Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? [Audio Cassette]

Marion Meade (Author), Grace Conlin (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2012

Dorothy Parker was known for her outrageous one-liners, her ruthless theater criticism, her clever verses and bittersweet stories, but there was another side to Dorothy Parker--a private life, set on a course of destruction. She suffered through two divorces, a string of painful affairs, a lifelong problem with alcohol, and several suicide attempts.

In this lively, absorbing biography, Marion Meade illuminates both the dark side of Parker and her days of wicked wittiness at the Algonquin Round Table with the likes of Robert Benchley, George Kaufman, and Harold Ross, and in Hollywood with S.J. Perelman, William Faulkner, and Lilian Hellman. At the dazzling center of it all, Meade gives us the flamboyant, self-destructive, and brilliant Dorothy Parker.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Meade's lively biography recounts the unhappy life of the wise-cracking versifier, short story writer and critic," reported PW. "So detailed is Meade's book that this, one imagines, is the last time a biographer will need to explain why so talented a writer could at the same time be so nasty a human being." Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Marion Meade has written a widely acclaimed biography, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a novel entitled Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks (June 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786108703
• ISBN-13: 978-0786108701
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,425,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marion Meade is a biographer and novelist.
Her most recent biography is Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. Other subjects include Eleanor of Aquitaine, Madame Blavatsky, Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, and Woody Allen. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties tells the story of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber becoming writers in the Jazz Age.
She has also written two novels set in medieval France, Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard and Sybille.
Aside from her writing, she edited Dorothy Parker's collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker; Parker's play The Ladies of the Corridor; and introduced Parker's Complete Poems.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only Decent Parker Biography, October 23, 2000

By 

A.Trendl HungarianBookstore.com "What should ... (Glen Ellyn, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (Paperback)

I don't think there is another decent review of Dorothy Parker's life in print.

I could go on and on about the individual bits of interesting data the book highlights: her relationship with Benchley, the Algonquin Round Table, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, plus her socio-political views, her misguided love life, her bitterness/love toward men. I suppose I could tell you a lot about what this book says in these regards.

I could lament how I think she is still an underrated fiction writer, as most people get stuck on her quips and witticisms, but her better skill was in unpeeling the subtleties of the everyday moment. I could, couldn't I?

There is plenty I could say about her insecurities, her foolish business mistakes and something bizarre about her dog. Oh yes, that would be interesting, that whole dog thing.

Instead, I'll just tell you this book is what is says, a thorough examination of the life of Dorothy Parker. You will be happy you bought it. It says everything I didn't say and more.

I fully recommend this book.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and Engrossing, December 25, 2004

By 

funniegrrl "funniegrrl" (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (Paperback)

I have read several bios of Parker, as well as bios of and memoirs by other denizens of the Round Table, and this book is BY FAR the most complete. Meade punctures so many of the oft-told tales about Parker, which are blythely repeated in other bios. She interviewed anyone and everyone still alive who could shed light on Parker, and does an impressive bit of detective work to prove that one of Lillian Hellman's many self-aggrandize stories was a fabrication. The negative reviews here are just puzzling to me -- I can't understand what more they want from this book. Far from being full of gossip or taking a kid-glove approach, this biography is exhaustively researched, fully footnoted, and shows all the contradictory -- sometimes unpleasant -- colors of Dorothy Parker.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Balanced Biography on a Brilliant Woman, July 11, 2005

By 

Melanie's Reviews (IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (Paperback)

All I could think of when I finished reading this biography was...wow. What a life, what a career, and what foolish choices smart ladies like Dorothy Parker can make. Parker had risen to almost iconic status with me as a writer and social commentator of her time. This book brings her back down with the balance of her brilliance with the reality of her misfortunes. The book could have used a *tighter* editor, but this is a must-read biography!