<strong>The Wicked Pavilion</strong> of the title is the Cafe Julien where everybody who isanybody goes to recover from failed love affairs and to pursue new on... » 

The Wicked Pavilion of the title is the Cafe Julien where everybody who isanybody goes to recover from failed love affairs and to pursue new ones tocadge money to hatch plots and to puncture one anothers reputation. DennisOrphen the writer from Dawn Powells Turn Magic Wheel makes an appearancehere as does Andy Callingham Powells thinly disguised Ernest Hemingway. Theclimax of this mercilessly funny novel comes with a party which remarked GoreVidal resembles Prousts last roundup and where one of the partygoersobserves There are some people here who have been dead twenty years.For decades Dawn Powell was always just on the verge of ceasing to be a cultand becoming a major religion. Gore Vidal «