Product Description

As this complete collection of her short stories demonstrates, Parker's talents extended far beyond brash one-liners and clever rhymes. Her stories not only bring to life the urban milieu that was her bailiwick but lay bare the uncertainties and disappointments of ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Edited by Colleen Breese

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #372536 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Perhaps it was a disservice to collect all of Parker's stories in one place. Despite insistence to the contrary in a reasoned but ultimately unconvincing introduction by Regina Barreca, Parker wrote decently about the same things over and over and over. This volume includes 13 stories and nine sketches which were previously uncollected, but they blend right in with the other material on drinking and divorce among those of a certain class. Parker's stories tend to float in the shallow end of the literary pool. It's not that any individual piece is of poor quality, it's just that, collectively, the the sameness becomes unbearable. Her humor, in particular, strikes the same note every time. A quick run-through of several plots exhibits this perfectly: two women insincerely discuss an impending divorce; a couple gets drunk in preparation for becoming teetotalers the next day. The nine sketches included here are more of the same, minus any actual plot. Descriptions such as "Lloyd wears washable neckties," are amusing, but go no further. It is ironic that feminist critics are attempting to resurrect Parker, since her writing makes her disdain for her own sex perfectly clear: she feels free to disparage these women for whom marriage and dinner parties are everything, but she always goes for the easy laugh at their expense rather than explore the larger context that forced them into such rigid roles.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Now remembered almost soley as the lone female member of the New York writers' group known as the Algonquin Round Table, Parker was one of the most popular and published writers of the interwar years whose stories and light verse were eagerly sought by the best magazines. Although widely represented in short story anthologies, Parker's entire corpus of stories has never been collected in a single volume: editor Breese includes 13 stories and nine "sketches" not previously anthologized. Read as a collection, however, the famous sardonic wit becomes too intrusive, and similarities of plot and character are annoyingly apparent. Reliance on heavy social drinking as a staple of her plots is less humorous to Nineties readers, and some of Parker's ideas on the relationship between the sexes are equally dated. Still, many of the stories, such as the often reprinted "Big Blonde," are moving, and the whole volume is an unsettling portrait of the era. For all fiction and research collections.?Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Parker has been subjected to an inordinate amount of disrespectful criticism. The cult of personality and the elevation of gossip over genuine analysis, combined with the tiresome and offensive habit of sexism, has very nearly obscured the importance of her work. This invaluable collection of nearly 50 of her superb stories, some never before collected, will cut right through that fog because Parker is potent. Her precision is unerring, her humor wicked, her anger searing, and her compassion profound. She has a keen sense of the absurd as well as the unjust, and an incredible eye and ear for detail. Regina Barreca, author of Perfect Husbands (and Other Fairy Tales), provides a rousing and refreshing introduction to Parker's work, pointing out that what was extraordinary about Parker was her art and her wit, not her much maligned personal life, which, frankly, resembled that of many celebrated writers. Donna Seaman

Customer Reviews

Sharp Wit Impales Lives- No Survivors
. Dorothy Parker live most of her life in hotel rooms, because she would rather starve than boil an egg, and smell than wash her own clothes. Her reason, also true, was, "I just need a place to lay my hat and a few friends".
. This biography is complete and helpful. It was a slog to get through the names of the many has-beens that populated her world. I gave it only 4 stars because of those many mentioned without explanation of who they were and why they mattered; and because the subject was such a bum. Another example of how brains, money, and arrogance combine to make a ruined life. Dorothy was brilliant, and her sharp wit entertained thousands during her reign. She wrote about her friends, drinking, money, unfaithfulness- the total of the lives of her many moneyed friends in New York City and Hollywood. An elitist by nature and arrogant by choice, she and her group are shown as desperate, lazy, unhappy, unsober; and quick to criticize the sober, happy, and hardworking for the sin of being boring.
. This is an indictment of the entire New York theater scene, and leftists of all stripes for good measure. Yes, I enjoyed it- and I'll never read it again.

Disappointed - thought she was funnier than this
I bought this book of stories because I thought Parker was funny. Some of her later work is. But all these stories written in the 1920's are depressing and dreary. Where is the humor? I expected some astoundingly humorous work and what it is is depressing mostly. Just my 2 cents.

Biting wit abounds.
Dorothy Parker was a great writer and a great social observant who now gives us a clear window into the past. Her wit is biting and at it's best in this collection, favourite reads are for the individual to decide, however, for me, as well as cheering me up with her razor sharp observation and almost cruel wit. Parker also saddens me for her wit must have been based on the cynacism of one who viewed her life as overindulged and wasted by circumstance, as a wealthy woman and as a woman in her time. Reading her is alawys like laughing with a red hot tear in your eye, for her work is as much an insight into her soul as it is to her lifetime and lifestyle.