4:39pm: Wit of the Round Table
Dorothy Parker: Click for bio & complete poetry online
This date marks several noteworthy landmarks, including the inaugural sailing of the America's Cup race around the Isle of Wight, won by the U.S. built schooner America in 1851, and the last major battle of the War of the Roses, the Battle of Bosworth Field, in 1485, wherein King Richard III was defeated and killed by Henry Tudor, ending the bloody War of the Roses.
However, it is the birthdate of Dorothy Parker, resident wit and champion of the Algonquin Round Table, whose New Yorker Column, The Constant Reader was the springboard for some of the most noteworthy, satirical, and literary browbeating in the history of letters, that we shall here celebrate. Here is a small sampling of Parker's wit and humor:
"It's a small apartment, I've barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends."
On learning that Calvin Coolidge was dead she remarked, "How could they tell?"
"Are you Dorothy Parker?" a guest at a party inquired. "Yes, do you mind?"
On being asked to use "horticulture" in a sentence: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
In a book review, in The Constant Reader: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown aside with great force."
In 1925, Harold Ross was struggling to keep The New Yorker magazine alive with a tiny, inexperienced staff and an office with one typewriter. Running into Dorothy, Ross said, "I thought you were coming into the office to write a piece last week. What happened?" Dorothy replied, "Somebody was using the pencil."
"I can't write five words but that I change seven."
"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."
"I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, After four I'm under my host!"
In the street once Dorothy approached a taxi. "I'm engaged," the cabbie said. "Then be happy," she told him.
Wasn't the Yale prom wonderful? "If all the girls in attendance were laid end to end," she said, "I wouldn't be at all surprised."
"Look at him, a rhinestone in the rough."
"Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart."
"You know, that woman speaks 18 languages, and she can't say "no" in any of them."
"His body has gone to his head."
In a 1933 review of the play "The Lake" starring Katherine Hepburn: "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."
"Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses."
Of the play "The House Beautiful": "The House Beautiful is The Play Lousy."
Young man to Dorothy Parker: "I can't bear fools." Dorothy Parker to young man: "Funny, your mother could."
In a New Yorker review of A.A. Milne's "House at Pooh Corner": "Tonstant weader fwowed up."
Another book review: "He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing."
For her own epitaph:"Excuse my dust."
Her Poetry:
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.
-and-
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
Dorothy Parker: one of a kind, a diamond, period.
Posted by cronish at August 22, 2002 05:06 PM