[HN Gopher] The heartbreak behind Dorothy Parker's wit
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The heartbreak behind Dorothy Parker's wit
Author : samclemens
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-10-31 14:50 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Lm9Lq
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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....
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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.
| seanhunter wrote:
| 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."
| downut wrote:
| That last one is simply genius.
| adamc wrote:
| Both her wit and her pain are on display in the poem Resume.
| 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...
| stevenwoo wrote:
| 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.
| herodotus wrote:
| 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.
| rmk wrote:
| 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.
| ableal wrote:
| 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
| ajb wrote:
| 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)
| billfruit wrote:
| Obnoxious paywall does not let us see a paragraph or a few lines
| even.
| downut wrote:
| 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.
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