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Dorothy Parker
was the quintessential New York writer, particularly in the magazine publishing
sense of the word. It should be said, she was a particularly New Yorker
kind of writer. Very little has changed at the mag since its inception, demanding
its writers be at home with essay, criticism, verse, fiction, screenplay.
Dorothy Parker excelled at all, at Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker
and finally Hollywood, but she truly finds her happy place firmly in short
fiction.
Born in New Jersey and educated
at a convent in New York, Parker worked first, between 1917 and 1920,
as a drama critic in a city left largely untouched, at least culturally,
by the world at war. New York then was still Old New York but growing
with the money of the nouveau riche, an era fat with the error of new
manners and newer institutions trying in vain to mix with the old. Parker
supplemented her income with these stories, first in verse for $10 per
week, then in short story form, published more glamorously in volumes
collected on behalf of her wit and New Yorker connections.
Which is not to say she is
undeserving of her accolades. On the contrary she is underrated as a female
author during la Belle Époque, her wit rivaling that of Mark Twain but
netting not nearly the cash of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and
Gertrude Stein. Without greater readership her stories will likely be
lost to women’s studies reading lists at obscure liberal arts colleges,
rather than to the canon where they easily belong.
Her stories are short and
heavy on quick dialogue – instant like a picture. You know the people
in them and you’ve heard what they say, because people are the same whether
they have money or not, as her subjects frequently do. Parker is keen
to let them hang themselves in their own ignorance. If only Parker – or
any of us – had the guts to point it out more directly.
Her collected stories are
usually available through major publishers and on the shelves of your
local retailer. Her verse is not so accessible via this route, and neither
is her criticism. This is unfortunate because she is among the best, including
Twain, Lionel Trilling and Paula Kael.
If you enjoy the short stories
of Dorothy Parker, you will also enjoy those of Lorrie Moore, a contemporary
writer already included in academic collections of “best” short stories,
and will without a doubt enjoy the short stories of John Cheever, the
acknowledged master of half-wealthy suburban New York dystopia. |
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