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Dorothy Parker: The Woman with an Acid Pen
In the roaring ’20s, a decade full of clever chaps like Robert Benchley, Groucho Marx, and Noel Coward, no writer had a sharper and more acid wit than Dorthy Parker.
Parker made her living as an all-r0und professional writer, but she’s largely remembered today for her acerbic wit and for her role as a charter member of New York’s famous Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers and actors that met daily for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until about 1929.
Ah, to have been a fly on the wall of the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel when the “Vicious Circle” met for lunch. Among those eating their soup and salad (perhaps accompanied by a cocktail or two) were Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Benchley, Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, Edna Ferber, Harpo Marx, Ring Lardner, and of course Dorothy Parker. How’s that for a luncheon group?
Among these brilliant lunch-goers, Dorothy Parker was the queen of the quip (she once called herself a wiseacre), the darling of New York literary society.
She was aware of her reputation. On the subject of her morning rituals, she wrote, “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
On hearing of Calvin Coolidge’s death: “How could they tell?”
On a stage performance by Katherine Hepburn: “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
On Yale prom night: “If all the girls were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
On female independence from men: “Where’s the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?”
Said after she had been seriously ill: “The doctors were very brave about it.”
She could be a bit racy with her puns: ‘You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.“
She could also laugh at herself.
I like to have a martini.
Two at the very most.
After three I’m under the table,
After four I’m under my host.
I’m pretty sure Parker would have appreciated the curious disposition of her ashes, which rested for 15 years in her lawyer’s filing cabinet. But they finally escaped and are now resting under a tombstone in Baltimore, provided by that city’s NAACP, with an epitaph, written by Parker herself, that reads,
Excuse my dust
Postscript: For this post, I went back and read a number of Parker’s 300-some published poems. Many of them are slight things (often published in Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, where slight things go to die), though always written with precise diction and imagery. Some deal with the dark side of life, including suicide and alcoholism. In a review of a collected volume of her poems, the critic for the NY Times called them “flapper verse.” That’s too harsh. She was a talented poet, though perhaps too much of her time.
Her stories have more heft to them, though one I read for this post, Arrangement in Black and White, is so dated that it is almost embarrassing to read today. Parker was a civil rights enthusiast (she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr.), and Black and White is her attempt to satirize an armchair liberal who gushes over a famous black singer at a party. The story is absolutely cringe-inducing in its dated diction and badly managed satire. Many of her stories, however, do transcend their time. Her story Big Blonde (O. Henry Award in 1929), for instance, is an evocative portrait of a working-class woman’s descent into alcoholism. I read it about 40 years ago, and it has stayed with me all these years.
Parker led a charmed life early on, but she didn’t end well. She was married three times, twice with her second husband (she later said he was “queer as a billy goat”). Both husbands died of drug overdoses. Prone to bouts of depression, Parker attempted suicide twice, once by slitting her wrists. Her poem Resume now serves as a kind of ironic comment on those attempts:
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.
Parker did continue to live, but not well. She ended up an alcoholic, living with her dog in a hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She died of a heart attack at the age of 73.
Published in General
I think of her often: “I hate writing. I love having written.”
I had written above that I love DP, but then immediately had misgivings. Google bore them out. I was confusing her with another acerbic New Yorker woman writer of those initials, Dawn Powell.
Two acerbic New York female writers with the same initials? Coincidence?
“If You don’t have anything nice to say about someone…. come sit by Me.”
Mr. Left Coast, I hate to disagree with anyone, but I love writing and I love having written.
Jimmy, that’s one of my favorite Parker quotes. I don’t know how I missed including it.
Although often ascribed to DP, I believe that one, also a favorite of mine, actually has fallen victim to that frequently quoted poseur, Miss Attribute, probably on the grounds that if Parker didn’t say it, she should have. https://www.google.com/amp/s/quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/09/sit-by-me/amp/
She, Parker did attract a number of false attributions, didn’t she? I think the reasoning goes like this: “If it’s acid and witty, it must be by Parker.”
