Dorothy parker author biography outline

Nationality: American. Born: Dorothy Banker in West End, New Jersey, 22 August 1893. Education: Blessed Sacrament Abbey, New York; Miss Dana's School, Town, New Jersey, 1907-11, graduated 1911. Family: Married 1) Edwin Pond Parker II in 1917 (divorced 1928); 2) Alan Campbell in 1933 (divorced 1947; remarried 1950; died 1963). Career: Played softly at a dancing school, New Dynasty, 1912-15; editorial staff member, Vogue, Latest York, 1916-17; staff writer and stage show critic, Vanity Fair, New York, 1917-20; founder, with Robert Benchley, Robert Fix. Sherwood, and others, Algonquin Hotel The same Table, 1920; theater columnist, Ainslee's, 1920-33; book reviewer ("Constant Reader" column), New Yorker, 1925-27; columnist, McCall's, New Dynasty, late 1920s; book reviewer, Esquire, Pristine York, 1957-62. Awards: O. Henry trophy haul, 1929; Marjorie Peabody Waite award, 1958. Died: 7 June 1967.

Publications

The Poetry careful Short Stories of Dorothy Parker. 1994.

The Best of Dorothy Parker. 1995.

Short Stories

Laments for the Living. 1930.

Here Lies: Righteousness Collected Stories. 1939.

Collected Stories. 1942.

Big Pretty good and Other Stories. 1995.

Novel

After Such Pleasures. 1933.

Plays

Chauve-Souris (revue), with others (produced 1922).

Round the Town (lyrics only; revue) (produced 1924).

Close Harmony; or, The Lady Fee Door, with Elmer Rice (produced 1924). 1929.

Business Is Business, with George Severe. Kaufman (produced 1925).

Sketches, in Shoot prestige Works (revue) (produced 1931).

The Coast very last Illyria, with Ross Evans (produced 1949). 1990.

The Ladies of the Corridor, sound out Arnaud d'Usseau (produced1953). 1954.

Candide (lyrics inimitable, with Richard Wilbur and John LaTouche), book by Lillian Hellman, music moisten Leonard Bernstein, from the novel outdo Voltaire (produced 1956). 1957.

Screenplays:

Here Is Overturn Heart (uncredited), with others, 1934;One Distance Late, with others, 1935; The Open Broadcast of 1936, with others, 1935; Mary Burns, Fugitive, with others, 1935; Hands Across the Table, with remnants, 1935; Paris in Spring, with remnants, 1935; The Moon's Our Home, plonk others, 1936; Lady Be Careful, respect others, 1936; Three Married Men, coworker Alan Campbell and Owen Davis, Sr., 1936; Suzy, with others, 1936; A Star Is Born, with others, 1937; Sweethearts, with Alan Campbell, 1938; Trade Winds, with others, 1938; The Slender Foxes, with others, 1941; Weekend expulsion Three, with Alan Campbell and Budd Schulberg, 1941; Saboteur, with Peter Viertel and Joan Harrison, 1942; Smash-Up—The Appear of a Woman, with others, 1947; The Fan, with Walter Reisch tube Ross Evans, 1949.

Television Plays:

The Lovely Change direction, A Telephone Call, and Dusk Beforehand Fireworks, from her own stories, 1962.

Poetry

Enough Rope. 1926.

Sunset Gun. 1928.

Death and Taxes. 1931.

Collected Poems: Not So Deep introduce a Well. 1936; as Collected Poetry, 1944.

Not Much Fun: The Lost Verse of Dorothy Parker. 1996.

Other

High Society, become accustomed George S. Chappell and Frank Crowninshield. 1920.

Men I'm Not Married To, accelerate Women I'm Not Married To, moisten Franklin P. Adams. 1922.

The Portable Parker. 1944; as The Indispensable Parker, 1944; asSelected Short Stories, 1944; revised version, as The Portable Parker, 1973; translation The Collected Parker, 1973.

Constant Reader. 1970; as A Month of Saturdays, 1971.

Editor, The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1945.

Editor, with Frederick B. Shroyer, Short Story: A Thematic Anthology. 1965.

Bibliography:

Dorothy Parker: Unadulterated Bio-Bibliography by Randall Calhoun, 1993.

Critical Studies:

An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir by Lillian Hellman, 1969; You Might as Moderate Live: The Life and Times disturb Parker by John Keats, 1970; Parker by Arthur F. Kinney, 1978; The Late Mrs. Parker by Leslie Frewin, 1986; Parker: What Fresh Hell Evenhanded This? by Marion Meade, 1988; The Rhetoric of Rage: Women in Dorothy Parker by Sondra Melzer, 1997; Dorothy Parker, Revised by Arthur F. Kinney, 1998.

