# Missing Dorothy Parker Quote Still Missing **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 7, 2011, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717 "2011-03-07T00:25:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2011, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/1 "2011-03-07T00:25:29Z")
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Everybody knows Dorothy Parker said this. Everybody knows she wrote this in one of her terribly witty and catty Constant Reader reviews for the New Yorker. Except that nobody can find the original. We’ve looked for it. There’s [this thread from 2009](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=532756), which references [this earlier thread from 2002](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=147953&highlight=dorothy+parker). Lots of searching, through every book and reference work the collective Dopery minds could paw through. And nothing. I filled in a missing Dorothy Parker biography for my collection recently, which brought the search back into mind. Although Google Books is now a part of everyday existence, we didn’t have it as recently as two years ago. I use it so much for research that I find it hard to imagine how I ever wrote anything in them olden days of 2008. So I searched. And searched. And searched. And found nothing. Well, what I found was apparently the first appearance of it in print. Robert E. Drennan’s 1968 collection of one-liners, _The Algonquin Wits_, which we already knew to be true. Don’t bother checking it for sources. It doesn’t give any for individual quotes. Where Drennan got it from is now the mystery to be solved. Could Parker have said it in conversation? Sure. Did she write the line? Probably not. Does it sound like her? Completely. Are the rest of these questions going to be as rhetorical? No, I’m stopping now. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2011, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/2 "2011-03-07T06:40:05Z")
As my random education Brings to mind this wry quotation, Though I’ve spaced out where I read it, Damn it, Dorothy Parker said it! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2011, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/3 "2011-03-07T07:29:38Z")
Is Robert E. Drennan still alive? Maybe you can ask him. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2011, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/4 "2011-03-07T08:53:19Z")
Most of the sources I’ve seen suggest the quote is from one of her book reviews in the New Yorker. The New Yorker has searchable database of all their issues available for subscribers. If there is a doper with a subscription to the New Yorker, maybe they could help out. [http://www.newyorker.com/search?rows=10&query=constant+reader&qt=dismax&sort=score+desc&bylquery=dorothy+parker&month1=01&day1=01&year1=1927&month2=01&day2=01&year2=1960&page=1](http://www.newyorker.com/search?rows=10&query=constant+reader&qt=dismax&sort=score+desc&bylquery=dorothy+parker&month1=01&day1=01&year1=1927&month2=01&day2=01&year2=1960&page=1) ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/5 "2011-03-08T01:06:29Z")
Luckily, the Fake AP Stylebook has a [guideline for this situation](http://twitter.com/#!/FakeAPStylebook/status/24477646343). ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/6 "2011-03-08T01:21:07Z")
Some of us have taken it back to 1960. Before that, you’re on your own. [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1102D&L=ADS-L&P=R1446&I=-3&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches](http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1102D&L=ADS-L&P=R1446&I=-3&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/7 "2011-03-08T04:27:40Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > Most of the sources I’ve seen suggest the quote is from one of her book reviews in the New Yorker. The New Yorker has searchable database of all their issues available for subscribers. If there is a doper with a subscription to the New Yorker, maybe they could help out. > > [http://www.newyorker.com/search?rows=10&query=constant+reader&qt=dismax&sort=score+desc&bylquery=dorothy+parker&month1=01&day1=01&year1=1927&month2=01&day2=01&year2=1960&page=1](http://www.newyorker.com/search?rows=10&query=constant+reader&qt=dismax&sort=score+desc&bylquery=dorothy+parker&month1=01&day1=01&year1=1927&month2=01&day2=01&year2=1960&page=1) Here’s what I wrote in that last thread. > [@'A book to be thrown with great force'--actual source found?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-book-to-be-thrown-with-great-force-actual-source-found/510815/12): > > I have The Complete New Yorker, on 8 CDs. I checked through them for every review that Parker wrote, especially the ones not reprinted in Constant Reader. The phrase appears in none of them. As far as I can tell the Constant Reader collection faithfully reprints the reviews so there wasn’t any need to reread them all. It’s hard to imagine that such a line would be cut out in any case. > > The book does have some problems. Some reviews can’t be found at all in the pages of the magazine. Example: Two Lives and Some Letters, listed as March 14, 1931, reviews H. S. Ede’s _Savage Messiah_. But the issue has only a theater review, of A. A. Milne’s play “Give Me Yesterday.” I can’t find that review anywhere in 1931. And the Ede book definitely came out in 1931, when she wrote only the occasional review. It’s possible that the odd and quirky search engine built into the Complete NY (you can’t search by title or keyword or phrase) missed that review in some issue so there’s still hope that other reviews might lie buried in the archives. > > There is simply no source for the line that anyone has found. It sounds like Parker, it gets attributed to Parker, and books about Parker accept it as hers. Everybody remembers reading it in Parker or in some book about Parker, although none of them have a source either. > > Where it comes from knows only God. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/8 "2011-03-08T12:27:18Z")
