"Such a Pretty Day" by Dawn Powell (1939)

We're back from the holidays with Dawn Powell—finally, our first woman writer in the book! And honestly, it's criminal how overlooked she's been. While F. Scott Fitzgerald was busy romanticizing Jazz Age dreamers, Powell was serving up razor-sharp satire about New York society, equal parts humor and barely concealed fury. We dive into some of her most caustic quotes and wrestle with the big question: why didn't her brilliant, acidic wit earn her a spot in the canon when lesser male writers got immortalized? "Such a Pretty Day" peels back polite social surfaces to expose all the judgment and simmering frustration underneath. It's wickedly funny but also surprisingly tender, and brutally honest about human nature in a way that makes you squirm a little. We couldn't help but compare her approach to Fitzgerald's: where he gave us tragic glamour, she gave us people who saw through the performance and laughed bitterly at it. Is Powell's obscurity just bad luck, or does her anger make her harder to canonize than the melancholy men who came before her? Get the book: Support your local bookstore or grab it through Bookshop.org link Links from the Episode:  LA Review of Books Article - Minding Other People's Business: On Dawn Powell link The Unmarked Graveyard podcast - Dawn Powell link