Powell Books

This book is great for little active hands. Its a Pop-up kind of thing (the moving parts of pop-ups, not the actual 3D stuff) all made of thick card board so its pretty indestructable. That is, except for the cover. I'm not sure what they were thinking. Its a single piece of cardboard, flimsier than cereal box cardboard. I'm not sure why they did that, especially since the reverse of the cover is the first page of the book. The rest of the pages (and back cover) are all thicker than even the sturdiest boardbook. I still give it a solid rating though - sometimes you just have to wonder what people are thinking.

My daughter is 16 months old too and she also loves it! Personally, I'm a little sick of it because I read it 100 times per day (and she has a lot of books to choose from), but she wants to read it over and over. I'm going to have to get some of the other ones and hope to get a little variety.

My 16 month old loves this book. It is really sturdy and made for children to make something happen on every other page, by lifting a flap or sliding something. For example the 1st page says this little doggy is sleeping and the second page says this little doggy wants to play, and my son uses his finger to make the dog's tail wag. It is really well done and just the right size for my son to hold the book by himself.

This book is great for little active hands. Its a Pop-up kind of thing (the moving parts of pop-ups, not the actual 3D stuff) all made of thick card board so its pretty indestructable. That is, except for the cover. I'm not sure what they were thinking. Its a single piece of cardboard, flimsier than cereal box cardboard. I'm not sure why they did that, especially since the reverse of the cover is the first page of the book. The rest of the pages (and back cover) are all thicker than even the sturdiest boardbook. I still give it a solid rating though - sometimes you just have to wonder what people are thinking.

Highly reccommend for plane trips with active toddlers. It kept my two year old daughter's interest -- believe me, that's a huge compliment. She loved turning the pages and moving all the parts. Also it's small--excellent travel toy.

This Little Fishy follows along the same lines as the Tap Tap Who's There? series. On each page, the book asks a question, then you slide a thick, durable cardboard tab to see the answer. This Little Fishy deals with opposites and things you'd find in oceans, so it begins with This fishy is happy, this fishy is...pull down tab...sad. The other characters are boats, seals, ducks and octopi.

It's a very cute book that's well made (much better then most sliding tab books). My 10 month old loves the whole series. I highly recommend them.

Josephine Powell's book on Tito Puente and his contributions to Latin music and dance is a treasure trove of people, places, facts and history. Because of the author's place in the history of Latin dance, she takes the reader with her through that fascinating maze of how artists like Puente changed the exposure and tastes of the American public and the world. The Latin Ballroom world today reflects how we adore - and then neglect and forget - the people who made us who we are. It was her words about Brascia and Tybee, Augie and Margo, Ramon and Rosita, Steven Peck, Doug Rivera and other remarkable dancers in the Latin genre that brought my attention to the book in the first place. Olga San Juan, Abbe Lane, Estelita Rodriguez, Dennis Cole and many more are some of the fascinating dance-related characters in this story that takes place in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, the Catskills and Havana. It is also a much-needed history of great nightclubs and ballrooms, which are only dim memories for the young - but in their time were the breeding grounds of Latin music and dance. Tito Puente's percussion and passion are finally brought to life in a fascinating book.

To remember Tito Puente's career so accurately as Josephine Powell has done makes this biography a worthwhile read. Tito Puente the man and Tito Puente the musician are blended into the tempo of the times during which the musical man lived. Reading of the various venues/clubs and the names of the other musicians with whom Puente played brought back many memories that I enjoyed recalling. When the drums aren't playing they are dreaming; and, for me this read let loose Tito Puente's exciting sound and drew out my Latin blood bringing fire into my old veins. For young musicians seeking success Josephine Powell's well-written commentary provides a glimpse of what can lie ahead in one's career; so do read Powell's take on Tito Puente's life and perhaps capture a taste of how you too can climb the charts with a dash of spice in your style.

Puente's multidecade friend's balanced "tell all' manages to expose the pailero's demons and closeted skeletons while maintaining the due reverence she always had for him. Puente was a great showman on the pailas (timbales) but not a tasteful one. Yet in Cuba where the timbales were created (the word and the instrument are derived from the Italian tympanii) Tito was highly respected by those who generally only begrudgingly approve of the non-Cubans who play typically Cuban rhythms.

