Constant Reader

Name: Constant Reader
Author: Dorothy Parker
ISBN: 9781961341265

by Dorothy Parker

2024McNally Jackson BooksISBN 9781961341265

History

About this book

Dorothy Parker’s complete weekly New Yorker column about books and people and the rigors of reviewing. When, in 1927, Dorothy Parker became a book critic for the New Yorker, she was already a legendary wit, a much-quoted member of the Algonquin Round Table, and an arbiter of literary taste. In the year that she spent as a weekly reviewer, under the rupic “Constant Reader,” she created what is still the most entertaining book column ever written. Parker’s hot takes have lost none of their heat, whether she’s taking aim at the evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson (“She can go on like that for hours. Can, hell—does”), praising Hemingway’s latest collection (“He discards detail with magnificent lavishness”), or dissenting from the Tao of Pooh (“And it is that word ‘hummy,’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up”). Introduced with characteristic wit and sympathy by Sloane Crosley, Constant Reader gathers the complete weekly New Yorker reviews that Parker published from October 1927 through November 1928, with gimlet-eyed appreciations of the high and low, from Isadora Duncan to Al Smith, Charles Lindbergh to Little Orphan Annie, Mussolini to Emily Post

Publication Details

Publisher: McNally Jackson Books
Published: 2024
ISBN: 9781961341265
Language: English

About Dorothy Parker

> "I like to have a martini, > Two at the very most. > After three I'm under the table, > after four I'm under my host." > — Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker was an American writer and poet, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles.. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as [The New Yorker][1] and as a founding member of the [Algonquin Round Table][2]. Following the breakup of that circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed as her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the infamous Hollywood blacklist. Parker went through three marriages (two to the same man) and survived several suicide attempts, but grew increasingly dependent on alcohol. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, her literary output and her sparkling wit have endured. See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker [1]: http://www.newyorker.com/search/query?query=dorothy+parker&queryType=nonparsed&submitbtn.x=0&submitbtn.y=0&submitbtn=Submit [2]: http://algonquinroundtable.org/