I’m making out my Xmas list, and I want to start reading Dorothy Parker. A quick scan of the selection at amazon.com reveals many titles, and I don’t know where to start. Eve, if you open this, do you think her complete set of stories or her complete set of poems would be a better choice? I’m no poetry-a-phobe; I’d be happy to start there if you feel that’s a better one.
Thanks in advance! And if anyone else has some advice or opinions to share, I welcome it all.
pug
“The Portable Dorothy Parker.” Contains a good selection of her poems, short stories and her theater and book reviews (she dimissed the latter as tripe she just did for the money—as far as I’m concerned, they’re the best stuff she ever wrote).
You might want to try a bio of her, as well—of the three, my favorite if the one by Marion Meade.
Enjoy, darling—oddly enough, I just today started a bio of Alexander Woollcott.
Howard Teichmann’s SMART ALECK? That’s a good, gossipy biography…although I think he kinda rushed it out because his bio of George Kaufman was so enormously successful.
THE PORTABLE PARKER really is the best choice…it’s the only volume of Parker I own, and I’ve never felt any great urge to supplement it.
There’s also a collection of “The Algonquin Wits” edited by Robert E. Drennan. Not much more than a literary nibble, but it could be just right for reading on the subway. And it would be worth the cost the first time someone lets you go first through a door and says “Age before beauty.”
“…and pearls before swine.”
There ya go, pug, I just saved you the price of the book!
I read just that volume earlier this year. You might want to try reading Mrs. Parker in small bites. I found the individual pieces I’d read earlier sharp and self-aware; when I read the “Portable” straight through, I found more self-absorption and self-pity than is to my taste. Better certainly than a vapid little miss sunshine, but rather, to use current SDMB phrasing, a one-trick pony. On the other hand, she does the best “take no prisoners” aphorisms, and maybe I shouldn’t look for more. My personal favorites are (paraphrasing):
“Old age isn’t for sissies;” and
“If you can’t say something good about someone, you come sit right next to me.”
Eve, I would love to hear you defend Mrs. Parker on this score, because I am rooting for her, and if anyone could change my mind on this, I bet you could. (BTW, I also would like to see more discuss the author/book threads, so I pledge to respond to any that you or any one else cares to start.)
Ike—yes, it is the Teichmann book. I looked at all three Woollcott bios the library had, and this seemed the most promising.
Humble—You’ll not find me standing up with any great strength for Dot’s poems or short stories. They veer from terrific to twee, and there IS a bit too much oh-so-delicate self-pity.
Where I think she shines is her theater and book criticism. Just as sharp and funny today as it was in the 1910s (or whichever decade you’re reading). When I wrote for “Movieline,” I tried desperately to pattern my work after hers, without actually stealing from her. A Web site review of my work once called me “a second-rate Dorothy Parker,” and I walked on air for days!
I knew you guys would steer me right! Thanks, Eve, and everyone else.
::adding “D. Parker - Portable” to rapidly lengthening list::
Now, after looking at amazon.com’s critiques and quotes, and being too impatient to wait for the book, I’d like to know if the fragment of poetry I’m paraphrasing below from memory is Dorothy’s, as I was once told (it is regarding William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies and Hearst Castle):
Upon my honor,
I saw Madonna
in a niche
above the door
of the aging whore
of a well-known sonofabitch.
Pug: Mrs Parker angrily denied having said that, saying she would never stoop so low as to rhyme “honour” with “Madonna”.