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quietprofanity Feb. 8th, 2008 05:00 pm)
quietprofanity Feb. 8th, 2008 05:00 pm)This review will probably be made up stuff I said before, but I might as well get it into one place.
I picked up The Portable Dorothy Parker in July 2007, the same day I picked up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I'd been interested in it earlier, mostly for its totally boss cover. Penguin Classics has this new imprint where they get comic book artists to design their covers. Sometimes this turns out not so good ... (Like this monstrosity. I mean, seriously. What the fuck?) But the Dorothy Parker book is the best. Picture on the front, little cartoons of her on the spine and front flap. The back flap has a comic strip version of her biography. The back has 1-panel showcases of her most famous short stories. And Seth's art is very good.
Why do I go into this? After all, it's just a cover and there's that old adage we all know but ... fuck that idea. I picked up this book and I knew 1.) exactly who this lady was and 2.) that I would like her. Then I flipped through, read the poems and laughed. And I am serious when I say that before this I had never heard of Dorothy Parker, or at least not in any way that sticks. (So, yes, Christopher Hitchens -- Dorothy Parker is funny, you asshole.) Then I realized one of my anthology books, Points of View had her short story "A Telephone Call." The story kind of embarrassed me, because it illustrates behavior that's not cool at all but seems so sensible at the time. And I'm a sucker for short stories written in a unique point of view and make you feel like you're not really reading at all.
So for the past seven months I've been reading this book. Not cover-to-cover. I figured out awhile ago that since short stories are self-contained, there's no reason to read them in order. So I'd pick it up and read whenever I felt like it, and read whatever part of the book I felt like at the time. (With a few exceptions, I didn't skip around the poetry sections -- I didn't want to forget what I read and what I didn't.)
Basic impressions here:
Poems: The bad part about the poems is that they're largely repetitive. Dorothy is either sad or wants to die or is sad because of a guy and that makes her want to die. Still, I do think that what elevates her poems above your average 13-year-old Internet poet is a part of her recognizes the futility of her inevitable feelings and finds a black humor in them. LadyDarkBloodDeath-Sama's pain is the deepest pain and darkest pain to ever pain ... Dorothy hurts too, and won't compromise how hurt she is, but knows that, unfortunately, another one is just around the corner.
Also, sometimes she writes about authors, as in Charles Dickens: "Who call him spurious and shoddy/Shall do it o'er my lifeless body." It doesn't get any better than that!
Short Stories: A lot of the same themes here. My favorite of these types of the love-is-hell short stories is "Sentiment." And the one that I find most true (but not funny) is "The Lovely Leave," which if I think about it hard enough can make me cry because ... because ... IT'S ABOUT ME!!! [sob sob] Okay, okay. The book also has some good short stories about racial interaction. A couple of satires of the upper class. A couple of goofy dialogues between a double-talking woman and her frustrated paramour which I actually didn't like so much. (Is that how Dorothy's relationships went when she was HAPPY?) The odd thing is that while they follow a lot of the same themes, all of them are unique in their own way, which was cool.
Oh, and by the by, "Here We Are" is overrated. "Big Blonde" should be taught in schools as a relief to the "Read this feminist story about a woman who kills herself" malarkey.
("Malarkey"? Ugh. I have to watch less Yahtzee reviews. I don't talk like that, do I?)
Essays: Are excellent. Love the one about her fight against fascism and her giving the finger to those who ask her "Why can't you just be FUNNY?" The more things change, no?
Reviews: Are not so excellent. Well, I liked them when she was substituting for Benchley, but her "Constant Reader" reviews seem less about her actually talking about what was good and bad about a book and more about her trying to be clever. So I was not so impressed. Oh well.
Letters: This was also a bit of a letdown. But sometimes people get a bit boring when you look at them up close, so whatever. It was neat to see her "writing" and "with my friends" personality were actually quite similar, though.
