Dawn Powell once again Graces readers with her stinky characters from new york. As is noted in nearly every introduction to her books, Powell said to her detractors who complained about her mopey creepy characters, "I write from real life." Because the characters in this book are "artists", in other words playwrights, nightclub entertainers, "professional beauties", they are more shallow, backstabbing, and negative than your average Greenwich village pendejo.
Prudence Bly is the protagonist here, and a more shallow, minimally-talented, two-faced character you couldn't ask for.
She hails from Silver City, Ohio, where she thinks they're all a bunch of country squares. But her old beau from the old hometown has come to New York for his chance to make it as a playwright.
He can't stand her or her phony crowd, and refuses to have anything to do with her, though she tries her very best to rekindle their romance.
Here is ol' Prudence in a nutshell:
"as James pinkney had once said to a small gathering of backbiters, prudence Bly was not a person so much as a conspiracy. She was guarded by those who knew her as jealously as the sucker list of a benevolent organization. In her hotel, doorman, Bellboys, chambermaids -- all felt part of the conspiracy of prudence-against-the-world; they read the papers for news of her and like her own close friends followed her progress as if she were a baseball tournament. In her they dimly felt they had a valuable machine gun, a weapon against society, their private egos were Avenged by her destructive wit, they crowed over her ability to mow down large and small potatoes with the barbed word, for among the fallen were sure to be a rival or, better still, a friend."

"Dol" short for something or other, is a gay character with enough money to buy the company of young men. But he had to put up with their ignorant young personalities. He invites his latest favorite, Bert Willy, to the opera, but is disappointed when Bert refuses. So Bert can only find Jean Nelson, a so-called"professional beauty" airhead.
I cracked up at the author's description of young women clamoring for attention and their strange penchant for calling themselves "little."
"Dol was excited and happy now translating music this way, and looking about the opera house he thought why this was his home, this was where his happiest hours had been spent, these walls surely loved him as he loved them, here was where his noblest thoughts had been born, here had taken place his first superb moment -- yes, it had been Caruso's samson, and he knew it had been worth living for. Here was his home. When he died, he would be brought here to die with Tristan and Isolde; he would die to great music. He walked about smiling during the intermission, not recognizing those who spoke to him in the lounge, hardly knowing jean, who shook a reproachful finger at him from a table of friends sufficiently respectable to be in the process of being snapped by a Journal photographer. All the rest of the evening Jean kept her hand through his arm, and his whole body recoiled from her fragrant proximity. he looked about him at boxes of debutantes in pretty pastels set like Easter baskets about the Horseshoe and he hated them all, their colors screamed above the singing, he hated all women for they are the enemies of peace, they must crash through Beauty with a shrill cry of 'me! Me! Little tiny me! Listen! Look! Me!' He forgave Jeff Abbott and Bert for not coming with him, for at least they had the taste to stay away when they were not interested rather than coming to compete. Indeed he loved everyone who had stayed away tonight, for at least they not did not obstruct his joy.
'Where shall we go now?' Asked Jean, snuggling back in his car. 'Didn't mary whitsey's hair look marvelous? I wish you could have seen her before guillaume took her in hand!'
'I'll take you home,' said dol.
He could not wait to get her out of his sight. He wanted to go home, even if Bert was not there, even if the fresh case of cognac was not there, he wanted to get home quickly before a pretty lady's chatter had pecked to bits his lovely evening."


Dol throws a party, as he is won't to do regularly, and the guests' reaction to his tragedy spells out in large letters how loathsome of a crowd he ran with. (He certainly didn't get his ashes scattered at the Tristan and Isolde opera.)
"As usual at these affairs dol sat in the big yellow Wing chair by the fire, smiling fixidly and ignoring his guests. But today of all days his smile was too fixed, his stupefaction so obvious that Neal and Jean came over to nudge him into consciousness and found that he had not passed out as they had unfairly suspected, the man was merely dead. The afternoon had gone so wrong from the very beginning that for the host to drop dead was exactly what might have been expected. Stifling her first outcry, Jean Nelson remembered her manners in time to summon the caterers and they lifted dol as inconspicuously as possible into his bedroom, and the guests were not subjected to any mortification other than the usual one of seeing their host seemingly pass out before they did. Bert Willy was the only one to sense something wrong and run into the bedroom, bursting into helpless baby sobs at the side of the haughty purple face on the bed among all the silver foxes and sables. 'hush, hush,' Neal kept saying though this only brought more and more rasping Cries from the thin, fair-haired boy.
'I won't hush! You -- none of you were good enough for him, that's what! I don't care, he was good, and I was going to tell him about cracking up his car last night, honest I was, I was going to tell him tonight I was sorry. Now he's dead! I won't hush!'
Even with the doctor's entrance explained as merely precautionary, The whisper crept around that something had happened, something almost as dreadful as arch Gleason's presence, and one by one Mrs Miller yanked out the furs and purses from under the still head and passed them out the door to the Disturbed ladies scuttling away from the vaguely sinister place; the fire still blazed under the chafing dishes, les and the boys had started the endless repetition of 'I love a hunting horn,' the waiter's doggedly passed their trays of dainties to the remaining few, but no one ate, no one drank except Arch gleason, and he wolfed whole platters, he drank from bottles unable to wait for service, and his wheezy rasping voice went on and on telling of bigger, better parties than this where he had been the host, and people listened, waiting with eyes on the closed bedroom door to know the story, something to tell at dinner, something sensational."

Prudence returns home to Silver City in the end, surprisingly, but she won't be there to stay for ol' Jeff Abbott. ( )