Making Whoopee with the Intelligentzia

By April 7, 1928, Dorothy Parker (as "Constant Reader") had written about a dozen "Reading and Writing" columns for The New Yorker. In all of them she'd managed to work her world-weariness into what was supposed to be a "book column." Parker had a way of making her own ennui sound interesting, and if you're going to read about somebody's ennui, that's a good thing.

In this column ("Mr. Lewis Lays it On with a Trowel") she gives us a glimpse into the ubiquitous party games of the late '20s. After the sudden decline of mahjong circa 1924, it seems the social fads were coming and going awfully fast. The New Yorker columnists -- who tended to go to Those Sorts of Parties -- constantly bemoaned the latest party diversion, but Dorothy Parker gives us an excellent (and "fun to read") list:

I have listened to poets rendering their own odes. I have had the plots of yet unwritten plays given me in tiniest detail, I have assisted in charades, I have been politely mystified by card tricks, I have even been sent out of the room and been forced, on my return, to ask the assembled company such questions as I hoped might reveal to me what Famous Character in Fiction they represented. I have spent entire evenings knee-deep in derry-down-derries, listening to quaint old English ballads done without accompaniment; I have been backed into cold corners by pianos while composers showed me how that thing they wrote three years before Gershwin did "The Man I Love" went; I know a young man who has an inlaid ukelele. You see these gray hairs? Well, making whoopee with the intelligentzia was the way I earned them.

I don't personally know anybody with an inlaid ukelele, and I don't tend to go to parties (let alone ones where they play games)...but if I WAS stuck someplace watching card tricks I'd probably feel the need to vent as well.

Rotarians of Literature

In the February 11, 1928 edition of The New Yorker, Dorothy Parker gives a priceless description of what she calls "Literary Rotarians." I'm not sure exactly who she's making fun of, but I assume they're up-and-coming authors who are always glad-handing around, desperate for a sale or for a valuable contact. Or maybe they're just "Constant Readers," like herself.

They are all bright and brisk and determinedly young. They skitter from place to place with a nervous quickness that suggests the movements of those little leggy things that you see on the surface of ponds, on hot Summer days. The tips of their noses are ever delicately a-quiver for the scent of news, and their shining eyes are puckered a bit, with the strain of constant peering. Their words are quicker than the ear, and spoken always in syncopation, from their habitually frantic haste to get out the news that the Doran people have tied up with the Doubleday, Page outfit, or that McCall's Magazine has got a new high-pressure editor. Some of them are women, some of them are men. This would indicate that there will probably always be more of them.

I love Dorothy Parker's flippant, oddball style, even when she's describing something I couldn't care less about. "Those little leggy things" sounds SO much better than "water strider."

Update: She's talking about "literary folk," who go to all sorts of literary functions and who consider themselves to be writers -- of novels or of newspaper columns -- but who never write anything that is remembered. Or who never write anything at all.

"Constant Reader"

In the latter months of 1927, "Constant Reader" started a series of book reviews in The New Yorker called "Reading and Writing." True to the title they were much more than just simple reviews. In this article from the distressingly-long November 19, 1927 issue (the issues got fatter around Christmas, mainly due to increased advertising), "Constant Reader" spends most of her word count telling us about her paper-cutter:

There was a time when that paper-cutter and I were like sisters. Whever I went, there was the paper-cutter. I would sit down in a comfortable chair, and there it was; I would step out of bed on a crisp Winter morning, and there it was; I would reach into the dim depths of a bureau drawer, and there it was, again. I grew to know it so well that I had my own secret pet-name for it. I used to call it "that lousy thing."

Yes, "Constant Reader" was actually Dorothy Parker, and it's a delight to have her finally join the magazine full time. As anxious as I am for The New Yorker to finally get somewhat SERIOUS -- beyond Morris Markey's brilliant news columns and the ongoing expose of Broadway graft -- at least Dorothy Parker's jokes are DIFFERENT. She had a unique style that I won't try to analyze until I've finally read that huge collection of her work that I have sitting in my bookshelf.