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 161
... play The House Beautiful was , she said , " the play lousy . " Increasingly depressed by the plays she had to suffer through as the theatrical season wore on , she took to ending her columns , " Mr. Benchley , please come home . Nothing ...
... play The House Beautiful was , she said , " the play lousy . " Increasingly depressed by the plays she had to suffer through as the theatrical season wore on , she took to ending her columns , " Mr. Benchley , please come home . Nothing ...
Page 252
... play , Time said the Texas audience and critics liked it , calling it the best of Dallas ' eight - play season , and thinking it to be a cinch for a Broadway run . " Though the authors refused to share in this prediction , " Time ...
... play , Time said the Texas audience and critics liked it , calling it the best of Dallas ' eight - play season , and thinking it to be a cinch for a Broadway run . " Though the authors refused to share in this prediction , " Time ...
Page 262
... play . ' We were going to write a murder play and then later he asked if I ever thought of the great number of women who live alone in hotels . I'd lived in hotels for thirty years and went into that — the unwanted , wasted women who ...
... play . ' We were going to write a murder play and then later he asked if I ever thought of the great number of women who live alone in hotels . I'd lived in hotels for thirty years and went into that — the unwanted , wasted women who ...
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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