I just finished Understanding Anthony Powell, and I really enjoyed reading it. It is written with such easy grace, with lines that made me smile and laugh, but also with a command of seemingly all the books ever written and all of world history. The writing style made it so much fun to read, even about those works I hadnt read (like the memoirs and journals, which now I want to read). Of course, The Dance to the Music of Time discussion was particularly great--I so loved reexperiencing the books on a deeper and higher level--makes me really want to reread these books again. This is one of the best literary books I have read in years!

Understanding Anthony Powell is part of a series of books from the University of South Carolina Press collectively titled Understanding Contemporary British Literature: shortish survey books for a general audience. This book covers Powell's life and work in six chapters. One discusses his life, one his early novels (from the 1930s), one his central work, the 12 volume roman fleuve A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975), one his last two novels from the 80s, one his memoirs, and one his journals.

The book is perceptive and sensible, not hagiographic but definitely approving. I found it of considerable value. Birns is a good close reader, and I definitely was given insights to points I had missed. He is interesting, for example, on the derivation of Powell's titles. He treats the central conflict of Dance as between people devoted to art (Nick Jenkins, the narrator, perhaps the key here) and people devoted to power (obviously Widmerpool is the central figure here). He is very interesting, too, on Powell's underappreciated memoirs and particularly his journals.

I am a stone fan of Powell's work -- take that as you will. I enjoyed Understanding Anthony Powell, and I think any reader interested in Powell would too. But the first step, if you haven't read Powell, is to embark on reading A Dance to the Music of Time. (And don't be afraid to take your time -- I read it over 15 months the first time.)

John Birns' UNDERSTANDING ANTHONY POWELL, an entry in the "Understanding Contemporary British Literature" series, is one of the most substantial overviews of the late author's career available.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first deals with Powell in general, though it references "A Dance to the Music of Time" more than anything else. The second is dedicated to Powell's early fiction, the third to "Dance", the fourth to the late fiction, and the fifth and sixth to Powell's non-fiction writing, the Memoirs and Journals respectively.

I am most interested in "A Dance to the Music of Time", and Birns' guide is very enlightening for fans of this masterwork. The chapter on this, entitled "Widmerpool and Theocritus", dedicates a section each to the twelve novels that comprise the sequence. Each novel of "Dance" has its own special focus and historical setting, so an individual treatment like the one here is necessary to fully elucidate their message. Birns is writing mainly for an American audience here, and knows how to explain certain features of older British society to an audience from a different culture. I appreciate "Dance" a lot better now than before.

I haven't read any of Powell's other books yet (and the Journals remain frustratingly unavailable in the United States) so I cannot comment on the other chapters, but if you are a fan of "A Dance to the Music of Time", consider obtaining this critical work.

Far be it for me to argue with a professor emeritus at the prestigious U. of Nottingham, and a highly regarded literary scholar, but I have an axe to grind with Norman Page about a notation. Regarding this passage on page 81:

"It was a young hand, rather long and thin, a little damp and coddled* from her slopping."

Page says "the meaning [of coddled] is obscure - possibly `warm' or `heated' is meant."

Anyone who cooks would recognize the word as meaning waterlogged in warm-to-hot water, as in a coddled egg. Ann Avice is, after all, a laundress, so she would naturally have dishpan hands.

I'd send this note to the publisher, but I can't locate the company online.

Otherwise, this is one of Hardy's finest novels, different in many meaningful ways from his previous novels. It's a must-read for a lover of Hardy, possibly more autobiographical even than "A Pair of Blue Eyes."

The Well-Beloved sounds very modern; it's got that brilliant minimalist prose Hardy does so well, and reminds me of many novels about twenty-something commitment-phobes. Jocelyn Pierston (sp? sorry - I just returned it to the library) has an "ideal" type of woman in mind (and the ideal keeps changing) so that no real female ever fit the bill. Consequently, he remains unmarried - and lonely - and he's forever (patronizingly) fidgeting with the lives of his discarded muses to the point that he actually harms some of them. One of the weaknesses of the novel is that the protagonist is supposed to be a brilliant sculptor. However, he is never shown pursuing his art. This reminds me of Philip Roth's main character in "Everyman," a professional (late-life) painter. Though Hardy was an architect, like Roth he has not captured the character of a visual artist. As both a novelist and a painter I know what it means to be a passionate visual artist. There are "quirks" in such people - ways of literally seeing the world - that these otherwise great writers have missed entirely, giving proof to the contention that a writer should write about what he/she knows. Both books left me with a sense of their emptiness, though I also gave Roth high marks at his Amazon site for "Everyman." Despite the lack in both novels, these writers know how to burn words into paper, mind and soul. Just to be in their presence, even to read a lesser novel, is to hear what it is to write. Too bad their protagonists don't make us see what it is to sculpt or paint.

