Books that embody their time: Angels on Toast by Dawn Powell

[Alex Oviatt]

October 20, 1940
Business in Bars
By ROBERT VAN GELDER

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ANGELS ON TOAST
By Dawn Powell.

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This novel, wittily written, is a kind of "Tobacco Road" of high-pressure business, mildly shocking at times, cleverly surprising, essentially formless, and presenting characters who are pretty hopeless because nothing much worth hoping for ever caught their attention.

The men are all two-timers and as helpless in the face of wives, liquor, mistresses and friendship as so many Jeeter Lesters. The women can't get anything out of the men except money and it seems that that isn't enough so they are badly sunk also. The majority of the characters are potential drunks because of boredom.

Lou Donovan appears most often. Lou is a former bellhop who became smart and founded his own business of supplying hotels. He married a genuine lady from a very stuffy family and it looked for a while as though that might be all right because he could always brag about his wife's rich and prominent relatives and so could consider his marriage as a business asset and as such worthy of protection and some care. But the relatives didn't respond very well, and when he met Trina Kameray, a cute refugee with a phony accent, he lost all taste for life in his own home.

Jay Oliver was Lou's best friend, though, as Lou reflected, it really was Jay's job that was his best friend and if ever Jay was eased out his successor would be Lou's best friend. Lou and Jay are so nearly interchangeable that the jacket-writer for this book got them mixed and talks about "Jay Donovan" and "Lou Oliver." They are very dressy, precisely groomed men, in their business prime, always ready to give a double-cross or accept one, both completely selfish, and neither of them accustomed to suffer from much that a fifth of Scotch can't cure.

A typical situation is this: Lou and Jay are on a business trip from Chicago to New York. At Pittsburgh, Ebie, Jay's intelligent and quite charming mistress, boards the train. At the Grand Central Jay's wife, who has flown from Chicago, to surprise him, meets them, and Lou presents Ebie as his own companion. As Jay can't escape from his wife that evening Lou and Ebie go out together and fail to part. This, however, leaves the relationship of the three unchanged. Ebie goes right on loving Jay and Lou, with no twinge of conscience, continues as Jay's best friend. Jay is a bit suspicious but he knows that neither Ebie nor Lou will by any chance confess anything, and surely they are not so stupid as to allow him a chance to find out the truth.

Miss Powell has an exceptionally keen ear for dialogue and she can write really witty lines. There are very few writers now at work who have more natural talent. Her novel is amusing but formless and inconclusive.

 

[jake_fink]

I love this book and Dawn Powell. I just reread Angels... in December and went right on to The Wicked Pavillion - which is included in the edition I have. She's so terrribly under-rated that it's criminal, so YAY! for you for reading her.

The reveiw above is nice, though I'd disagree that the novel is "essentially formless" (apparently formless perhaps), and that Lou and Jay are anything like interchangeable except to lazy jacket-blurb scribblers, otherwise, very good.

What about all the beautifully handled description, like this about the Ellery Bar & Grill?:

Another curious thing about these small, venerable, respectable hotels, there seemed no appeal here to the average customer. BAR and GRILL for instance, appealed to seemingly genteel widows and spinsters of small incomes because there was an air of musty piety about the management, a lady could be a dipsomaniac here under the most genteel conditions, - very quiet, very hushed, this place; then there were those tired flashes in the pan, the one shot celebrities, and on the other hand there was a gayer, younger group whose loyalty to BAR and GRILL was based on the cheapness of its martinis. Over their simple dollar lunches (four martinis and a sandwich) this livlier set snickered at the old residents, whispered nifties to each other when the small very, very fat little old resident waddled in and was assisted with great dignity to a bar stool by two courtly gentlemen near-by who appeared unable to get a real hold on the gelatinous little creature and must scoop her up by handfuls.

 

[Alex Oviatt]

The Golden Spur is another great Powell book. She was a protege of the famous editor Max Perkins (Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, etc.), which is a little-known fact. I agree about the review--I just thought it was interesting to see what they were saying about this in real time. Your description makes me want to go to the bar at the Ellery Hotel--as well as the bar at the Spinning Top--or the one in Lou's office! Ah, the good old days.....