Dorothy Parker is one of my favorite characters of the 20th Century. I like her writing fine, but like her personality more. She encapsulated the brilliance and pathos of the wit who sees through the veil of existence and laughs to keep from crying. She certainly would be on my list of persons from history to share dinner (preferably at the Algonquin), though deep down I fear that she would verbally destroy me.
“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
“This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”
“Tell him I was too fucking busy– or vice versa.”
I understand the need to turn every occurrence or statement into a diamond…or a knife. It is a type of mental gymnastics, and sticking the landing feels like little Christmas. But it also comes from a place of profound pain as it is a safety valve to avoid acknowledgement of facts or people one faces. Both lose some reality when they become raw material for the mill wheel of the brain. And while the resulting product can be a thing of beauty, it is always once removed and comes at a cost.
“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”
“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”
“Ducking for apples — change one letter and it’s the story of my life.”
One doesn’t associate Dorothy Parker with Christmas, except in a “blitzed under the mistletoe” kind of way, so I was surprised to discover that she wrote an almost sincere Christmas poem titled! “The Maid Servant at the Inn.” Relating the reactions to the nativity of a character who didn’t exist.
“It’s queer,” she said; “I see the light
As plain as I beheld it then,
All silver-like and calm and bright-
We’ve not had stars like that again!”
And she was such a gentle thing
To birth a baby in the cold.
The barn was dark and frightening-
This new one’s better than the old.
“I mind my eyes were full of tears,
For I was young, and quick distressed,
But she was less than me in years
That held a son against her breast.
“I never saw a sweeter child-
The little one, the darling one!-
I mind I told her, when he smiled
You’d know he was his mother’s son.
“It’s queer that I should see them so-
The time they came to Bethlehem
Was more than thirty years ago;
I’ve prayed that all is well with them
Remarkably sincere…were it not for the last lines of the last two stanzas, t would be unrecognizable as Parker’s. Whatever her own ideas and beliefs about the Christmas story, she has given us an outsider’s perspective, as she did in life
Be safe, be strong.