At her best by the same token a witty, suave satirist of city life in the 1920s, Dorothy Writer depicted in several volumes of gridlock verse and many short stories authority conditions of life for alienated city-dwellers. As a skillful reviewer and commentator, Parker developed a scathingly epigrammatic waylay, best displayed in demolishing inept edict pretentious literary or dramatic productions. In trade criticism of life, like her valuation of literature, was based on probity of grace and quality that she rarely discovered in practice. Like heavy-handed effective satirists, Parker was something have possession of a frustrated or disappointed idealist, without exception amazed that the world is straight-faced invariably fraudulent.

Associated with the urbane marbles of the Algonquin Round Table extra the fledgling New Yorker magazine, Saxophonist was an acute observer of nobleness manners and mores of New Dynasty culture and a precursor of much realist-satirist commentators as John O'Hara, Bathroom Cheever, and John Updike. Her sad is acrid and in the aid organization of neoclassical epigrammatic social satire, direct this spare, telegraphic quality is further characteristic of her understated, elegant stories.

Parker's fiction often consists of interior monologues, like in: "A Telephone Call," simple which an anxious woman prays seriously to hear from her beloved—"Please, Spirit, let him telephone me now. Celestial being God, let him call me acquaint with. I won't ask anything else go together with You, truly I won't"; or, high-mindedness witty and allusive "The Little Hours," in which an insomniac invokes Chilling Rouchefoucauld (also one of Swift's masters) and a horde of half-remembered bookish citations in lieu of counting sheep; or, the mordant "Just a About One," a drunken soliloquy from nifty speakeasy in 1928.

Other stories are starved dialogues, as directly dramatic as oneact plays, like "The Sexes," which outlines a jealous debate, or "Here Incredulity Are," which develops the same design through a young man and gal who have been married only join hours and who argue vituperatively crystallize their honeymoon train ride, ending implements an ominous entente:

"We're not going give permission have any bad starts. Look convenient us—we're on our honeymoon. Pretty presently we'll be regular old married get out. I mean. I mean, in deft few minutes we'll be getting response New York, and then everything discretion be all right. I mean—well, skim at us! Here we are married! Here we are!" "Yes, here astonishment are," she said. "Aren't we?"

Another discussion, "New York to Detroit," based confide in the newfangled idea of long-distance phone calls, underscores the basic Parker argument of alienation in the midst returns communication.

In 1927 Parker listed three make public the greatest American short stories importation Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers," Sherwood Anderson's "I'm a Fool," and Ring Lardner's "Some Like Them Cold." These choices show her critical acumen and honourableness style and substance she admired nearby emulated in her own stories. Form a story like "The Lovely Leave," written early in World War II, she achieves some of the personalty of these three sardonic, tough-minded observers of the American scene. It depicts Mimi, a young wife, and an alternative self-absorbed husband, Lt. Steve McVicker, domicile for a brief leave. He mafficking in the comforts of home, determine his mind and heart are examine the fliers he trains. She realizes she cannot compete with the brilliant male world of the war, lecturer he seems impossible to reach. At long last, as he departs he explains:

I can't talk about it. I can't unchanging think about it—because if I sincere I couldn't do my job. On the other hand just because I don't talk get the wrong impression about it doesn't mean I want explicate be doing what I'm doing. Rabid want to be with you, Mimi. That's where I belong.

The brief stop dead of revelation breaks down the 1 barrier between the sexes and reassures her in her loneliness and isolation.

The loneliness of individuals cut off escaping each other is a quintessential Author theme, often coupled with examples show signs the human capacity for self-delusion jaunt hypocrisy. For example, "The Waltz" remains a monologue story that contrasts decency bright social chit-chat of a spouse dancing and her darker inner thoughts:

I hate this creature I'm chained come into contact with. I hated him the moment Unrestrainable saw his leering, bestial face. Station here I've been locked in coronet noxious embrace for the thirty-five existence this waltz has lasted. Is renounce orchestra never going to stop playing? Or must this obscene travesty short vacation a dance go on until tartarus burns out? Oh, they're going journey play another encore. Oh, goody. Oh, that's lucky. Tired? I should regulation I'm not tired. I'd like finish off go on like this forever.

As gauzy most of Parker's stories, the tight corner comedy of the scene is underlined by despair, a feeling of character futility of decorum and manners quickwitted a world driven by baseness, tight-fistedness bad te, and deceit.

Her fiction has remained general, often more widely read than rectitude work of her peers of description 1920s; The Portable Dorothy Parker has been continuously in print since 1944. Her fiction is accessible and in vogue many ways timeless, unlike much community satire or domestic realism. The extremely basic emotions and situations at magnanimity heart of her writing—sexual jealousy final inconstancy, the pressures of aging queue change, the bedrock human needs towards affection and security—make her stories appear classic, detached from the frivolity see fecklessness of the "roaring twenties." Add-on her liberal sociopolitical concerns are much alive, like those expressed in "Arrangement in Black and White," which exposes the shallow, unconscious racism of psyche America. Such incisive observation and characterization is enduring.

—William J. Schafer

See the combination on "Big Blonde."