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Dorothy Parker

"Then he came to New York. Don't we all?"

After an unhappy childhood in New York City, Parker sold her first poem to Vanity Fair at the age of 21. In an era when New York attracted a diverse population of writers, artists, and musicians to become the preeminent city of social and cultural innovation, Dorothy Parker transcribed this city and its brash, racially progressive, sexually liberated ethos. Through the booming business of sophisticated yet deftly humorous publications, Parker and her cohort of quick-witted writers telegraphed the new, daring culture of the city.

Bio

Résumé

Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.”

Enough Rope

A self-described "mongrel," Dorothy Rothschild was born in 1893 to a prosperous German-Jewish garment manufacturer and his protestant wife. Young Dorothy was raised by servants in a four-story townhouse at 214 West 72nd street. When her father died, leaving her an orphan without money at the age of 20, she turned to her sharp wit and her gift for writing as a means to survive in New York.

O' Henry Award

Intro: Dorothy Rothschild of 72nd Street

Enough Rope

First Collection of Poems, published 1926

Hollywood

Dorothy Parker's famous lines?

News Item

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

Observation

If I didn't care for fun and such,

I'd probably amount to much.

But I shall stay the way I am,

Because I do not give a damn.

Original MSS at Fales?

In 1914, Dorothy Parker sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine, one of the new "smart magazines" that appeared in the 1920s. Two years later, at the age of 24, she replaced P.G. Woodehouse as the magazine's drama critic, a remarkable position at the time for a woman of any age. Known for harsh criticism, Parker said of one play: "If you don't knit, bring a book."

Motivation: Make a living as a writer / off your wit

"Men, A Hate Song"

Vanity Fair

February, 1917

What were the Smart Magazines?

By the 1920s publishing and printing was the second-largest industry in New York (behind ladies' garment manufacturing). In the early 20th century, a new crop of so-called "Smart Magazines," published in Manhattan, had sought to impart urbanity and a shared urban cultural vocabulary to the large numbers of people who had moved from farms into the city at the end of the 19th century.

Vanity Fair - 1914

Image Grid Here

State of New York: Smart Magazines for a Smart City

The Smart Set - 1900

Edited by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, The Smart Set: The Magazine of Cleverness featured early work by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Theodore Dreiser.

In 1913, the debonair publisher Conde Nast bought the rights to the name of a British magazine and revamped it the following year as forum for the artistic and literary voices of the 1920s. The magazine promoted the work of artists such as Picasso, the writing of Gertrude Stein, D.H. Laurence, and Aldous Huxley, and the celebrity portraiture of Cecil Beaton and Man Ray.

The New Yorker - 1925

Founded as a sophisticated humor magazine in 1925, Harold Ross's New Yorker was "not edited for the old lady in Dubuque." In addition to Parker, in the 1920s the New Yorker offered a platform to writers such as E.B. White and James Thurber.

“When I was growing up, I had three wishes – I wanted to be a Lindbergh-type hero,

learn Chinese and become a member of the Algonquin Round Table.”

JOHN F. KENNEDY

While working at Vanity Fair, Parker befriended fellow writers Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood, and the three began lunching regularly at Algonquin Hotel. The trio quickly attracted a following of from the worlds of publishing and theater, forming a lunchtime club known for their banter, wit, and biting commentary. Mrs. Parker was widely regarded as the sharpest wit of this elite bunch who ruled over a round table at the hotel throughout the 1920s.

Note to LP:

The key to these New Yorker pieces is the selected quotations: visitors are not likely to read through a story or article. Is there a way to make the archive image of the text as a kind of background and then pull out text selects to get a flavor of the work and her voice?

Art Samuels, Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott

Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Franklin P. Adams, Marc Connelly, Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt, Frank Crowninshield, and the Host, Frank Case

Hot Spot: round table members

The New Yorker

Parker joined the staff of the New Yorker at its founding in 1925. In magazine's 2nd issue Parker offered a satirical profile of the fictional "Mrs. Legion" of Riverside Drive.

Action: Go to work for the New Yorker

Not until she has sedulously effaced all traces of individuality does Mrs. Legion feel that she is smart enough to appear in public.

Although she lives as far from Park Avenue as it is possible to do and still keep out of New Jersey, Mrs. Legion is cozily conversant of all of the comings and goings, or what have you, of the Avenue dwellers

From 1927-1931 Parker authored the "Reading and Writing" column under the name "Constant Reader." These reviews, peppered by Parker's dry, dismissive wit, were a key attraction in the new magazine.

October 20, 1928 - Dorothy Parker writes a wry, yet, biting review of "The House on Pooh Corner"

"The Garter"

In this short story, Parker - describing herself as a "poor, heartsick orphan" - is mortified at a party when her garter breaks. Through this inner monologue Parker breaches traditional boundaries by describing a single woman - a jazz-age girl about town - who is feeling severe anxiety about her undergarments.

All I have to be grateful for in this

world is that I was sitting down

when my garter busted.

All they can see is this unfortunate exterior. There's a man looking at it now. All right baby, look your head off...Look pretty silly don't I, sitting here holding my knee? Yes, and I'm the only one that's going to hold it, too. What do you think of that sweetheart?

The thing to do is avoid panic at all costs. Tell the orchestra for God's sake to keep on playing. Dance you jazz-mad puppets of fate, and pay no attention to me.

Never trust a round garter or a Wall Street man. That's what life has taught me.

"Home to Harlem"

"Constant Reader" was not simply a source of cutting wit. In her 1928 review of Claude McKay's home to Harlem she praised the book as a long overdue representation of Harlem told from a black perspective

It is rough book: a bitter, blunt, cruel, bashing novel

We needed, and needed badly, a book about Harlem Negroes by a Negro. White men can write...but one never loses consciousness, while reading them, of the pallor of the authors' skins

"Arrangement in Black and White"

Parker was keenly sensitive to the topic of racial injustice. In this 1927 story published in the New Yorker, a white woman is eager to meet an African American singer at a cocktail party - to prove how free she is from prejudice.

I don't see why on earth it isn't perfectly all right to meet colored people. I haven't any feeling at all about it.

"You Were Perfectly Fine"

The carefree world of drinking and partying in the 1920s was frequently the subject of Parker's satirical stories. Here a man suffering from a tremendous hangover realizes that he unwittingly declared his love to a woman while in a taxi in Central Park the previous night.

Don't you know, how you told me I had never seen your real self before? Oh, Peter, I just couldn't bear it, if you didn't remember that lovely long ride we took in the taxi!...oh, Peter dear, I think that taxi ride was the most important thing that ever happened to us in our lives.

Parker's politics:

Sacco and Vanzetti, 1927

HUAC - 1955

Death: 1967 - estate to MLK. Later donated to NAACP.

Conclusion: Off to Hollywood...activism

Portrait by Richard Avedon, 1958

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