As much as I love to read, I wasn't very convinced about this book when my dad picked it out. But I can now say it's one of the best books I have ever read. It's sad yet honest, beautifully written. I recommend this book highly.

"Born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad," remarks an anonymous character in "The Wicked Pavilion." That seems like a shard of a micro-self-portrait buried in the book. And can one ever doubt how clear-sighted Powell was about her unique strength? Recently Lorrie Moore took Powell to task in The New York Times Book Review (Nov 7, 1999) for her "point-of-view problems." "'[Her novels] are dart-throwing fiestas,' to borrow one critic's words," said Moore, "'The Wicked Pavilion,' for instance, is on the brittle brink of being mere mood -- mean and elegant, but whose?" Such Jamesian prudence is off-base when confronted with Powell's raucous, near-drunken laughter bellowing from almost every page. (Her razor-sharp wit seems able to better Woody Allan any day! But how many artist-fools can we find in our Entertainment Century who could turn down writing assignments from Hollywood on "Funny Girl" and "The Wizard of Oz"?) Powell's comic vision is unabashedly omniscient and aggressively earthy. "The Wicked Pavilion" is no doubt elegant. If it appears to be acidic, it's also unmistakably warm. Her lyricism at the end of the novel brings to mind her elegant but no less tough-minded predecessor Edith Wharton, for what else is Cafe Julien but Society -- in this context the Glamor-rotten Big Apple of New York -- where all is cloaks and masks and the dreams of love and fame a deadly dart-throwing masquerade? If one finds Powell's caricature of the art world too one-dimensional, her insights about a struggling artist's plights are painfully immediate and ultimately, with the ruins of her life haunting these pages, authoritative. "Being dead has spoilt me," said Marius, the artist who is complicit in the news of his death and witnesses the incredible ascendence of his reputation. At such moments you seem to hear Dawn Powell speaking from beyond the grave. Her voice has survived magnificently, not because she has, like Marius, won "the Grand Immortal Prize of death which opened the gates closed in life" to her, but because it has spoken the unspeakable about human foibles and the necessary lies and illusion of happiness through the mirage of her art.

I had never heard of Dawn Powell before- this was the first of her novels that I've read. The New York art scene of the that compelling between war period, is drawn and quartered in this timeless tale of obsession and illusion that is a comic classic of the highest form. I read the book in one and a half sittings and regretted its end. I strongly disagree with those who accuse it of nothing more than a bitchy and bitter novel. I was overcome, at the gentility by which Powell drew the most vulgar and opportunisitic social pariahs with ultimate sympathy and grace. Even the most pretentious social parasite, is awarded a show of dignity, and not a reptilian exit that would have been his due in less compassionate hands. The Cafe Julien, described in the title is modeled on a real artists' haunt in Powell's Greenwich Village. However it is equally every time and every place where humans come apart and remake themselves in that painful custom peculiar to man. It is no less the synagogue of the moneychangers, Balzac's Paris, the Occupied Left Bank, The Storming of Versailles. It could be peculiar to Caesar's or Mussolini's Rome with decadence the perfect counterpart of Brechtian Berlin. For this is how we act, this is what we do; often in the name of art and always, in pursuit of glory. We create and devour, crown and then dethrone, and like the lions, we will honor the new ruler by gobbling our young. In the Wicked Pavillion, some artists die physically and the rest undergo a spirtual death all in pursuit of what cannot be named. Even the timeless Julian is ultimately leveled and as easily forgotten as the woman who once had beauty and now posesses nothing else. Barstools at the Julian were like places at a royal court and equally vain and vicious were the proud patrons who owned them. We witness once committed artists become forgers of their dead comrade's work, postuhumously valuable. Everyone is making out, the would-be intellectual critics and the jackals who own the galleries. Even an ex comes uninvited to a mock remembrance service covered in widow's weeds. The service is taped and reveals nothing more than the vicious remarks made about all in attendance. Everyone is stripped and denuded but none so starkly as the naked, crazy prostitutes locked away on a psych. ward- the fate to which their chic counterparts eventually succumb. But, forget this cautionary blather- read the book for the character Elsie!
She is my newly crowned queen of American characters, a pretender to the throne of female greats held for years by her predecessor, the equally, overbearing British country Dame, Lady Circumference, the infamous peeress in Waugh's,"Decline and Fall." I so love these heavy, plodding females with aristocratic license to bore and command. Boston-bashing Brahmin, Elsie Hookler, is the terror of any hostess, intrusive grand dame, consummately worthy of position in American characters. Readers of Waugh, Wharton, Mitford, Parker, etc.- you know who you are- this is required!