I just did a quick search on “tossed aside lightly” on Google Books Ngram, and find no references to the famous phrase until 1969, at which point it is ambiguously credited to Parker. There _are_ references to the phrase “tossed aside lightly” (without the pithy epigram of a book review) going back to the 19-teens, but nothing attributed to Parker with that “it should be thrown with great force” until after her death. And none of those citing the saying say which book she was reviewing, or where the review appeared. This does not fill me with confidence that the quote really originated in one of her reviews – the Ngram Viewer is silent about it in that phrase throughout the time she was writing them. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/9 "2011-03-08T12:41:12Z")
Dorothy Parker: I never said that. Someone else: You will, M’am, you will. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/10 "2011-03-08T12:49:21Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I just did a quick search on “tossed aside lightly” on Google Books Ngram, and find no references to the famous phrase until 1969, at which point it is ambiguously credited to Parker. There _are_ references to the phrase “tossed aside lightly” (without the pithy epigram of a book review) going back to the 19-teens, but nothing attributed to Parker with that “it should be thrown with great force” until after her death. 1962: [The Dispatch - Google News Archive Search](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r04cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WFEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7250,5269688&dq=aside-lightly+dorothy-parker&hl=en) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/11 "2011-03-08T12:50:44Z")
A search through Google Books shows me that Paul Johnson, in his recently-published **Humorists: from Hogarth to Noel Coward** , actually attributes the quote to a Parker review of a novel by Hugh Walpole (page 191), but he gives no footnotes and doesn’t identify the book, or where the review appeared. This doesn’t give me confidence that it’s accurate. Walpole died in 1941, and Parker was reviewing plays, at least from about 1921. Walpole published over two dozen books in that time span. A search over Parker and Walpole doesn’t turn up any reviews of him by her. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/12 "2011-03-08T12:51:53Z")
> [@](#): > > 1962: [Google News Archive Search](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...y-parker&hl=en) Missed that one. I note that he doesn’t attribute it to any book review. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/13 "2011-03-08T13:07:32Z")
And the reason I brought up the Ngram Viewer was that, if Parker or if _Anybody Else_ had written that quote, it would’ve shown up. And it doesn’t, until the 1960s. That’s significant. If you put it “fwowed up”, it turns up citations to Parker’s review of Milne, going back to 1927 (although in the collection _Constant Reader_, not the original review itself, I note) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/14 "2011-03-08T22:43:30Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > 1962: [The Dispatch - Google News Archive Search](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r04cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WFEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7250,5269688&dq=aside-lightly+dorothy-parker&hl=en) That’s given in the link samclem posted in #6, which also contains a 1960 cite. > [@](#): > > The earliest known instances of the quotation, I believe, are dated > April 04, 1960 in the Oakland Tribune and October 1962 in Bennett > Cerf’s column. The 1960 cite acknowledges an earlier appearance of the > phrase in the Los Angeles Mirror News, but no details are given. > Apparently there is microfilm of the Los Angeles Mirror news in the > Los Angeles central library. I suspect that this microfilm has not yet > been digitized for wider dissemination. