Dorothy Parker lives at present in a mid-town New York hotel. She shares her small apartment with a youthful poodle which has the run of the place and has caused it to look, as Miss Parker says apologetically, somewhat “Hogarthian”: newspapers spread about the floor, picked lamb chops here and there, and a rubber doll—its throat torn from ear to ear—which Miss Parker lobs lefthanded from her chair into corners of the room for the poodle to retrieve—which it does, never tiring of the opportunity. The room is sparsely decorated, its one overpowering fixture being a large dog portrait, not of the poodle, but of a sheepdog owned by the author Philip Wylie and painted by his wife. The portrait indicates a dog of such size that in real life it must dwarf Miss Parker. She is a small woman, her voice gentle, her tone often apologetic. But occasionally, given the opportunity to comment on matters she feels strongly about, her voice rises almost harshly, her sentences punctuated with observations phrased with lethal force. Hers is still the wit which made her a legend as a member of the Algonquin’s Round Table—a humor whose particular quality seems a coupling of a brilliant social commentary with a mind of devastating inventiveness. She seemed able to produce the well-turned phrase for any occasion. A friend remembers sitting next to her at the theatre when the news was announced of the death of the stolid Calvin Coolidge. “How do they know?” whispered Miss Parker.
Readers of this interview, however, will find that Miss Parker has only contempt for the eager reception accorded her wit. “Why it got so bad,” she has said bitterly, “that they began to laugh before I opened my mouth.” And she has a similar attitude disparaging her value as a serious writer.
But Miss Parker is her own worst critic. Her three books of poetry may have established her reputation as a master of light verse, but her short stories are essentially serious in tone—serious in that they reflect Miss Parker’s own life which has been in many ways an unhappy one. “She has distilled,” one commentator said of her, “her sorrow for the light quaffing of a flippant generation.”
If the tone of her short stories is serious, so is her intent. Franklin P. Adams has described it in an introduction to her work: “Nobody can write such ironic things unless he has a deep sense of injustice—injustice to those members of the race who are the victims of the stupid, the pretentious and the hypocritical ...”
INTERVIEWER
Your first job was on Vogue, wasn’t it? How did you go about getting hired, and why Vogue?
DOROTHY PARKER
After my father died there wasn’t any money. I had to work, you see, and Mr. Crowninshield, God rest his soul, paid $12 for a small verse of mine and gave me a job at $10 a week. Well, I thought I was Edith Sitwell. I lived in a boarding house at 103rd and Broadway, paying $8 a week for my room and two meals, breakfast and dinner. Thorne Smith was there, and another man. We used to sit around in the evening and talk. There was no money, but Jesus we had fun.
INTERVIEWER
What kind of work did you do at Vogue?
PARKER
I wrote captions. “This little pink dress will win you a beau,” that sort of thing. Funny, they were plain women working at Vogue, not chic. They were decent, nice women—the nicest women I ever met—but they had no business on such a magazine. They wore funny little bonnets and in the pages of their magazine they virginized the models from tough babes into exquisite little loves. Now the editors are what they should be: all divorcees, and chic, a collection of Ilka Chases; the models are out of the mind of a Bram Stoker, and as for the caption writers—my old job—they’re recommending mink covers at $75 apiece for the wooden ends of golf clubs “—for the friend who has everything.” Civilization is coming to an end, you understand.
INTERVIEWER
Why did you change to Vanity Fair?
PARKER
Mr. Crowninshield wanted me to. Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Benchley—we always called each other by our last names—were there. Our office was across from the Hippodrome. The midgets would come out and frighten Mr. Sherwood. He was about seven feet tall and they were always sneaking up behind him and asking him how the weather was up there. “Walk down the street with me,” he’d ask, and Mr. Benchley and I would leave our jobs and guide him down the street. I can’t tell you, we had more fun. Both Mr. Benchley and I subscribed to two undertaking magazines: The Casket and Sunnyside. Steel yourself: Sunnyside had a joke column called “From Grave to Gay.” I cut a picture out of one of them, in color, of how and where to inject embalming fluid, and had it hung over my desk until Mr. Crowninshield asked me if I could possibly take it down. Mr. Crowninshield was a lovely man, but puzzled. I must say we behaved extremely badly. Albert Lee, one of the editors, had a map over his desk with little flags on it to show where our troops were fighting during the first world war. Every day he would get the news and move the flags around. I was married, my husband was overseas, and since I didn’t have anything better to do I’d get up half an hour early and go down and change his flags. Later on, Lee would come in, look at his map, and he’d get very serious about spies—shout, and spend his morning moving his little pins back into position. (...)
INTERVIEWER
It’s a popular supposition that there was much more communication between writers in the “twenties.” The Round Table discussions in the Algonquin, for example.
