Sunday, Monday, and Always: Stories by Dawn Powell

Although Dawn Powell was more widely known in the first half of the 20th century as a playwright and novelist, she apparently wrote hundreds of short stories as well that she sold to magazines, allowing her to support her art. This collection of what she considered her best short-fiction work (according to the preface) offers some witty, entertaining nuggets of cosmopolitan life in NYC during the '40s and '50s. Many of the characters are trying desperately to "make it big" somehow, whether in big business, movie stardom, the literary scene, high society, etc. Powell's razor-sharp view of such characters is both mocking and often sympathetic. Many of the stories somehow reminded me of musicals of the Hollywood's Golden Age, and the dialogue seems straight from Busby Berkely. The stories are all truly "short stories"--most no more than 5 or 10 pages. They are almost like one-act plays, enough to introduce you to the main players and what their environment is like, walk you through a crucial and significant moment (an audition, a forbidden shopping spree, a dinner party, a funeral), and it's over--perfect if you are not in the mood to make a longer reading commitment to one of Ms. Powell's novels (although you should!). A witty--and sometimes ascerbic--look at American society in an age gone by.