the portable dorothy parker by dorothy parker

She had never been a drinker, but her friends were a bibulous bunch and she felt obliged to join them.Īlgonquin Round Table: (left to right) Art Samuels, Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott

She was invited to many of the wild parties in Long Island mansions which inspired the most memorable and decadent scenes in F. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them…’ At the time, however, her world revolved around the group.Īs was common in Prohibition-era New York, Parker socialised in speakeasies after nights at the theatre. In her later years, Parker was dismissive of the self-proclaimed ‘Vicious Circle’ at the Algonquin: ‘The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. With fellow Vanity Fair staffers Robert Benchley and Robert E Sherwood, Parker founded an informal lunch ‘club’ at New York’s Algonquin Hotel, attracting some of the city’s most influential critics and social commentators. The Algonquin Round Table came to epitomise the flippancy, irreverence and hedonism of the Jazz Age. She developed a pithy, acerbic style which placed her firmly in the increasingly popular ‘elevated eyebrow’ school of American journalism. The young journalist Dorothy Rothschild married Edwin Parker in 1917, and soon afterwards replaced PG Wodehouse as Vanity Fair’s theatre critic. It should be thrown with great force,' and 'Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.' Parker's ability to lay bare the follies, myths, and hypocrisies of her characters in such a wickedly funny-sometimes sad-manner is unmatched, and her attention to language, quirks, and the other little details of life make her stories come vividly to life.Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was a poet, writer and critic, most famous today for her scathing wit and savage put-downs. As a founder member of the Algonquin Round Table, she spent the Prohibition era partying with some of the greatest American journalists and literary figures of the day, developing a taste for Scotch whisky in the process. These unabridged selections of more than thirty short stories and poems is essential for any Parker fan and an excellent way for new readers to make the acquaintance of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors, whose memorable lines include: 'She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B,' 'This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. Along with Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table, she dominated American popular literature in the 1920s and 1930s. When it comes to expressing the pleasure and pain of being just a touch too smart to be happy, Dorothy Parker is still the champion, after all these years.

The portable dorothy parker by dorothy parker