Dawn Powell Kick

Contemporary of Fitzgerald's (born in the same year, 1896). Same editors. Same NY circle: Friends with the Murphys, et al.
But a MUCH better writer than Fitzgerald. More soul, more heart, more brain. No schtick, no schmaltz. (Just nowhere near as good-looking and hype-friendly.)
No overt personal drama (though she had her own private drama: a sometimes violent and mentally ill institutionalized son, and a perpetually drunk bisexual husband---she couldn't milk these topics as Fitzgerald did his own institutionalized wife).

I've now finished Powell's first Library of America volume (1930 - 1942). "Dance Night" and "Come Back to Sorrento" were heartbreaking. Not because she was trying to break your heart, but because her small-town characters were so ordinary and real, with all of their simplistic/complicated dreams. With "Turn, Magic Wheel," "Angels on Toast," and "A Time to Be Born," she switches from small-town Ohio dreams to upper-class New York City dreams---but the characters are still equally as semi-confused/semi-certain and unsettled, and their inner turbulent selves and milieu still as surely drawn.

I probably liked "Angels on Toast" the least of the five, though it was still psychologically and sociologically interesting.

After the first volume, I took a break to read the diaries ('31 to '65). Some tidbits I noted upon first pass:

January 1941: The avoidance of contemporary manners in modern writing. In the last century, Thackeray, Dickens, Edith Wharton, James, all wrote of their times and we have reliable records. Now we have only the escapists...false to history, false to human nature. Among contemporary writers... We have Hemingway, who writes of a fictional movie hero in Spain with the language neither Spanish nor English. When someone wishes to write of this age---as I do and have done---critics shy off---the public shies off. "Where's our Story Book?" they cry. "Where are our Story Book People?" This is obviously an age that Can't Take it.

March 1956:  The Secret of my Failure. Just thought why I don't sell stories to popular magazines. All have subtitles---"Last time Gary saw Cindy she was a gawky child; now she was a beautiful woman..." I can't help writing "Last time Fatso saw Myrt she was a desirable woman; now she was an old bag..."

June 1957:  Post-dated check for $75 out. Very ominous. Don't know whether to lay low or to get high. Would be at end of rope if could afford rope. Let's say am at end of thread.

August 1957:  Some people have several lives (Auntie May); others die the first time and continue dying to their death. If they get through the death of youth---that is, the period when they admit the death of youth (anywhere from 30 to 50) and become the next person, middle-aged, they usually can go on till they are willing to relinquish middle age (60 to70) when they begin to really enjoy life, the fruits of their experience, and are eager afresh for things about them.

June 1959:  I don't know why we should object to being sales-pressured and mass-persuaded when we are such self-persuaders and can con ourselves into any feeling that assures us convenient excuses for our plan of life. If it is necessary to excuse our immoralities, we sell ourselves the idea our mates are monsters, or our parents were. If we wish to continue abject love, we con ourselves into seeing these objects of devotion as angels.