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IF A YOUNG MAN finds his own father inconveniently ordinary, can he choose another? Jonathan Jaimison, the engagingly amoral hero, comes to New York from Silver City, Ohio for exactly such a purpose. Combing through his mother’s diaries and the bars and cafés of Greenwich Village, Jonathan seeks out the writer or painter whose youthful indiscretion he believes he might have been, all the while committing numerous indiscretions of his own. By the end of the novel, Jonathan has figured out not only his paternity, but his maternity, and best of all, himself. Published in 1962,The Golden Spurwas Dawn Powell’s last novel.… (plus d'informations)
Lize and Darcy are two young women who befriend Johnathan Jamieson, the protagonist of "The Golden Spur." They befriend Johnathan the first time he shows up there (it's a bar), following leads from his deceased mother's notebook as a place he might find his biological father. Lize had been the girlfriend of Hugow, an artist who figures largely in this book, but now Hugow has run away from her and Darcy has moved in with him. Now Lize looks for someone else to move in with, Percy Wright, a Wall Street worker whose analyst has recommended he take up painting for therapy. He figures if he gets Hugow's girlfriend, some of Hugow's talent might run off on him. "Still, his spaniel adoration was consoling. he had inherited his mother's old brownstone house in Brooklyn heights and lived there alone with two floors rented out. He was flattered when lies started leaving her things there, a makeup kit, douche bag, then a suitcase quote just while she was looking for an apartment." Ugh. This brings back memories from when I was a kid and I would see douche bags hanging on the backs of bathroom doors. I always wondered how they figured squirting some liquid up your vagina would clean out the slime of men's semen. ( )
A friend read this in a book club, and recommended it to me. What a find! Arch and witty, reminiscent of Dorothy Parker at her best, Powell casts a jaundiced eye on everyday life in the Manhattan of the 40s and 50s, the one we wish we'd lived in. My to-read list now includes all her other books. ( )
A satiric (and sometimes satyric) romp with Greenwich Village characters, this admittedly slight book is most entertaining in its portrayal of those characters - the writers, would-be writers, painters, hangers-on and prodigious drinkers. The uniting thread is a young man from Ohio who is looking for his late mother's lover, so that he may find his true role model. In the process, he gets his city education, and we get a picture of the Village in the 1950s. ( )
In The Golden Spur we see the Village at a point of its decline that is rather squalid: bearded beatniks and abstract painters have seeped in among the Guggenheim fellows, the raffish N.Y.U. professors and the adult-edu-cation students. It is a phase with which Miss Powell is evidently not so intimate and not so sympathetic as she was with the Village of an earlier time but which she nevertheless accepts as still more or less cozy and more or less fun in the good old Village tradition...
I ought not to reveal whose son the boy unexpectedly turns out to be, but Miss Powell, who has sometimes been criticized for the formlessness of her novels and their inconclusive endings, has constructed here a very neat plot, and for once in her career played Santa Claus and made her hero a generous present. She then has him reject, however, the privileges of the social position to which he is now entided and flee from the opening of an uptown gallery that he has undertaken to subsidize, in company with an erratic and much esteemed painter—you never know in Miss Powell’s novels whether the painters are really any good—who has become its principal star but who prefers to the patronage of the affluent a lodging in a rickety warehouse near Houston Street, on the lower West Side.
In 1962, Powell published her last and, perhaps, most appealing novel, The Golden Spur. Again, the protagonist is male. In this case a young man from Silver City, Ohio (again), called Jonathan Jaimison... On that blithe note, Powell's life and life-work end; and the wheel stops; the magic's gone-except for the novels of Dawn Powell, all of them long since out of print, just as her name has been erased from that perpetually foggy pane, "American Literature."
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
The hotel stationery was Wedgwood blue like the wallpaper, delicately embossed with a gold crest and a motto, In virtu vinci, a nice thought, whatever it meant, for a hotel.
Citations
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
A giant crane was the star performer, lifting its neck heavenward, then dropping a great iron ball gently down to a doomed monster clock in the front wall of the structure, tapping it tenderly, like a diagnostician looking for the sore spot. Does it hurt here? here? or here? Wherever it hurts must be target for the wham, and wham comes next, with the rubble hurtling down into the arena with a roar. A pause, and then the eager watchers followed the long neck's purposeful rise again, the rhythmical lowering of the magic ball, the blind grope for the clock face, and then the avalanche once more. The cloud of dust cleared, and a cry went up to see the clock still there, the balcony behind it falling. "They can't get the clock," someone exulted. "Not today! Hooray for the clock!" The spectators smiled and nodded to one another. Good show. Well done, team!
"Phone call, Doctor Kellsey," said the bartender. "What do I tell her this time?"