Dawn Powell (1897-1965) grew up in rural Ohio, but spent most of her adult life in New York City. Although little known during her lifetime, her reputation has blossomed in recent years. "The Wicked Pavilion" is her next-to-last novel. It was written in 1954 and is set in New York City in the late 1940's.

The "Wicked Pavilion" in the novel is the Cafe Julien, on Washington Square in Grenwich Village. It is a haunt for failed artists, lovers, bohemians, mid-towners, and those on the make. The novel centers around three groups of characters: a) a group of three failed artist friends, Dazell, Ben and Maurius and their agents and hangers-on. Much of the story centers upon the apparent death of Marius and the instant celebrity and inflation of his reputation that follows in its wake; b) Rick and Elleanora, on-again off-again lovers who meet and carry on their relationship over the years in the Cafe Julien; c)Elsie and Jerry. Elsie is an elderly woman from a wealthy Boston family who befriends Jerry a struggling model and would -be kept woman who spends a night in a mental institution with prostitutes. The three stories are interrelated, but the plot does not fit together althogether well and is the weakest part of this still excellent novel.

The book is biting precise, well-observed satire. The characters in the book, both male and female, are predominantly people who have come to New York from the Midwest in search of adventure, art, success, a new life -- much as Dawn Powell herself did. The dream of New York as a "happy city" remains but it becomes covered in Powell's work with disillusion, failure, and cynicism. The artists lack talent, the lovers lack passion, and everyone is on the make. Still, at the end of the book, the Cafe Julien is torn down and Powell makes us feel how an era is at an end.

The book begins with a short chapter, an essay in fact, called "entrance" which sets the stage for the disillusion we see in the course of the book. It also sets out, as satire will do, an ideal which the world the book shows us only parodies. Powell writes"

"But there were many who were bewildered by the moral mechanics of the age just as there are those who can never learn a game no matter how long they've been obliged to play it or how many times they've read the rules and paid the forfeits. It this is the way the world is turning around, they say, then by all means let it stop turning, lit us get off the cosmic Ferris wheel into space. Allow us the boon of standing still till the vertigo passes, give us a respite to gather together the scraps of what was once us -- the old longings for what? for whom" that give us our wings and the chart for our tomorrows."

This book gives a picture of a New York City that physically is no longer and perhaps always lived as a vision and ideal. The book is sharp, cutting and funny in its picture of what Powell portrays as a fallen reality.

A beautiful coffee table book that is worthy of being read by anyone who likes literature and literary figures, and especially by those who admire women of rare talent who have succeeded, often against high odds, in getting women's words heeded. It is interesting to note the birth/death dates under each of the 35 names. In the 1700s and throughout most of the 1800s they died tragically young by today's standards. Only in this century has one lived into her 90s. Not designed to be comprehensive; the choices are admirable.

Is your best friend, sister, mother, wife, and/or daughter a literary soul? Is reading her favorite pastime? Are books her favorite possessions? Or are you the person described above? If so, look no further. Here is a gem of a book that makes a perfect gift for any occasion.