And that is the The Portable Dorothy Parker. It's great, and if you don't think so, you must be STUPID!
... I need to get my own material again ... if I ever had it.
I picked up The Portable Dorothy Parker in July 2007, the same day I picked up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I'd been interested in it earlier, mostly for its totally boss cover. Penguin Classics has this new imprint where they get comic book artists to design their covers. Sometimes this turns out not so good ... (Like this monstrosity. I mean, seriously. What the fuck?) But the Dorothy Parker book is the best. Picture on the front, little cartoons of her on the spine and front flap. The back flap has a comic strip version of her biography. The back has 1-panel showcases of her most famous short stories. And Seth's art is very good.
Why do I go into this? After all, it's just a cover and there's that old adage we all know but ... fuck that idea. I picked up this book and I knew 1.) exactly who this lady was and 2.) that I would like her. Then I flipped through, read the poems and laughed. And I am serious when I say that before this I had never heard of Dorothy Parker, or at least not in any way that sticks. (So, yes, Christopher Hitchens -- Dorothy Parker is funny, you asshole.) Then I realized one of my anthology books, Points of View had her short story "A Telephone Call." The story kind of embarrassed me, because it illustrates behavior that's not cool at all but seems so sensible at the time. And I'm a sucker for short stories written in a unique point of view and make you feel like you're not really reading at all.
So for the past seven months I've been reading this book. Not cover-to-cover. I figured out awhile ago that since short stories are self-contained, there's no reason to read them in order. So I'd pick it up and read whenever I felt like it, and read whatever part of the book I felt like at the time. (With a few exceptions, I didn't skip around the poetry sections -- I didn't want to forget what I read and what I didn't.)
Basic impressions here:
Poems: The bad part about the poems is that they're largely repetitive. Dorothy is either sad or wants to die or is sad because of a guy and that makes her want to die. Still, I do think that what elevates her poems above your average 13-year-old Internet poet is a part of her recognizes the futility of her inevitable feelings and finds a black humor in them. LadyDarkBloodDeath-Sama's pain is the deepest pain and darkest pain to ever pain ... Dorothy hurts too, and won't compromise how hurt she is, but knows that, unfortunately, another one is just around the corner.
Also, sometimes she writes about authors, as in Charles Dickens: "Who call him spurious and shoddy/Shall do it o'er my lifeless body." It doesn't get any better than that!
Short Stories: A lot of the same themes here. My favorite of these types of the love-is-hell short stories is "Sentiment." And the one that I find most true (but not funny) is "The Lovely Leave," which if I think about it hard enough can make me cry because ... because ... IT'S ABOUT ME!!! [sob sob] Okay, okay. The book also has some good short stories about racial interaction. A couple of satires of the upper class. A couple of goofy dialogues between a double-talking woman and her frustrated paramour which I actually didn't like so much. (Is that how Dorothy's relationships went when she was HAPPY?) The odd thing is that while they follow a lot of the same themes, all of them are unique in their own way, which was cool.
Oh, and by the by, "Here We Are" is overrated. "Big Blonde" should be taught in schools as a relief to the "Read this feminist story about a woman who kills herself" malarkey.
("Malarkey"? Ugh. I have to watch less Yahtzee reviews. I don't talk like that, do I?)
Essays: Are excellent. Love the one about her fight against fascism and her giving the finger to those who ask her "Why can't you just be FUNNY?" The more things change, no?
Reviews: Are not so excellent. Well, I liked them when she was substituting for Benchley, but her "Constant Reader" reviews seem less about her actually talking about what was good and bad about a book and more about her trying to be clever. So I was not so impressed. Oh well.
Letters: This was also a bit of a letdown. But sometimes people get a bit boring when you look at them up close, so whatever. It was neat to see her "writing" and "with my friends" personality were actually quite similar, though.
And that is the The Portable Dorothy Parker. It's great, and if you don't think so, you must be STUPID!
... I need to get my own material again ... if I ever had it.
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