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BY SYLVIA BROWNRIGG | Whatever you think of Gore Vidal, we all owe him for rescuing from obscurity the great satirical works of Dawn Powell. Vidal's 1987 essay in the New York Review of Books, in which he called Powell "our best comic novelist," helped lead to the reissuing of several of her novels. In the early '90s, music critic Tim Page picked up the ball, editing Powell's letters and remarkable diaries. Page now completes his dedicated work on Powell with this compelling and sympathetic biography.

All of Powell's difficult early life in rural Ohio (her mother died, probably of a botched abortion, and her salesman father remarried a remarkably cruel woman) was a rehearsal for New York, the city that would define her life and work. Many of her novels travel back to Ohio, but those set in bohemian Greenwich Village society -- including "Turn, Magic Wheel" and "The Wicked Pavilion" -- are best known now, and received greater critical praise.

In 1920 Powell married a benevolent advertising man, Joe Gousha. It was a marriage of conflict and affliction, though also of fundamental companionship. Their only son, Jojo, a bright but tormented child, was probably autistic and required constant care; finances were often strained; and Joe in time became a fairly serious drunk. Their open partnership left both free to have affairs, though when Joe died in 1962 Powell found herself bereft.

In spite of or perhaps because of the pain of her family life, Powell was remarkably prolific, producing 15 novels, more than 100 stories and several plays. Page alternates the narrative of her fluctuating literary career with stories of her giddy, booze-fueled social life. As can be surmised from her character-studded fictions, Powell had friends in all circles. Figures who decorate this busy story include Ernest Hemingway (who once told Powell she was "his favorite living novelist"), Edmund Wilson, legendary editor Maxwell Perkins -- and Gore Vidal. John Dos Passos, a devoted friend from the early '20s, later called Powell "one of the wittiest and most dashingly courageous women I have ever known."

One name with whom Powell is associated for stylistic rather than social reasons is Dorothy Parker. Diana Trilling wrote that Powell was "the answer to the old question, 'Who really makes the jokes that Dorothy Parker gets the credit for?'" They have so much in common -- two witty, free-thinking, hard-drinking women who came of age in the '20s, defying literary and sexual conventions of femininity -- that a sustained comparison could be fascinating. Yet Page is frustratingly reticent, and he rarely contextualizes Powell's writing. He reproduces many insensitive reviews of her work -- one critic said flatly of some Ohio characters, "These are not important people" -- and quotes from Edmund Wilson's astute assessment that praised her comic, clear-eyed view of the "alien and anarchic" world of New York.

It is, as Page recognizes, this tough, unsentimental quality in Powell -- and, of course, her sharp wit -- that so appeal to contemporary readers. Powell's many fans will find much in this affectionate account to admire, including her fantastic determination and energy: She finished the highly acclaimed novel "The Golden Spur" the year Joe died, and just a few years before cancer claimed her in 1965. A character in an early Powell novel declares that "work will be my armor against pain." Tim Page's welcome biography of this complex, important writer helps us better appreciate her own smart and glittering armor.
SALON | Nov. 13, 1998

Sylvia Brownrigg's first novel, "The Metaphysical Touch," will be published next spring by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She is a regular contributor to Salon.