"Damn it, does a light go on all over the city every time I step into a bar?" cried Dr. Kellsey indignantly. "You told her once, didn't you, that Doctor Kellsey hadn't been in for weeks?" "This is a different lady, Doctor," said the bartender.
"Ah. My wife. In that case tell her you don't know any Doctor Kellsey." He waited till the bartender hung up. "What did she say?"
"Said I was lucky," said the bartender.
"Damn these female bloodhounds," said the professor.
"You one of those college creeps?" Darcy asked Jonathan politely. "Is that why you got stuck with that stuffy professor?"
"Kellsey isn't stuffy except when he's on the wagon," Lize said severely. "Personally I like him. He's just a good-natured old slob that hates everybody, that's all. Be fair."
"All right, then, let's go," he snapped, taking long strides to throw off Anita's prim little high-heeled steps, her thighs never parting as if afraid of wandering rapists. "I haven't much time because I must see this young chap I mentioned, the son of my old student—"
The truth had no part in love anyway, except for the truth of finding each other at the right moment.
A man is lucky if he discovers his true home before it is too late. True mate and true calling are part of this geographical felicity, but they seem to fall magically into place once the home is found. Virtues that have been drying up in the cocoon bloom and flourish, imp becomes saint, oaf becomes knight errant, Pekingese turns lion.
"Lonely!" shouted Alvine, suddenly coming to life. "What do you know about loneliness! Why, you're not even married!"
"Ah yes, I keep forgetting that the function of history is to bring in advertising," Dr. Kellsey said.
The shrinker had certainly filled her up with self-confidence this time, Walter thought, and he wondered how long before it would start chipping off like the lipstick and eyeshadow. Whateverwas making her so satisfied made him jealous, but then he was jealous of everybody nowadays, jealous of the President of the United States for all that free rent and gravy, jealous of cops for their freedom to sock anybody who annoyed them, jealous of students who could skip his classes, jealous of Hugow or anybody stupid enough to believe in his own genius, jealous of happy believers and bold infidels, and jealous of young men with a whole lifetime ahead to louse themselves up as they wished. Ridiculous to be jealous of poor old Anita, especially when she had his bad news coming to her.
It was like old times, before Jonathan had stirred up his life. The professor tucked Anita's hand under his arm when they got into the taxi and gently reminded her that a man's wife did have first rights to his apartment, new or old. By the time they got out at Costello's for steak and quiet talk they weren't speaking to each other.
It was good to be back in the ring.
Deborah's sub rosa importance enraged Walter except in his periods of pious sobriety, when he was allowed to share it and flaunt it in the faces of his colleagues. Her grapevine information got him a fellowship at the right time, and got him the New York job when she was promoted to the foundation's New York office. Drunk and in his right mind he hated and feared her, but in his nightmares of remorse, financial catastrophes, or professional embarrassments, he turned to her. These were their happiest times, he wallowing in shame and she wallowing in virtue.
"You're as bad as a wife, Turner," he said. "You find somebody in bed an hour or so after you've managed to drag your own can out, and right off you start pointing and yelling big night, big night, aren't you ashamed, it's after ten, Bergdorf's is open, Saks is open, Irving Trust is open, get up, get busy, do something, do your crossword puzzle, tear up your mail, get on all the phones, start apologizing for last night and tomorrow too, while you're at it, get on the ball, don't just lie there minding your own business."
Derniers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
He was very glad that Hugow had turned back downtown, perhaps to the Spur, where they could begin all over.
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▾Descriptions de livres
IF A YOUNG MAN finds his own father inconveniently ordinary, can he choose another? Jonathan Jaimison, the engagingly amoral hero, comes to New York from Silver City, Ohio for exactly such a purpose. Combing through his mother’s diaries and the bars and cafés of Greenwich Village, Jonathan seeks out the writer or painter whose youthful indiscretion he believes he might have been, all the while committing numerous indiscretions of his own. By the end of the novel, Jonathan has figured out not only his paternity, but his maternity, and best of all, himself. Published in 1962,The Golden Spurwas Dawn Powell’s last novel.
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Lize had been the girlfriend of Hugow, an artist who figures largely in this book, but now Hugow has run away from her and Darcy has moved in with him. Now Lize looks for someone else to move in with, Percy Wright, a Wall Street worker whose analyst has recommended he take up painting for therapy. He figures if he gets Hugow's girlfriend, some of Hugow's talent might run off on him.
"Still, his spaniel adoration was consoling. he had inherited his mother's old brownstone house in Brooklyn heights and lived there alone with two floors rented out. He was flattered when lies started leaving her things there, a makeup kit, douche bag, then a suitcase quote just while she was looking for an apartment."
Ugh. This brings back memories from when I was a kid and I would see douche bags hanging on the backs of bathroom doors. I always wondered how they figured squirting some liquid up your vagina would clean out the slime of men's semen. (