PARKER
I wasn’t there very often—it cost too much. Others went. Kaufman was there. I guess he was sort of funny. Mr. Benchley and Mr. Sherwood went when they had a nickel. Franklin P. Adams, whose column was widely read by people who wanted to write, would sit in occasionally. And Harold Ross, the New Yorker editor. He was a professional lunatic, but I don’t know if he was a great man. He had a profound ignorance. On one of Mr. Benchley’s manuscripts he wrote in the margin opposite “Andromache,” “Who’s he?” Mr. Benchley wrote back, “You keep out of this.” The only one with stature who came to the Round Table was Heywood Broun.
INTERVIEWER
What was it about the “twenties” that inspired people like yourself and Broun?
PARKER
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, “You’re all a lost generation.” That got around to certain people and we all said, “Whee! We’re lost.” Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the “twenties” seemed like flops, they weren’t. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.
by Marion Capron, Paris Review | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive.]
Readers of this interview, however, will find that Miss Parker has only contempt for the eager reception accorded her wit. “Why it got so bad,” she has said bitterly, “that they began to laugh before I opened my mouth.” And she has a similar attitude disparaging her value as a serious writer.But Miss Parker is her own worst critic. Her three books of poetry may have established her reputation as a master of light verse, but her short stories are essentially serious in tone—serious in that they reflect Miss Parker’s own life which has been in many ways an unhappy one. “She has distilled,” one commentator said of her, “her sorrow for the light quaffing of a flippant generation.”
If the tone of her short stories is serious, so is her intent. Franklin P. Adams has described it in an introduction to her work: “Nobody can write such ironic things unless he has a deep sense of injustice—injustice to those members of the race who are the victims of the stupid, the pretentious and the hypocritical ...”
INTERVIEWER
Your first job was on Vogue, wasn’t it? How did you go about getting hired, and why Vogue?
DOROTHY PARKER
After my father died there wasn’t any money. I had to work, you see, and Mr. Crowninshield, God rest his soul, paid $12 for a small verse of mine and gave me a job at $10 a week. Well, I thought I was Edith Sitwell. I lived in a boarding house at 103rd and Broadway, paying $8 a week for my room and two meals, breakfast and dinner. Thorne Smith was there, and another man. We used to sit around in the evening and talk. There was no money, but Jesus we had fun.
INTERVIEWER
What kind of work did you do at Vogue?
PARKER
I wrote captions. “This little pink dress will win you a beau,” that sort of thing. Funny, they were plain women working at Vogue, not chic. They were decent, nice women—the nicest women I ever met—but they had no business on such a magazine. They wore funny little bonnets and in the pages of their magazine they virginized the models from tough babes into exquisite little loves. Now the editors are what they should be: all divorcees, and chic, a collection of Ilka Chases; the models are out of the mind of a Bram Stoker, and as for the caption writers—my old job—they’re recommending mink covers at $75 apiece for the wooden ends of golf clubs “—for the friend who has everything.” Civilization is coming to an end, you understand.
INTERVIEWER
Why did you change to Vanity Fair?
PARKER
Mr. Crowninshield wanted me to. Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Benchley—we always called each other by our last names—were there. Our office was across from the Hippodrome. The midgets would come out and frighten Mr. Sherwood. He was about seven feet tall and they were always sneaking up behind him and asking him how the weather was up there. “Walk down the street with me,” he’d ask, and Mr. Benchley and I would leave our jobs and guide him down the street. I can’t tell you, we had more fun. Both Mr. Benchley and I subscribed to two undertaking magazines: The Casket and Sunnyside. Steel yourself: Sunnyside had a joke column called “From Grave to Gay.” I cut a picture out of one of them, in color, of how and where to inject embalming fluid, and had it hung over my desk until Mr. Crowninshield asked me if I could possibly take it down. Mr. Crowninshield was a lovely man, but puzzled. I must say we behaved extremely badly. Albert Lee, one of the editors, had a map over his desk with little flags on it to show where our troops were fighting during the first world war. Every day he would get the news and move the flags around. I was married, my husband was overseas, and since I didn’t have anything better to do I’d get up half an hour early and go down and change his flags. Later on, Lee would come in, look at his map, and he’d get very serious about spies—shout, and spend his morning moving his little pins back into position. (...)
INTERVIEWER
It’s a popular supposition that there was much more communication between writers in the “twenties.” The Round Table discussions in the Algonquin, for example.
PARKER
I wasn’t there very often—it cost too much. Others went. Kaufman was there. I guess he was sort of funny. Mr. Benchley and Mr. Sherwood went when they had a nickel. Franklin P. Adams, whose column was widely read by people who wanted to write, would sit in occasionally. And Harold Ross, the New Yorker editor. He was a professional lunatic, but I don’t know if he was a great man. He had a profound ignorance. On one of Mr. Benchley’s manuscripts he wrote in the margin opposite “Andromache,” “Who’s he?” Mr. Benchley wrote back, “You keep out of this.” The only one with stature who came to the Round Table was Heywood Broun.
INTERVIEWER
What was it about the “twenties” that inspired people like yourself and Broun?
PARKER
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, “You’re all a lost generation.” That got around to certain people and we all said, “Whee! We’re lost.” Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the “twenties” seemed like flops, they weren’t. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.
by Marion Capron, Paris Review | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive.]
