Customer Reviews

Dorothy Parker : Selected Stories (Big Blonde, Too Bad, Song of Shirt, Mr. Durant, Diary of a New York Lady, Standard of Living, The Garter)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I often think we spend so much of our time wishing we lived in a kindler, gentler time -- a time past when things were simpler. Dorothy Parker's stories made me realize that life is life and it ain't easy, no matter what the year. The reader's smoky voice is perfect for the collection. As she told each tale, I felt as if she were reaching right into my chest and clenching my heart in her brightly-manicured grip. The stories are revealing. I found myself haunted by "Mr. Durant" days afterward. I can say that I came away from this collection changed in some way. How, precisely, I cannot say. It is too soon to tell, since I just finished the last story yesterday. I do recommend them, however, if only to show readers of this day how very different life in Dorothy Parker's day.

Dorothy Rothschild Parker's malicious wit, mordant humor, and cynicism are brilliantly revealed in this audiotape narrated by Elaine Strich. With a gravelly voice appropriate for the wearied New York lives she portrays, Strich imbues "Big Blonde" and a host of other stories with attitudes of the late 1920s through the early 1940s, showing the arrogance of men in relation to women, the voluntary subservience of the women, and the shallow goals of socially conscious people whose primary concern is recognition by each other.

"Big Blonde," her most famous story, describes how Mrs. Morse, a large blonde woman, finds happiness in her recent marriage and homemaking, only to find her husband becoming less interested in her as she becomes more domestic and less "exciting." Mrs. Morse's downward spiral into drink and an eventual suicide attempt parallel Parker's own life. "Too Bad" tells of the Weldons, an upscale couple who seem to have a perfect marriage, except that they can no longer find anything to say to each other, largely because the wife has become a bore. "Song of the Shirt" tells of a wealthy woman of "great heart," who volunteers to sew hospital robes for wounded soldiers but is unable to help the unemployed mother of a polio-stricken child.

"Mr. Durant" continues the emphasis on the arrogance of men, as the title character has an affair with a naïve employee who becomes pregnant and loses her desirability. "Diary of a New York Lady" details the shallow social activities, the theatre going, and the repetitive parties of a woman with too little to do. The funniest, most tongue-in-cheek story, "The Garter," tells of a character named Dorothy Parker who is stranded on the couch at a major party because her garter has broken and she can't get up without losing her stocking.

Parker adds much ironic humor to these stories of failure. She is cruelly critical of women who let men determine their destinies, mocking both their pretensions and their lack of imagination, but she also recognizes that they have little choice and few opportunities to escape their lot. Equally critical of men, she finds their interest in women selfish and often limited to the bedroom. Sardonic, ironic, and cruelly observant, Parker creates tragedies masquerading as social comedies and comedies of almost unbearable pathos. Mary Whipple