“Frequently quoted poseur, Miss Attribute.” You do have a way with words, Mrs. She.
Maybe my all time favorite Parker poem:
Miss Parker would have been the perfect celebrity for our times — she was mostly famous for being famous.
I thought that was Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
Oh, good call.
Mr. Left Coast. You’ve got it. Alice actually needlepointed the quote into a pillow. I just read a little bio of her. She was a pistol, wasn’t she? Even Teddy couldn’t control her.
I came across an Oxford Ph.D. who attributed it to Dorothy Parker.
I looked up Marie of Romania to see if something in her bio would make the last two lines clever. And I hoped to discover, at the same time, why those four lines would be your favorite Parker poem. I couldn’t find anything. You probably know something that I don’t know, as usual.
Tell me more about your reading of the poem.
My favorite celebrity ever.
I wasn’t sure I’d find any Ricocheters who knew much about Dorothy Parker, much less one who would say that she was her favorite celebrity. Good for you, Kay. I like her too.
In 1926 Queen Marie made a diplomatic tour of the United States. She made quite a stir wherever she went. She even made it to the Pacific Northwest, where she presided over the dedication of Maryhill Museum of Art. The museum has an informational display about the dedication.
Al, I’ve been there. And one minute before your post, my wife Marie came down from upstairs with the exact same information that you just posted. Coincidence or supernatural intervention. Who knows?>
She would change some of her saying to more wit at times. On a TV show, I remember her saying: I wish I could drink like a lady, one or two at the most. Three I’m under the table and four I’m under the host.
I cannot remember the show, maybe “What’s My Line”?
I have a morbid sense of humor, liked Ogden Nash as well.
My favorite bit of her criticism: “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
@kentforrester, I really like the new photo of Bob — much more flattering, but where’s his mask?
I don’t know a blasted thing about Marie of Romania. I like the mordant humor. (And the opportunity to let fly with the word “mordant,” which I don’t have occasion to use nearly often enough.) It’s just a bit of caustic wit, isn’t it? Hahaha, life is all bunnies and rainbows, and the course of true love always does run smooth. Oh, yeah, right, and BTW, I’m the Queen of Romania.
Isn’t that all it is?
But, mostly, I so admire rhyming of “extemporanea” and “Romania,” and the fact that, even with both those words in such a short poem, the whole thing scans so beautifully in a metrical sense.
Not terribly scholarly, I know. It just makes me chuckle.
I have no idea what the literary critics say about it, or what it means. Probably just as well.
Throwing also entered into her review of The House At Pooh Corner.
I love that too. My favorite, bit of her literary criticism, might go to her “Constant Reader” column in which she discussed The House At Pooh Corner, and, referring to Piglet’s use of the word ‘hummy’ about one of his made-up songs, said this:
Ah. Great minds think alike.
I’m also fond of the remark she made to her publisher, when he was trying to find out why she hadn’t been meeting her writing deadlines while she was on her honeymoon. Unfortunately, I can’t repeat it here.
Such a mess as a human being, and such a caustic, penetrating wit. I love her.
I had a drink in her honor at Harry’s Bar in Venice, birthplace of the Bellini cocktail. She used to frequent it when she was in Italy. I had a great time there, imbibing Strega, one of my favorites, and eating a simply fabulous dessert (mostly spongecake, fruit, and boozy whipped cream). The lovely (in all senses of the word) waiter must have felt sorry for me when he saw me casting longing glances at the dessert trays on the next table, and brought me one “on the house.” I tipped him generously. A memorable evening.
I remember what she said, and no, not to mention here.
Jim, Bob says thanks. I put up the new Bob pic because of the new formatting rules for Ricochet avatars. They’re supposed to be squares.
I’ve tried to get Bob to wear a mask, but he says they’re too stuffy and shakes it off. I do the same thing.