the Martell bottle. The machine whirred and voices came crackling out like popcorn.
'she's a ghoul--'
Dalzel and Ben think up a scheme to make money off Marius' death. Powell's contempt for the artists' circle and their sponsors comes through loud and clear.
there's Jerry Dulaine, a model who is not as much in demand with clients as she once was. Elsie Hookley, who lives in Jerry's building, comes from a wealthy Boston family, and was once married to a European baron. She enjoys how her bohemian lifestyle prickles her brother Wharton, who is staid and stuffy.
Jerry is depressed after her failed dinner party for Collier McGrew, the bigwig she's trying to"catch." She's considering a bottle of sleeping pills when a stood-up Rick comes over to her place and they decide to go out on the town. She wakes up in a strange room, and Rick is nowhere in sight:
"Her room would be a mess, she knew that from the fierce throbbing in her head which meant that she had drunk too much of something terrible, and of course her clothes would be thrown all over the place and probably the lamp turned over. But this bulb in the ceiling? the pale woman with long red braids lying in the other bed? The funny looking windows with no curtains – dungeon like windows – yes, with bars. suddenly a struck her that she must have done it – taking poison or dope pills just as she had been afraid she might. This was no dream, this was a hospital . How had it happened, how long ago, and where? Frightened, she sat up in bed abruptly and the sudden motion made her sick. She leaped up to go to the bathroom but the door was shut."
There's much more fun and frolics and plenty of schadenfreude at pretentious people's comeuppances. Powell has a delicious talent for showing up the phoniness of New York's rich and her presentation of humans whose only concern in life is how they appear to others is good fun. Makes for much laugh-out-loud moments.
There're so many characters that it's hard to keep track of them all. I'll name several of them: there's
Show More
Rick Prescott, and there's ellenora: these two love each other, but they never get past having dates in the cafe. He keeps offending her with his presumptuousness, but he's too stupid to figure it out.There're three artists, rather despicable characters: Dalzel Sloane, Ben Forrester, and Marius. They are always in need of money, always having problems with dealers, and always breaking up with, and getting new girlfriends, which interferes with their work. Marius dies, and as often happens when an artist dies, his work is suddenly in great demand, and everybody wants to share anecdotes of being his best friend.
There's a hilarious scene where Cynthia Earle, a wealthy sponsor of artists, has a party to make a recording for posterity of those who had been closest to Marius, giving their best memories of him. The m.c. doesn't know enough about the recorder, and whispered gossiping and snide, jealous murmurs come out louder than the eulogies:
"Dalzell sloane, ben, briggs, Okie and severgney had stayed on for one more run-through although it was after 2:00. Cynthia had graciously brought out her best Brandy when the other guests left, for the evening had proved most unnerving for all. in the first playback private whispers and asides had come booming out drowning proper speeches and a dozen quarrels had started because someone waiting to hear his own pretty speech heard instead malicious remarks about himself made at the same time. almost everyone had stalked out either wounded to the quick or eager to report the fiasco. careful editing must be done by a chosen few, Cynthia had declared, and here they were, ears critically cocked, eyes on the Martell bottle. The machine whirred and voices came crackling out like popcorn.
'she's a ghoul--'
Dalzel and Ben think up a scheme to make money off Marius' death. Powell's contempt for the artists' circle and their sponsors comes through loud and clear.
there's Jerry Dulaine, a model who is not as much in demand with clients as she once was. Elsie Hookley, who lives in Jerry's building, comes from a wealthy Boston family, and was once married to a European baron. She enjoys how her bohemian lifestyle prickles her brother Wharton, who is staid and stuffy.
Jerry is depressed after her failed dinner party for Collier McGrew, the bigwig she's trying to"catch." She's considering a bottle of sleeping pills when a stood-up Rick comes over to her place and they decide to go out on the town. She wakes up in a strange room, and Rick is nowhere in sight:
"Her room would be a mess, she knew that from the fierce throbbing in her head which meant that she had drunk too much of something terrible, and of course her clothes would be thrown all over the place and probably the lamp turned over. But this bulb in the ceiling? the pale woman with long red braids lying in the other bed? The funny looking windows with no curtains – dungeon like windows – yes, with bars. suddenly a struck her that she must have done it – taking poison or dope pills just as she had been afraid she might. This was no dream, this was a hospital . How had it happened, how long ago, and where? Frightened, she sat up in bed abruptly and the sudden motion made her sick. She leaped up to go to the bathroom but the door was shut."
There's much more fun and frolics and plenty of schadenfreude at pretentious people's comeuppances. Powell has a delicious talent for showing up the phoniness of New York's rich and her presentation of humans whose only concern in life is how they appear to others is good fun. Makes for much laugh-out-loud moments.
Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
306 p.; 5.2 inches
ISBN
0679726853 / 9780679726852
Local notes
STORAGE
indexed 339(2)/103
indexed 339(2)/103