What Fresh Hell is This? (Marion Meade)
Not a lot of people outside of obsessive literary circles know who Dorothy Parker was or have read her poetry and short fiction. However, I have always been drawn to her wild and witty personality, her simple and acerbic words and also, I will admit, her artistic and wretched vices — so common among the Literati of the 20s and 30s (She socialized with Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fitzgerald and Hemingway to name a few). This biography was reverent and exhaustive in its depiction of the life of this “Celebrated Wit,” and though it was long, I enjoyed most every page of it.
“What fresh hell is this?” Such was the typical, pessimistic attitude of Parker when the doorbell rang or something new happened to interrupt the old. She was known to like you to your face, and rip you to shreds when you back was turned. She had but a few friends, but those loyal, and an on-again-off-again success monetarily. As in the newspapers, gossip columns and magazines of the day — she was one of the first writers, and a continuing one, in The New Yorker magazine — she is still remembered for her biting one-liners. A sampling:
- When told that President Coolidge was dead, she asked, “Well, how can you tell?”
- A friend of Dorothy’s was described as never being able to hurt a fly. She replied, “Not if it was buttoned up.”
- At one of her first literary jobs at Vogue, Dorothy wrote captions for fashion pictures. One, which almost ran before it was caught, read, “From these foundations of the autumn wardrobe, one may learn that brevity is the soul of lingerie.”
But her personal life was turbulent, and included abortion, two divorces, buckets — if not barrels, if not ships — of alcohol, Communism and other then-disdained political choices, and chronic financial neediness thanks to a drive towards charity and the need to spend every penny in her hand, when she had it.
One of my favorite of her magazine poems, many of which she came to think of as vapid and silly in her later life, spoke of marital problems:
By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying —
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
It’s a long read (414 pages in my copy), but worth it if you have an urge to find out more about this “Wit.” (I’d like to know, how do you get the title of “Wit” anyway? Is it possible in the 21st century?) However, the story of her life is darker and deeper than her cutting words. The biographer did a great job, but her poetry and short fiction depict her personality, too, in a much more dynamic way… a more true way, from a certain point of view. Besides, it kind of depressing to know that her ashes are still lying unclaimed in some attorney’s office in New York.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars – Book club selection
Biography, Non-Fiction |