Book Review - Dorothy Parker's The Portable Dorothy Parker
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: 1944
Format: Paperback, 626 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
Hazel is a beautiful busty blonde, always putting on a show for one lover or another. Marriage allows her to finally be herself, which doesn't please her husband one bit. He misses the good-time girl he married. She takes to drinking and hanging out with her neighbor who always seems to have a plethora of men at her place. One particular man takes a shine to her and her husband is out of the picture and she's a kept woman. Until one day she isn't. She moves from one man to another, being the good-time girl, a fate she's destined for as even suicide didn't take. Suicide is a theme returned to again and again, "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." All these people living desperate lives, barely scraping by. Yet the Crugers are well off. They have staff to take care of their every whim. Miss Wilmarth is a nurse that works for them. She is neither above nor below stairs. She is in her own world. But her employers let her little by little into their world. Of course to the Crugers she is a joke. They believe she is unattractive and like showing off their "Horsie." Because if one thing is true, those with money will make sport of their lessers. So the truth of "society" is revealed, it is there to be the punching bag, a position they aren't used to. But the truth is, behind the veil even those who are well off, those with jewels and pearls, they too suffer from melancholia. The world makes everyone suffer in the end. Though one lady out on a date might just adopt "Horsie," it's something she's prone to do after "just a little one." But as she gets drunker and drunker, her companion Fred has to hear her slur the reputation of their mutual acquaintance, Edith. Because the alcohol makes her maudlin and apt to say what she shouldn't even be thinking. But it will all be alright if they adopt just a little horse... Alcohol, class, loneliness, depression, this is the world as it is, but also with the cut and thrust of someone who has been there.
Everyone knows Dorothy Parker even if they don't know they know her. She is remembered primarily for her pithy one-liners. If you've ever heard someone say that men "seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses" that's one of hers. As is "what fresh hell can this be?" And "I hate writing, I love having written." Timeless snark that people use to this day, even if it's been slightly bastardized and altered. Despite her dislike of writing her output was prodigious, a poet, a reviewer, and short story writer, she did it all. What's more she even followed the writers inevitable journey west to Hollywood and garnered two Academy Award nominations. One of which might surprise you. She just happened to write the first version of A Star is Born. Though personally I'm more impressed with her doing Saboteur for Hitchcock. Her stories became wildly popular due to her and Alexander Woollcott producing an anthology of her work for servicemen stationed overseas during World War II. It was finally published for the masses in 1944 as The Portable Dorothy Parker. Since then it's been revised twice to add in more material and make it the behemoth that it is today, a paperback clocking in at 626 pages that could clock anyone if wielded properly. One would think that reading this vast conglomeration of work from her scatching review of The House at Pooh Corner to letters about staying with friends in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Europe to poetry and prose might give you a little whiplash. That you might just be overwhelmed by the sheer disparate quality of her work. But for me, this wasn't the case. Instead I felt like I got a glimpse of this fully rounded character, and boy was she a character. Her poetry showed her depth of feeling along with her astounding use of language. Her letters showed her inner life and her social conscience and how she was always fighting for the underdog, even if it did get her on the Hollywood blacklist. Her reviews showed that even if you were her friend she'd come at you both barrels blazing. And her short stories showed her wicked wit. While many people point to "Big Blonde" as her best story, might I counter with "The Game." Written for Cosmopolitan in 1948 it's about a newlywed couple hosting a few of their friends at their apartment. The game they play becomes more and more vicious with secrets revealed, especially about the husband's first wife... With this story alone you can see why she worked with Hitchcock. It's a marital version of Rope. You NEED this story in your life so you might as well buy the book. You wouldn't want her ghost showing up and decimating you with the perfect pithy put-down now would you?
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