My favorite of DP, paraphrasing:
razors pain you
rivers are damp
acids stain you
drugs cause cramp
guns aren’t lawful
nooses give
gas smells awful
you might as well live
Having done some very half-hearted and amateur Googling, I can’t find anything resembling an attribution either. I’m beginning to suspect she never wrote it; either she said it and it got remembered (but not in a published review) or she never said it.
This would make a perfect General Question, wouldn’t it? But if Eve doesn’t know the answer, there probably isn’t one.
Well, I submitted it to Snopes, it’ll be interesting to see if they can come up with anything. This DOES seem more like a GQ question, maybe someone over there can crack it. This is annoying me more than I can express. My suspicion is that it was in a review that was published in a magazine other than the New Yorker, because I believe she published reviews under the pseudonem Constant Reader in a couple of different magazines. If it was in the New Yorker, I’d think the citation would be really easy to find.
I think my favorite anecdote (apocryphal?) is of her encounter with Clare Booth Luce:
The two women came to a door at the same time.
Luce said “Age before beauty” motioning for Paker to enter first. As she walked through the door, Parker replied “And Pearls before Swine.”
OK, I’ll check the attic this weekend and get the information down - I think I kept track of which New Yorkers I looked at, other sources I checked, etc., etc.,