"Women of Words," the expanded second edition, (209 pages; 2002), provides a wonderful portrait of forty-three great women writers. The brief bios and excerpts from each author's work are very well written, but it is their pastel portraits, Jenny Powell's brilliant illustrations, that makes this such a special book. This hard cover, coffee table edition is beautifully presented.

The authors include: Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Edith Wharton, Dorothy Parker, Eudora Welty, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Conner, Edith Sitwell, Jean Rhys - the list goes on, and the selection is extraordinary.

Look for the expanded second edition of "Women of Words." It includes 43 women writers, (more is better in this case). Although the 1st edition contains only 35 writers, it is still a wonderful book.

And a P.S. here - this book is a good choice for literary men also.

These thirty-five authors are unique writers and women. Short bios are accompanied with selections from their best-known works. Great way to "taste" author's style. Marvelous original portraits of each add greatly to beauty of the book.

This is number three of twelve in the 12-part "A Dance to the Music of Time" series. I found the first two volumes a little dull and slow, but I am continuing to read this series mainly due to Richard Horton's exhortations. With this book, I finally got a sense of why Richard keeps urging me along; something finally clicked. As characters reappeared, I welcomed them back as old friends, and didn't need to flip back to find where they had entered the story before. Jenkins, the narrator, started doing something, rather than just commenting on the actions of Stringham, Templar, and Widmerpool. Marriages were consummated and broken. Literary and political differences moved into the foreground of the novel. For once, I even thought I saw a plot.

I guess what really happened is that I warmed to both Powell's prose and subjects. In the first two books, I thought there were occasions upon which Powell waxed poetical--loving bits of description that put both character-building and story into suspension until the subject at hand was drained of detail. I am the first to admit that I am not one fond of overt description, but one can sit still for only so long before something falls asleep.

Jenkins and his contemporaries are in their late 20s in this book, which takes place in the golden years between the two World Wars. Trouble is brewing in the world, seen here in some characters who are pronounced revolutionaries, followers of Marx and Trotsky.

A quote from page 63 sums up the idea of this series in my mind:

Afterwards, that dinner in the Grill seemed to partake of the nature of a ritual feast, a rite from which the four of us emerged to take up new positions in the formal dance with which human life is concerned. At the time, its charm seemed to reside in a difference from the usual run of things.... But, in a sense, nothing in life is planned--or everything is--because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.

And, while I am in a quoting mood, here is a line that seemed apt: "There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you." Lines like that have me anxious to continue the series.

I loved Acceptance World, which has Powell's writing on the London art scene (hilarious) and his more meditative style at its most enthralling. This book occassionally puts Powell in Proust's class, in my opinion, and I wouldn't say that about most of the other novels in the series, as much as I have enjoyed them.

I enjoyed reading Powell's first collection of short stories entitled "Typical" and looked forward to reading this one, once I got the chance.

Powell has a really great ear for the way people speak, but more to the point, he can really get inside the minds of the down-and-out, somewhat crazy men and women he portrays. The 3 linked stories grouped under the title "All Along the Watchtower" are reminiscent of many of Samuel Beckett's works. (I thought most of "Molloy" and "Malone Dies.") He also has shadings of Flann O'Brien, who is quoted as the Frontispiece to this volume.

For me a hallmark of really great writing is that I find myself reading it aloud, and I was vocalizing muchos veces during this read. The writing can go from downright hilarious to heart-rendingly poignant to deeply troubling with ease. A very great read!

Padgett Powell weaves an imaginative South that's as rich as Lady Baltimore cake. Losers and drunkards compete for the attentions of women with big hair and bigger secrets. Powell seems to know them all, and he hints at something darker and more mysterious in the American character, but with a quirky, hysterical style that can take a reader's breath away, and leave him jealous of a writer with so much natural talent. Even his weakest stories are better than almost anyone's else strongest ones.

The Answer/La Respuesta by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, is the best answer I have ever read. In the Answer to Sor Filotea de la Cruz, Sor/sister Juana Ines de la Cruz wrote her autobiography, in which she reveals her drive as a woman/human being. Her pursuit of -capital T- Truth gained her close friends and cunning enemies. She was way ahead of her own time. I recommend this book very much. I enjoyed it. WA

One of the finest recent translations of Sor Juana's "Response." The authors have done an outstanding job of translating and annotating the text. A "must read" for any Sor Juana scholar.