The heartbreak behind Dorothy Parker's wit | Hacker News Reader

The heartbreak behind Dorothy Parker's wit

washingtonpost.com

42 pointssamclemens15 comments

Perhaps the most famous example of her wit is her damning review of Katherine Hepburn in a broadway play: "She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A. to B.", but I quite like another less well-known one which was when someone challenged her to come up with a pun and to make things more difficult she had to use the word "horticulture". Parker came up with "You can lead a 'horticulture', but you can't make her think."

That last one is simply genius.

It's very clever wordplay, especially on-demand, but, for my money, the best true puns work both ways.

Both her wit and her pain are on display in the poem Resumé. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44835/resume-56d22415...

She lived in a difficult period for bright women who needed to express their thoughts. It's still a difficult period for such women, although it has improved.

She left her estate to MLK. She was the right stuff. Some details here: https://dorothyparker.com/dorothy-parker-haunts/baltimore-na...

It's darkly funny and tragic given what we know about her suicide attempts, although we should separate fiction from autobiography, I'm reminded of Virginia Woolf's contemporary novels where it feels like there's always adult characters making jokes about committing suicide, it really stands out now since Woolf chose the river.

The 1920's and 30's were a particularly unfortunate time to be a young woman, because after the slaughter of young men in ww1, not only were young men then (hypocritically) put on a pedestal, but there were fewer to go round, making for a somewhat unnatural competition between women. The results in terms of women's lives can be found in the literature of this era, although not always foregrounded (for example, in Dorothy L Sayers)

Dorothy Parker died in 1967. In 1972, my university presented its first ever computer science course: a second year course, teaching both IBM 360 assembly language and Fortran. The driving force behind this was Derek Henderson, one of the first people to receive a PhD in Computer Science. And a member of the team that designed the IBM 360.

What did this have to do with Dorothy Parker? Well the year I took my first Computer Science course from Prof. Henderson (as he was known to me), I discovered two passions in my life - programming, and the very cool women on campus who all seemed to be carrying the book "The Portable Dorothy Parker" with them everywhere.

I was fortunate to come across this book in one of the many "Little Free Libraries" that dot my neighborhood. I dip into the massive tome every now and then and am consistently surprised by the quality of the writing. The writing conveys her feelings, and there is a clear "woman's voice" that comes through.

https://people.csail.mit.edu/bkph/articles/Derek_Henderson_C...

https://archive.ph/Lm9Lq

Guessing this is the book cover depicting Dorothy Parker that the author of the article refers to: https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads....

I'd rather focus on her literary and political work than her appearance, and plan to return to this thread later on that point, but yes, she does serve as a caution to overindulgence in drink and smoke.

Fetching in her youth, though:

<https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03...>

On politics: the article briefly mentions her assistance to Martin Luther King, Jr. For quite some time her remains were interred at the NAACP's headquarters, to be reinterred when the NAACP moved from Baltimore to Washington, DC.

In a collection of short stories I'd read recently I was struck by several which touched on race and racism. One involved what we'd now probably call a "Karen", making increasingly effusive, and non-credible, claims to race-blindness. The character's dialogue was absolute cringe, and this was obviously intentional on Parker's part.

In case anyone else is curious about the photo not shown in the article, the paperback edition mentioned is probably this: https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Dorothy-Parker/dp/0140150749

I've used this one all my life:

"Eternity is a ham and two people"

Especially when the spouse's company simply mails one to us every year, and I want to give it away.

Obnoxious paywall does not let us see a paragraph or a few lines even.

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