You Might as Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker"Once upon a time --just after World War I to be precise-- the world was bright and new, and Dorothy Parker was one of the brightest and newest people in it." So begins this biography of one of the wittiest American writers of her era by John Keats. It is an intriguing story, sad in many ways, but never less than interesting. Parker is still read widely all these years after her heyday, and she is remembered as a leading figure at the famous Round Table lunches at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Because she said and wrote so many funny lines, it was widely presumed that Dorothy Parker's Life was a ceaselessly merry one. She did have a great deal of fun but Parker was also an artist tormented by her own merciless sensibilities, viewing mankind with a wry, hard suspicion. You might as well live (whose title comes from a poem she wrote about the methods of suicide) is a wonderfully readable biography, as much about a style of life and art as about the kind of person who did so much to express it. John Keats manages to depict his remarkable subject- the most talked about woman of her time with warmth, sympathy, and an understanding of the cruel price she paid for her complex creative gifts. |
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Page 142
... Alexander Woollcott said the woman in the story was Dorothy Parker to the life , that she had created a fictional character who exactly demonstrated something that she knew to be true about herself . Oh , just a little one , Fred , not ...
... Alexander Woollcott said the woman in the story was Dorothy Parker to the life , that she had created a fictional character who exactly demonstrated something that she knew to be true about herself . Oh , just a little one , Fred , not ...
Page 187
... Alexander Woollcott telephoned her , he was not interested in discussing the theater , or her stories , or in chatting about the reasons why she was in town from the Coast . Mr. Woollcott was concerned about the fact that a number of ...
... Alexander Woollcott telephoned her , he was not interested in discussing the theater , or her stories , or in chatting about the reasons why she was in town from the Coast . Mr. Woollcott was concerned about the fact that a number of ...
Page 243
... Alexander Woollcott was dead . When in 1945 Robert Benchley died , she was numbed . It was difficult to think that ... Alexander Woollcott's story about the time he and a young college boy saw her and Mr. Benchley at the theater , and ...
... Alexander Woollcott was dead . When in 1945 Robert Benchley died , she was numbed . It was difficult to think that ... Alexander Woollcott's story about the time he and a young college boy saw her and Mr. Benchley at the theater , and ...
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Alan Campbell Alan's Alexander Woollcott Algonquin group Algonquin Hotel American artist asked Beatrice Ames Beer believed Benchley called Communist Crowninshield dogs Donald Ogden Stewart Dorothy and Alan Dorothy Parker Dorothy's friends Dottie drinking Eddie editor Edwin Parker Ernest Hemingway Esquire Esquire magazine fact farm felt film Frank Sullivan funny girl gossip Harold Ross Hemingway Hemingway's Hollywood humor Jack and Charlie's joke kind knew lady Lillian Hellman literary living looked magazine married matter Miss Dana's Miss Hellman mood Morse Murphys never newspaper once Oppenheimer party Perhaps play poems political radical Robert Benchley Rothschild Round Table seemed Seward Collins Sheean Sherwood short stories Street studio talent talk theater thing thought told twenties Vanity Fair verse Vincent Sheean wanted wife woman women wondered Woollcott word writing written wrote York Yorker young