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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excuse My Ink, November 8, 2001
This review is from: The Portable Dorothy Parker (Paperback)
It's not enough to say that Dorothy Parker was great, or that she was brilliant. It's hard to see from a distance her colossal impact on the literary world. When you buy this book (and you WILL buy it; these aren't the droids you're looking for) immediately read some of the very earliest stories. They are of WWI vintage or so. If you remember high school literature, short stories written just before Parker put pen to paper were the somewhat longer "chapter of a novel" type, of Guy de Maupassant, or W. Somerset Maugham. Dorothy Parker virtually invented the "slice of life" short story, which she brought to the New Yorker. This style became the standard of the fledgling magazine, popular with the public, and without a doubt helped get the magazine off the ground. This style is still the pervasive one today. Short stories were not all Mrs. Parker wrote. She wrote play reviews, and as Constant Reader book reviews. She could dismiss a play with "House Beautiful is Play Lousy," or take down her least favored AA Milne with "Tonstant Weader frowed up." She once spent the better part of a review complaining about her hang-over. She kept New Yorker readers coming back week after week, laugh junkies after a fix. And so she changed the voice of the reviewer as well. Previously, the reviewer voice had been detached and quite dry, rattling off obligatory lines about the costumes, the sets, the leading actor, the leading actress-- as predictable as the label on a shampoo bottle. The wonderful Libby Gelman-Waxner is her direct descendent. Pauline Kael is a niece, although she might have bristled at the suggestion. Andrew Harris and Elvis Mitchell can thank Mrs. Parker for their unfettered freedom. The best thing about reading this collection is discovering the sheer joy Mrs. Parker took in writing. She was good and she knew it. She once said, in reviewing the unfortunate book Debonair, that the curse of a satirist is that "she writes superbly of the things she hates," but when she tries to write of things she likes, "the result is appalling." Personally, I find Parker moving and eloquent in her reviews of the Journal of Katherine Mansfield, and Isadora Duncan's posthumously published autobiography, two books that touched and impressed her, but it is true that her distinctive voice croons most seductively when she doesn't like something. Unfortunately, one is left with the impression that she didn't like much other than gin, Seconal and dogs, but I don't think that's true. If she were as unhappy as is commonly believed, she would have escalated her suicidal behavior, and not have lived to the age of 74. She would not have had the passion to march for the acquittal of Sacco and Venzetti, to travel to Spain during the country's civil war, to volunteer as a war correspondent during WWII, and to join in voice and body the civil rights movement in her last decade. I think disdain rather than anger is a better word for what she felt towards the targets of her wit-- and it is true that sometimes a retrospective view of her own behavior was the target, but the ability to laugh at oneself is the sign of, well, if not mental health, at least a well-rounded emotional self. And by the way, since Parker had no heirs, she left her estate, including future earnings from her work, to Dr. Martin Luther King jr., and when he sadly died the year after she did, he passed on the right to profit from the Parker works to the NAACP, so for every copy of this book sold, the author's cut profits the NAACP.
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36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One Perfect Rose After Another, November 7, 2002
This review is from: The Portable Dorothy Parker (Paperback)
On one occasion, when challenged by a friend to use the word 'horticulture' in a sentence, Dorothy Parker replied "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." Possessed of a razor sharp intelligence and a wicked turn of phrase, she stands as perhaps the single finest American wit and humorist of the early 20th Century. This expanded edition of THE PORTABLE DOROTHY PARKER collects all three of her volumes of poetry, both volumes of her collected short stories, and a great deal more besides--all of it guaranteed to give readers hour after delightful hour. Like her contemporary and only serious competitor James Thurber, Parker's work often focused on the battle of the sexes, and many of her short stories--such as "Dusk Before Fireworks," "You Were Perfectly Fine," and "Here We Are"--present savagely funny portaits of couples who are on the edge in more ways than one. She is also extremely famous for her 'monologue' stories, particularly "Telephone Call," in which the reader essentially overhears the thoughts of the character it portrays. But she is perhaps best remembered for her sharply comic poetry, which is typically written as a subverted 'jingle' that goes unexpectedly awry, often in the most morbid way imaginable; "One Perfect Rose" and "You Might As Well Live," to name but two, have been standards of American poetry collections since they were first published. And no theatrical critic has ever equalled Parker for sheer comic acidity. But Parker was not simply a humorist. While a number of her poems address deeper subjects--"Rainy Night" is particularly memorable--many of her short stories are intensely dramatic. "Big Blonde" details the slow decline of a woman who is passed from man to man, never finding happiness and drifting into alcoholism and attempted suicide; "Clothe the Naked" presents a touching portrait of a black woman struggling to survive in a hostile white world. Her eye for detail is remarkable; her style is distinctly her own, a mixture of the clinical and the wryly comic; be it comic or tragic, she is in full command of her art in every selection. This is one that belongs on your shelf, no question about it. Strongly, strongly recommended.
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than just a starter book, July 7, 2000
This review is from: The Portable Dorothy Parker (Paperback)
This is the one you want. The sum of it all, or at least, the bulk of Dorothy Parker's best stuff. Buy this book first, read it, then read it to your friends. Then buy them a copy.
Read to your friends her gloriously articulate rips into her peers' books, her acidicly cynical (but humbly honest) poetry about her relationships, and her well-crafted stories about a moment in life. Pour some coffee, then read some more.
You probably know her quote about 'horticulture' and might be familiar with what she said about the girls from Yale. Maybe in high school you read her famous poem, "Resume" ("Razors pain you/acid stains you..."). Now, introduce yourself to her other work. Her poems and other turns-of-phrase are never raunchy, but somehow, in her brutal clarity, some still fill in the not so naive reader with plenty to laugh at.
Her stories helped found the New Yorker Magazine, where she was an editor. Her book reviews are on the insightful, smirking level of Mark Twain's review of "Last of the Mohicans." Her ability to insult a book or play is more than just witty, but more than often intensely accurate. She wasn't just making fun of a writer, but educating them. She tore them apart and had them happier for it.
Brendan Gill's intro will give her writing context, helping you see why she wrote the way she did.
I learned from Parker how to take a few minutes and see the complex subtleties and find a story it (read "A Telephone Call" as an example). Her craft is masterful, allowing her wit and sense of social nuance show through.
Fans of Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, and even the short stories of Ernest Hemingway will love her.
I fully recommend this book.
Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com
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