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Title: Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker, Brendan Gill ISBN: 0-14-015074-9 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: May, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.76 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excuse My Ink
Comment: It's not enough to say that Dorothy Parker was great, or that she was brilliant. It's hard to see from a distance her colossal impact on the literary world. When you buy this book (and you WILL buy it; these aren't the droids you're looking for) immediately read some of the very earliest stories. They are of WWI vintage or so. If you remember high school literature, short stories written just before Parker put pen to paper were the somewhat longer "chapter of a novel" type, of Guy de Maupassant, or W. Somerset Maugham. Dorothy Parker virtually invented the "slice of life" short story, which she brought to the New Yorker. This style became the standard of the fledgling magazine, popular with the public, and without a doubt helped get the magazine off the ground.
This style is still the pervasive one today.
Short stories were not all Mrs. Parker wrote. She wrote play reviews, and as Constant Reader book reviews. She could dismiss a play with "House Beautiful is Play Lousy," or take down her least favored AA Milne with "Tonstant Weader frowed up." She once spent the better part of a review complaining about her hang-over. She kept New Yorker readers coming back week after week, laugh junkies after a fix. And so she changed the voice of the reviewer as well. Previously, the reviewer voice had been detached and quite dry, rattling off obligatory lines about the costumes, the sets, the leading actor, the leading actress-- as predictable as the label on a shampoo bottle. The wonderful Libby Gelman-Waxner is her direct descendent. Pauline Kael is a niece, although she might have bristled at the suggestion. Andrew Harris and Elvis Mitchell can thank Mrs. Parker for their unfettered freedom.
The best thing about reading this collection is discovering the sheer joy Mrs. Parker took in writing. She was good and she knew it.
She once said, in reviewing the unfortunate book Debonair, that the curse of a satirist is that "she writes superbly of the things she hates," but when she tries to write of things she likes, "the result is appalling." Personally, I find Parker moving and eloquent in her reviews of the Journal of Katherine Mansfield, and Isadora Duncan's posthumously published autobiography, two books that touched and impressed her, but it is true that her distinctive voice croons most seductively when she doesn't like something. Unfortunately, one is left with the impression that she didn't like much other than gin, Seconal and dogs, but I don't think that's true. If she were as unhappy as is commonly believed, she would have escalated her suicidal behavior, and not have lived to the age of 74. She would not have had the passion to march for the acquittal of Sacco and Venzetti, to travel to Spain during the country's civil war, to volunteer as a war correspondent during WWII, and to join in voice and body the civil rights movement in her last decade.
I think disdain rather than anger is a better word for what she felt towards the targets of her wit-- and it is true that sometimes a retrospective view of her own behavior was the target, but the ability to laugh at oneself is the sign of, well, if not mental health, at least a well-rounded emotional self.
And by the way, since Parker had no heirs, she left her estate, including future earnings from her work, to Dr. Martin Luther King jr., and when he sadly died the year after she did, he passed on the right to profit from the Parker works to the NAACP, so for every copy of this book sold, the author's cut profits the NAACP.
Rating: 5
Summary: Delightful, Demonic, Quotable
Comment: Dorothy has a possession of the english language that is almost demonic, and coupled with her insight into the weaknesses of human nature (not to mention her own), her prose and poetry are witty, cutting and hilarious. Her poetry is short and quotable and her short stories explored the mundane and ridiculous of American Life far earlier than most writers. My favorites, however, are her book and play reviews. They are genius, and can leave you rolling on the floor. This is my favorite collection of Dorothy's work. I have found that collections of only poetry or short stories soon became tedious and extremely depressing (I wonder if Dorothy on Prozak would have produced such great work). This is an excellent volume for those just discovering Dorothy, and great to keep handy for a "little read."
Rating: 5
Summary: A Wonderful Collection of Wit and Attitude
Comment: I have read a great deal of her work and have found that she has the wit that applies to make her stroies fun to read and the attitude that suits them to others my age...I find this as one of my all time favorite books and could not appreciate all the hours of joy and laughter these poems and stories have brought me...Dorothy Parker was and will always be one of the greatest authors of this age...God Bless Her!Other books that I am known well to read are the Harry Potter and books and the Series of Unfortunate Events.
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Title: Dorothy Parker, What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade ISBN: 0140116168 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker ISBN: 0679601325 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 30 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker, Colleen Breese, Regina Barreca ISBN: 0142437212 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title:Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle ASIN: 6303422136 Publisher: New Line Studios Pub. Date: 26 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $19.98 |
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Title: The Algonquin Wits: Bon Mots, Wisecracks, Epigrams and Gags by Robert E. Drennan, Heywood Hale Broun ISBN: 0806509473 Publisher: Citadel Trade Pub. Date: December, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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