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > A search through Google Books shows me that Paul Johnson, in his recently-published **Humorists: from Hogarth to Noel Coward** , actually attributes the quote to a Parker review of a novel by Hugh Walpole (page 191), but he gives no footnotes and doesn’t identify the book, or where the review appeared. This doesn’t give me confidence that it’s accurate. > Walpole died in 1941, and Parker was reviewing plays, at least from about 1921. Walpole published over two dozen books in that time span. A search over Parker and Walpole doesn’t turn up any reviews of him by her. In the old joke, Johnson’s book can only be described with superlatives: it is the worst book on humor ever written. It is a tissue of idiosyncratic opinion supported by “facts” that are flatly wrong and supplemented by urban legends and “everybody knows” history. He gives further reading rather than cites, although it’s obvious he hasn’t read or remembered those books himself, since they would contradict what he wrote. Let me demolish his Parker page. > [@](#): > > From her address to the American Horticultural Society: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think” Nonsense. Making a pun out of a long word was a standard game at the Algonquin Round Table, which is where it was said. > [@](#): > > To the staff of Vogue: “Brevity is the soul of lingerie, as the petticoat said to the chemise.” Not to the staff. She wrote it as a picture caption, which isn’t surprising since her job there was to write picture captions. > [@](#): > > On her abortion: “It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.” Attributed to Parker. From John Keats’ biography. No known source, but not disputed. > [@](#): > > To Harold Ross. “Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.” She said that, but not to Harold Ross, but after his death to the Paris Review in 1956. > [@](#): > > On Los Angeles: “Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.” Attributed to Parker. No known source, last I checked. > [@](#): > > Epitaph for herself: “Excuse my dust.” Part of a joke competition for epitaphs. The full quote is: Here lies Dorothy Parker. Excuse my dust." If you don’t quote it in full, then the the use of Here Lies as a title for her book of collected short stories makes a lot less sense. > [@](#): > > “Scratch a lover, and find a foe.” “Scratch an actor and find an actress.” The first is a line from the poem, Ballads of a Great Weariness. The second is attributed, no known source. > [@](#): > > To a friend who went to the country to have her baby. “Congratulations, we all knew you had it in you.” Needs to be understood in context, which is that the woman had constantly boasted about her pregnancy and shown off her growing belly. It’s a backhanded slap, not a pleasantry. > [@](#): > > On a story by Hugh Walpole. “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Needless to say, there is no record that I can find of Parker ever reviewing Hugh Walpole. The Parker pages are inserted into a chapter on James Thurber, for no better reason than that they wrote for The New Yorker at around the same time. At least Thurber gets talked about on half the pages in that chapter. Poor Noel Coward gets about three in his chapter. I hated, hated, hated, hated this book. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/15 "2011-03-09T04:04:03Z")
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” It’s not particularly witty. There’s barely a pun there, just using ‘lightly’ to describe the physical act of tossing instead of consideration of the intent to do so. And how many of these witticisms can really be attributed to the original source? Any Algonquinish quotes might have been spoken by many associated with literary snark, and for many, the lines will be attributed to the person from whom they heard it first, or last. I am a bit surprised that such a simple turn of words hadn’t appeared in print prior to 1962. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/16 "2011-03-09T04:26:36Z")
“I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.” – [Dorothy Parker](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/17 "2011-03-09T14:12:06Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > 1962: [The Dispatch - Google News Archive Search](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r04cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WFEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7250,5269688&dq=aside-lightly+dorothy-parker&hl=en) Note that Cerf also quote “Dr. Kronkheit,” so it’s possible he made up the other quotes, too. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/18 "2011-03-09T14:15:28Z")
Because she was known for the _bon mot_ people often attributed their own quotes to Parker in order to give them more validity. Two of them she denied ever using: Age before beauty Pearls before swine. Tell him I’ve been too fucking busy, or vice versa. It’s also who (supposedly) said it. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/19 "2011-03-09T14:51:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Tell him I’ve been too fucking busy, or vice versa. We’ve discussed this one on the Board not that long ago, deciding that it was highly unlikely she’d ever said it, as it never had any source attributed, and the story, as told, was Too Good To Be True. I wasn’t aware that she’d ever actually denied saying it. Do you have a cite? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717/20 "2011-03-09T14:54:45Z")
It’s discussed in John Keats’s bio of Parker [You Might As Well Live](http://www.amazon.com/You-Might-As-Well-Live/dp/0913729493). He agrees it’s as myth. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-dorothy-parker-quote-still-missing/573717.md?page=2)