Dorothy Parker's quips and light verse have become part of the American literary landscape, but, as this new collection of her complete short stories demonstrates, Parker's talents extended far beyond brash one-liners and clever rhymes. Many of the stories, originally written for magazines, have never been collected before.
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7 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Ms. Parker's collection of short stories are modern and funny. Many of the dialogues detailed in her works can still be heard uttered today between men and women.
0 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By light
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had never read any Dorothy Parker but was looking for a new seam of reading and having enjoyed my first Patricia Highsmith found this on the "customers who also shopped for this" link and highly recommended on a listmania list.I took it on holiday but I just didn't really enjoy these stories. I read about seven of them and gave up. I found the stories had dated badly and that the tales of relationships lacked resolution/conclusion. Is that it? I found myself saying at the end of each one - they seemed very slight tales or entirely predictable compared to many of those of her peers such as Somerset Maugham.Notfor me.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars
16 reviews
44 of 44 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Lime-Green Look at the Battles of the Sexes
24 Aug 2001
By Brian Kevin Beck
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Mass Market Paperback
And I thought I knew all of the short story writers who write good social satire, especially about the Battle of the Sexes. Do you like John Updike's dissonant couples the Maples? John Cheever's middle-class suburban sashayings? John O'Hara's accounts of evil-propelled mis-treatments and non-treatments? Ring Lardner's tales of hamfisted bunglings? Katherine Mansfield's dry-point etchings of looming males and tendril-like females?
To these I can now add Dorothy Parker--whom I discovered only last month after enjoying the above social-critics for decades. A sharp-tongued journalist, Parker wrote in New York City in the 1920's through the 1950's. She's a key addition to the "fruit salad" of these writers--call her a lime, perhaps--small, tart, acid but somehow quenching our thirst for the truth however tangy?
Parker precisely pinpoints interpersonal shipwrecks. Marriage is--what happens. Often it's like this:
In "New York to Detroit," on the telephone, a man mechanically shoves a desperate woman out of his life. The bad connection aids his "misunderstandings" of her frantic pleas.
In "Here We Are," a just-married couple travel by train to their New York City honeymoon hotel. But we see already the stress-fractures of immature overreactions, and how out of them starts to ooze the lava of hatred which will surely melt down (or burn out) the marriage soon.
In "Too Bad," women are perplexed, even astonished, that the Weldons separated. Such an ideal couple! Except Parker eavesdrops us into the couple's typical evening at home. Its genteel vacancy, polite non-communication, and quiet distancing tell the tale.
Is Parker too crude a caricaturist? Heavy on the satire, too bitter personally? True, her women seem simplified: helplessly-hysterical, nice-nice faceless patseys or creampuffs, captives of bland routines--and of men. Her men similarly seem generic males-of-the-species, "blunt bluff hearty and...meaningless," conventionally-whiskered and all, chauvinistically-insensitive if not cruel. Okay... But if it's overdone, why do I feel I have known and seen these people, or traces of them, often, and not in New York of the 1920's-1950's either?
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Smarter than you, not that you'd know it
28 Dec 2001
By Rob Lightner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Mrs. Parker possessed a venom that incapacitated its victims with sheer brainy pleasure. Her stories are tight, sparse, and crunchy with wit--Oscar Wilde looks like Krusty the Klown in comparison. While some would complain that she rarely strays from critiquing the hypocrisies of the wealthy and powerful, it's hard to argue that there isn't enough material therein to fuel a thousand careers. Her work is essential reading for those of us who aren't perfectly at ease with the ways of the world but find ourselves coping with it anyway.
The Elaine Stritch readings of seven of these stories are also tremendously entertaining and worthy of separate purchase. The delight of sitting in a darkened room, listening to a master actress reading Mrs. Parker, sipping from a tumbler of whiskey, must be experienced to be believed.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Men never make passes at girls reading Dorothy Parker
6 Feb 2003
By Jacquie
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Dorothy Parker is one of the great women writers of the twentieth century. Though her life was marred by alcoholism and rather poor choices, her biting, insightful stories are a window into the twenties and women in general. I read her stories whenever I've had a rough day and need a giggle.
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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