A Time to Be Born - (Pushkin Press Classics) by Dawn Powell (Paperback)

About the Book

Set against a marvelously atmospheric backdrop of the city in the months just before America's entry into World War II, Powell here offers a scathing and hilarious study of cynical New Yorkers stalking each other for selfish ends. At the center of the story are a wealthy, self-involved newspaper publisher and his scheming, novelist wife.

Book Synopsis

This scathing "comedy of manners" set in the 1940s "steers us through the lives of women who come to New York . . . for love, money, opportunity, and a good time" (New York Times).

At the center of this 1942 novel are a wealthy, self-involved newspaper publisher and his scheming, novelist wife, Amanda Keeler--who ensnares Ohioan Vicky Haven in her social and romantic manipulations.

Author Dawn Powell always denied Amanda Keeler was based upon the real-life Clare Boothe Luce until years later when she discovered a memo she'd written to herself in 1939 that said, "Why not do a novel on Clare Luce?" Which prompted Powell to write in her diary, "Who can I believe? Me or myself?"

Set against an atmospheric backdrop of New York City in the months just before America' s entry into World War II, A Time of Be Born is a scathing and hilarious study of cynical New Yorkers stalking each other for various selfish ends.

Review Quotes

"Effortlessly funny, fantastically mean without ever being cynical, and particularly astute on gender politics while avoiding earnestness and essentialism." -- The Atlantic (Named in 2024 one of the Great American Novels of the past 100 Years)

"Dawn Powell's 1942 comedy of manners . . . steers us through the lives of women who come to New York from the hinterlands, for love, money, opportunity and a good time. One, Amanda Keeler Evans, a figure based on Clare Boothe Luce, is a vapid and conniving social climber who marries a newspaper baron to set her own writing career afoot. The other, Vicky Haven is a victim of Amanda's social and romantic manipulations. Few books have so bitingly and energetically captured the hunger for status and success that animate the city and enrage so many."
-- The New York Times

"The Powell Effect is strikingly evident in her handling of the Clare Boothe Luce character in her roman à clef A Time to Be Born. The character is, in every conventional sense, a monster of sexual and literary deception, and a consummate liar and user, yet seen through Powell's clarifying lens her actions become understandable -- one even comes to accord her energies a respect akin to that we have for Becky Sharp. To feel, really feel, the heartbreak of an objectively contemptible character is an exquisitely mixed literary experience, and Powell was peerless in keeping her readers off stride."
--Salon

About the Author

Dawn Powell was born in Ohio in 1896, the second of three daughters. After enduring great cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, Dawn ran away at the age of thirteen and arrived at the home of her aunt, who served hot meals to travellers emerging from the train station across the street. Powell worked her way through college and made it to New York. Powell referred to herself as a "permanent visitor" in her adopted Manhattan and brought to her writing a perspective gained from her upbringing in Middle America. She knew many legendary writers of her time, and Diana Trilling famously said it was Dawn 'who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit.' Ernest Hemingway called her his 'favorite living writer.' She died in 1965 she was buried in New York's Potter's Field.