James has gone to class, I've got coffee brewing, and I'm getting mentally ready to attempt (gasp!) going out for a walk. I wish this didn't have to be a big deal, but after the allergy woes of the last 48 hours I'm not feeling real confident about my chances. I peered out the window just now and those trees are looking cruel and threatening, ready to assault me with their spores of doom. Suddenly there's this atmosphere of ripe fecundity out there, when did I start living in a garden of earthly delights? There's something unseemly about this explosion of flora, in no time flat we've gone from sodden bleakness to tropical paradise. I feel like a missionary in the New World, slightly embarrassed by the frankness of nature. As I gaze out at it my eyes narrow in suspicion.

Maybe I should stay in, where it's safe. I'm finishing Dawn Powell's The Wicked Pavilion, which is so good I truly don't want it to end. I've known about Powell for years, her lapse into undeserved obscurity and subsequent return to print, championed by Gore Vidal. I never read her before, not sure why. I guess I was expecting some kind of Algonquinish sub-Dorothy Parker stuff, clever but dated, insubstantial. Well, I'm an idiot, because The Wicked Pavilion is fantastic. She's witty, yes, but it's so much more. She's great on nuances of character, fine shadings of motivation, there's plenty of deft psychological observation. Her generosity toward her characters is pretty much the opposite of what I was ignorantly expecting, she doesn't sell them out for cheap laughs. Her writing has bite, and the approach is satirical, but there's a humane core. She's hilariously mean, but not cruel.