Dodson, a somehow tragically minor figure
of the Harlem Renaissance who was for a
time the young Als' mentor and lover. There
are sentences in The Women, which, after
twenty years, I still cannot decode, yet I
know they were written to be understood.
Als, like Proust, is worth the effort.
If ever you are gloomy, pick up Truman
Capote's last unfinished novel, Answered
Prayers, for a hearty, wicked, world-weary
laugh. The funniest parts are unprintable
here; for example his disquisition on the
discomfort of being a friend of the rich.
Suffice to say, for Capote nothing was
sacred but talent: he was wonderfully
politically incorrect, about race, religion,
homosexuality, women and wealth, but
especially about himself.
Another writer to lift your spirits in a dark
sort of way is the great Dawn Powell,
hardworking author of fourteen novels,
about half them set in the Midwest where
she hailed from, the others archetypal
stories of New York, her adoptive home,
where she lived a charmed if struggling life,
inhabiting with her husband and an admirer
a duplex apartment at 25 East Ninth Street,
where liquor and literature flowed freely. In
HYLAND
Zoland Books
ISBN-10 1883642418
Zoland Books
ISBN-10 188364240X
