Dorothy Parker: stories and biography

Dorothy Rothschild, better known as Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), was an American writer with a truly caustic sense of humor. Her wit and a keen eye on her time led her to be one of the best pens in capturing the “dark side” of urban life.

He was born by chance in New Jersey, but his heart and his work were crossed by New York. He grew up on the Upper West Side and attended Blessed Sacrament Convent School, curious considering his father was Jewish and his stepmother was Protestant. In any case, Dorothy Parker’s formal education ended when she turned 13.

The life of Dorothy Parker It was marked by specific tragedies. In 1913 she lost his entire family. From then on she made a living playing the piano at a dance school, until after many efforts she managed to sell a poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1914. A year later she got a contract as an editorial assistant at Vogue magazine. At that time she married a Wall Street man, Edwin Pond Parker II, but they divorced shortly. He would become the prototype of the macho but also attractive man who appears in practically all of her work.

Dorothy Parker’s career took off violently in 1919. She was fired from Vanity Fair and began working independently, gaining contacts and admirers. Her personal life also took a favorable turn. After the divorce she had an astonishing succession of whirlwind romances. In 1923 she wrote Big Blonde, awarded as the best fantasy story of that year.

For fifteen years he published seven anthologies of stories and poems. The former gained well-deserved and lasting recognition. His prose is spare, sharp, and unfairly described as “humorous.” Dorothy Parker is especially in charge of something that we could define as urban sadness, of women’s relationships with men and the world around them. She often appears some ironic, sarcastic trace, but never clearly humorous. Critics confused her focus on hypocrisy with humor. Something that happens quite often.

In 1934 she married the actor Alan Campbell. The couple moved to Hollywood, where Dorothy Parker wrote the script for a film classic: A Star is Born, 1937, directed by William A. Wellman.

During those years Dorothy Parker maintained an intense center-left political militancy. Among other notable events she founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; A matter that earned her being investigated by the FBI under suspicion of being an agent of the Communist Party. In a short time she became part of the Hollywood Black Lists.

Her life as a writer continued actively, although her personality became more and more elusive. It is known that she had two suicide attempts and that alcoholism was a serious problem in her last years.

Dorothy Parker died of cardiac arrest in 1967, aged 73, in the city she loved, New York. Her ashes rest at the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Black People. In her epitaph, written by herself, one notices something of her fascinating personality:

Excuse My Dust.
(Sorry for the dust).

Dorothy Parker: stories: