Dorothy
Parker Slept Here
Dorothy Parker's teenage home on the Upper West Side is marked by
a plaque unveiled on the celebration of her birthday, August 22,
2009.
News
Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (dorothyparker.com) continues
to keep alive the spirit of Dorothy Parker and her Algonquin Round
Table pals. He was recently interviewed by the Voice of America
for a television segment on Parker that will be broadcast via satellite
in Iran. On Mrs. Parker's birthday (August 22), Kevin oversaw the
dedication of a bronze landmark plaque affixed to Parker's teenage
home in Manhattan; it is one of the locations in his book.
Kevin recently released The Lost Algonquin
Round, a collection of 50 pieces by the Vicious Circle that
he co-edited with Robert Benchley's grandson, Nat Benchley. He regularly
speaks to assorted audiences, including members of the Museum of
the City of New York and at various bookstores, about Dorothy Parker
and her cronies, and he continues to lead walking tours of Round
Table sites in Manhattan.
Reviews
“A stunning and highly entertaining book.”
(Library Journal)
“An eye-opening account of the life and
times of Dorothy Parker and a paean to Old Gotham.” (Publishers
Weekly)
Readers “will l revel in the wealth of
material associated with one of New York’s most memorable,
talented and colorful citizens.” (TravelSmart)
Library Journal
Fitzpatrick, founder and president of the Dorothy Parker Society,
has put together a stunning and highly entertaining book that combines
biography, architecture, literature, and travel. It documents the
many sites that Parker—the quintessential New Yorker and celebrated
writer who, upon returning from Los Angeles, once quipped, “I
get up every morning and want to kiss the pavement”—lived,
worked, socialized, and died. In 79 color and 75 black-and-white
photographs and five maps, the book moves from Parker’s first
24 years on the Upper West Side to her declining years on the Upper
East Side, with midtown and the theater district—her hangouts
while writing for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker—sandwiched
in between. With a detailed time line of Parker’s life, a
further reading list, informative Internet destinations, and a comprehensive
index, this first volume in the publisher’s new “ArtPlace”
series is highly recommended.
(top) Publishers Weekly
Part biography, part walking tour, Fitzpatrick’s meticulously
researched first book is an eye-opening account of the life and
times of Dorothy Parker and a paean to Old Gotham. Parker’s
finest work, mostly of verse and short stories for The New Yorker
and Vanity Fair, as well as her reign as Queen of the Algonquin
round table of writers and wits, were integral to literary New York
during the Prohibition era when, as writes Fitzpatrick, “the
speakeasies are always hopping, the party is just beginning.”
This segment of Parker’s life is well-known, and fans will
enjoy using the photos and maps to find Parker’s many apartments,
the Algonquin Hotel, the first office of The New Yorker
and The 21 Club, where connoisseurs of fine cocktails can still
get a crisp Tom Collins (with non-bathtub gin, even). Casual Parker
fans may not know about Parker’s stint as New York’s
first female drama critic (for Vanity Fair), nor her leftist
activism that led to her inclusion on McCarthy’s black list.
Fitzpatrick does an admirable job of summarizing these time periods
in the writer’s life, and also of capturing Parker’s
lonely last days, when Gloria Vanderbilt was one of her few friends.
Less a guidebook than a loving testimonial and guide to a pioneering
New York writer, this book will win Parker-and Fitzpatrick-new fans.
Photos.
(top) New York Times
‘‘Dorothy Parker herself was a Manhattan confection:
equal parts bootleg scotch, Broadway lights, speakeasy smoke, skyscraper
steel, streetcar noise, and jazz horns,’’ Kevin C. Fitzpatrick
writes in A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York
(Roaring Forties Press, $19.95). He continues, ‘‘Dorothy
was the precocious offspring of a Jewish father and a Protestant
mother, a product of a city struggling economically but on the verge
of enormous power and influence.’’
In this Baedeker of Parker’s city . . . it’s
difficult to resist [the author’s] invitation to listen in
on the literary Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel and to visit
the other haunts that Parker and her 30-something pals frequented
in their prime. . . .
In her introduction, Marion Meade, a biographer
of Parker’s, recalled her bittersweet memories of early evening
in the city. ‘‘There is no such hour on the present
clock as 6:30, New York time,’’ Parker wrote. ‘‘Yet,
as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll
live through the night.’’
(top) TravelSmart
After devouring Kevin C. Fitzpatrick’s book, you might be
tempted to think of it as a Dorothy Parker encyclopedia—since
it is filled with just about everything one could hope to discover
about the noted writer, critic, defender of human and civil rights
and humorist—although she herself preferred the term “satirist.”…
This is a book so well documented with street maps,
footnotes, and photographs that one could easily use it to organize
a “Dorothy Parker Walking Tour”; although that’s
one of the things that the author, who is also the founder of the
Dorothy Parked Society, specializes in.
Both the public and private lives of Ms. Parker
are examined; her friends, her enemies, her marriages, her love
affairs, her years with Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, as
well as her work as screenwriter. It turns out that she co-wrote
two of Hollywood’s finest films, the original version of A
Star Is Born and Smash-up; The Story Of A Woman, earning her an
Oscar nomination for each.
Not surprisingly, a fair amount of the book is
devoted to her years as a member of the fabled “round table”
at the Algonquin Hotel which began in 1919 as a welcome-home luncheon
roast in honor of New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott
and continued for the next ten years. Ultimately, the “round
table” was home to such glittering literati as Robert Benchley,
Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Sherwood,
Marc Connelly and Harpo Marx. Fitzpatrick reminds us that Ms. Parker
produced much of her finest and most enduring work during this manic
decade.
Those who are already familiar with Dorothy Parker’s
quick wit thanks to such oft repeated lines such as, “I love
a martini; two at the very most. Three and I’m under the table;
four and I’m under the host”, will revel in the wealth
of material associated with one of New York’s most memorable,
talented and colorful citizens.
