I look forward to seeing many of you there—hopefully well thawed out from the deep freeze! x Jacquie
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| Al Hirshfeld |
Christine's Minutes On an unseasonably mild winter day (on the tails of the polar vortex), twelve members of the literature Club met at the home of Kathy Sullivan, our newest member. She served yet another variation on the newly-devised meal known to us as a Not-Lunch, which included soup, watermelon salad, rosemary nuts, hummus, crudites and brownies, none of which shall henceforth be considered lunch.
There was general lamentation about the abrupt and ill-advised cessation of the publication of our beloved and reviled local rag, The Rivertowns Enterprise. How will we know what artistic presentations are happening in our own backyard? How can we stay abreast of criminal activities without the Police Blotter? And where can we send letters or gratitude or irritation? Joanna informed us that the Friends of the Library may step into the breach, and create a village newsletter with upcoming events, but clearly, the loss of our local newspaper represents a serious diminution of the quality of village life.
President Constance rang the bell at 1 PM exactly. The minutes were read and accepted. Our treasury continues to hold at $170.
Carol announced that the Barkin Corner Bookstore maintained by the Friends of the Library, has a glut of children’s picture books as well as chapter books. With the idea of our club buying the books and giving them away to a local group, Constance will check with the Family Service Society of Yonkers, where she previously placed many books, and Christine will speak with Susan Meigs about the needs of the library at Children’s Village.
Two books were highly recommended by members: North Woods by Daniel Mason and Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney.
As per usual, multiple schedule changes were announced.
Frances Greenberg presented today on Dorothy Parker. She noted that in the spring of 1948, the year of her birth, the Literature Club theme was American Lit, and the works presented included feminism, the Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen and Latin American history.
Frances’s 20th century American Literature subject was Dorothy Parker. What can be said about Mrs. Parker? That like Oscar Wilde, her “dramatic life overshadowed her work”? That she is better known for her spoken witticisms than for her writings? That although she had a dark view of life, she could be awfully funny?
To give us context and perspective, Frances had members read from two introductions to Mrs. Parker’s collected works, separated by three decades: Somerset Maugham writing in 1944 and Brendan Gill in 1973. We heard her famous poem, “Resumé,” an acidic ode to choosing life over suicide.
While we know her better as a writer of stories and light verse, Parker’s careers as a critic and as a screenwriter were more lucrative and longer lasting.
Dorothy Rothschild was born in 1893 in Long Branch, New Jersey, where her family summered. She grew up on the Upper West Side. Her mother was Christian, her father was Jewish, and neither were religious; still, both of their families disapproved of the marriage. Her mother died when Dorothy was 4. Their father’s new wife was disliked by all four children. The step-mother died three years after marrying. Suffice to say it was a chaotic household without a mother figure in charge. Dorothy dropped out of boarding school after 2 years, effectively ending her schooling at age 14. Her father died when she was 20, and from that point on, she was on her own. She submitted stories and poems to magazines, and Vanity Fair accepted one. Months later, she had a job at Vogue writing captions.
Dorothy met Edward Pond Parker II while spending the summer in Branford, Connecticut with her sister and brother-in-law. It was love at first sight between the funny, bright, petite brunette writer, and the tall, blonde, alcoholic WASP stockbroker. They were married in 1917 in Yonkers. A month later, Edward Parker went into the Army and drove for the Ambulance Corps. Working on the front lines he became addicted to morphine. Back in New York, Mrs. Parker had become the drama critic for Vanity Fair, and was a regular member of the Algonquin Round Table. When Edward returned from the army, he managed to get off morphine, but kept drinking. The couple began fighting, and not very nicely. Mrs. Parker also drank copiously, but for many years she kept it under control. In 1927, Harold Ross, founder of The New Yorker, asked her to review books for the magazine; her by-line was the Constant Reader.
The twenties were a good time for Mrs. Parker. She was a regular diner and drinker at the Algonquin. In 1926 she published Enough Rope, a collection of light verse. The book was successful, but for Mrs. Parker, who had high literary standards, it was not good enough. Her drinking morphed from social to alcoholic, and she made bad choices in her lovers. She discovered politics in 1927, during Sacco and Vanzetti trial, which she protested. In 1937, she went to Spain and wrote about the Civil War. Much later, upon her death in 1967, her entire estate (which was not vast) was bequeathed to Martin Luther King Jr. He was completely surprised.
Beginning in childhood, and for the rest of her life, Mrs. Parker seesawed between affluence and relative poverty. She never quite settled down, and lived mostly in hotel rooms. She met her second husband, Alan Campbell, in 1931. The actor/writer was eleven years younger. They married in 1933, and often worked together on screenplays. For a while, he was able to bring order and domesticity into her life. At age 43, Mrs. Parker conceived a child, but miscarried. She never had children. The couple divorced in 1948 over an affair Campbell had with an Englishwoman during the war, but they remarried in 1950, only to separate yet again.
Meanwhile, Senator Joe McCarthy was on a witch hunt to root out Commies in Hollywood. Mrs. Parker was questioned by the FBI, who asked if her scripts were making Americans more sympathetic to Communism. She replied that she couldn’t get her dogs to behave, let alone a movie audience. She was not called before Congress.
During the fifties Mrs. Parker intermittently saw Campbell, and even collaborated with him. She also wrote brilliant stories, and reviewed books for Esquire. But she had trouble with deadlines, and Esquire eventually gave up on her in 1962. She was living at the Volney Residential Hotel when she died of a heart attack, aged 73, in 1967.
Members were entertained and enlightened as we read a few of her stories. “The Little Hours” is a brilliant soliloquy/rant about insomnia, and hating to count sheep. It includes such great lines as “This way leads to galloping melancholia.” And “Bed before morning, Sailors take warning.” “The Wonderful Old Gentleman” is a poignant and yet scathingly funny story about a family gathered in the living room, described as an “admirably complete museum of objects suggesting strain, discomfort, or the tomb”, while the old gentleman is dying upstairs. Without commentary, Mrs. Parker lays bare the years of sacrifice by the Bains, and exploitation by the Whittakers, reminding some of Jane Austen’s brilliant scene in Mansfield Park when Fanny Dashwood persuades her husband to impoverish his half-sisters, despite a deathbed promise to his father. We also read “Ethereal Mildness” which deviously extols a book called Appendicitis by Thew Wright, AB, MD, FACS, as a cure for insomnia. Who knew that beholding a “Vertical Section of Peritoneum” could induce such hilarity in the reader?
At 3 PM, we reluctantly ended a delightful afternoon discovering Mrs. Parker’s wit and wisdom.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary
