Interesting BBC article about Dorothy Parker (from 2017) [View all]

[Mike 03]

Overnight I heard an interview with Gail Crowther, the author of a new book entitled "Dorothy Parker in Hollywood" and it piqued my interest. She is an American author I know nothing about. Then while surfing I found this article about her. I thought it might be of interest to others. She really seemed a fearless, perhaps underappreciated, spirit.

An independent spirit

Perhaps suspicious of her interest in fashion and men, feminists have been wary of claiming Mrs Parker. Even if she’d wanted in, lines like “If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you” would have had her evicted from the sisterhood faster than you can say Simone de Beauvoir (never mind that de Beauvoir herself spent a lot of time weeping in cafes over Sartre’s infidelities). Parker was accused of disloyal attacks on women, of writing for a male audience, of projecting a female rather than a feminist view of the world. So-called second wave feminists were more interested, and began to portray Parker’s humour as a kind of social protest against patriarchal convention.

Certainly, most of the quotes she’s remembered for come from her verse or her Round Circle quips, but her stories feature female characters trying to square exhilarating new choices with the enduring constraints of societal expectation. Some of her heroines are lovelorn, suicidal alcoholics but others are undeniably strong characters. Temporarily untethered by the hedonistic ‘20s, their lives embrace contradictions and challenges only too familiar to 21st Century women.

Parker’s stories also deal with questions of family, race, war and economic inequality, and it wasn’t just on the page that these themes interested her. Ironically, while the hectic turmoil of her private life is a tale well-thumbed, her public life has been forgotten. Throughout, she was actively involved in campaigning for social justice. In 1927, she was fined $5 for ‘sauntering’ in a Boston demonstration protesting the execution of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti; during the Spanish Civil War she travelled to Europe to further the anti-Franco cause; she became national chairman of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. And in her will, she left the bulk of her estate to Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, which brings us back to Baltimore.

Dorothy Parker’s stunning wit and tragic life

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170605-dorothy-parkers-stunning-wit-and-tragic-life