Book Review : Ramshackle Bio of Dorothy Parker

The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker by Leslie Frewin (Macmillan: $19.95; illustrated)

Boldly presented as “the first full-scale biography of Dorothy Parker,” this book is little more than a ramshackle anthology of threadbare ripostes from the Algonquin Round Table, or, as Leslie Frewin calls it, “that bastion of prolific prolixity.” There hasn’t been prose so absurdly alliterative or maladroitly modified since Spiro Agnew was returned to the private sector. Frewin relies heavily upon a thesaurus; a dangerous dependence leading to ludicrous distortions of meaning. How would Parker have reacted at hearing her verse called “atrophying”? Would she have realized Frewin needed a synonym for “withering” and forgiven him? Not on your life.

Though the author has assiduously recycled every last shred of information pertaining to his subject, using much of it twice, he hasn’t presented a single fresh observation, insight or fact. Quoting at length from Parker’s friends and acquaintances, living and dead, it’s immediately obvious he never had the good fortune to meet the woman herself, either in her heyday or thereafter. Though Dorothy Parker designed her life to be virtually Frewin-proof, leaving neither immediate survivors, unfinished manuscripts nor treasure troves of correspondence, she underestimated biographical doggedness.

Paste and Prejudice

Undeterred by a lack of primary sources, Frewin soldiers on with scissors, paste and prejudice, his antipathy unconcealed, his attitude gratuitously snide. “Her parents’ hypocrisy had thrown up a singular benefit to her in the shape of books, which lined several corridors as well as the library of the West 80th Street brownstone. They had been collected by her father, a mute symbol of perhaps some exaggeration affectation that was required to indicate to visitors the erudition of its owner”--the craven word perhaps making the sentence no less derisive. Elsewhere, Frewin is merely fatuous; his main contribution to the Parker hagiography a highly conjectural account of her school days at Miss Dana’s in Morristown, N.J. “For Dorothy Rothchild, it was a world away from the cloistered conformity of the Sacred Heart convent back in New York. . . . Dorothy flowered, happy here despite the many rules and regulations . . . glad to be away from her father’s prim and proper social facia” (sic) and her new stepmother’s “tireless and tiresome fantasies of hellfire and brimstone.” Happily, the Algonquin connection would provide her with a loyal audience of appreciative Boswells eager to record her aphorisms. We’re lucky to have them.

As soon as Parker graduates, we’re back to familiar New York territory, breezing through the early days as a reviewer for Vanity Fair, speculating about the short-lived first marriage to Edwin Pond Parker II, marveling yet again at her quick success with the Algonquin wits, and sanctimoniously commenting upon Parker’s growing tolerance for pure grain alcohol mixed with orange juice. Here Frewin interrupts himself to supply a cursory overview of the Roaring ‘20s, tramping ground thoroughly covered by a long roster of previous observers, notably Margaret Case Harriman, Robert Drennan and John Keats. Next, we’re given titillating peeks into Parker’s closet and her bureau drawers full of lacy underwear. We’re entrusted with a few details of her unhappy love affairs--skimpy fare heavily padded with quixotic excerpts from a variety of sources.

In addition to dozens of song lyrics and chunks of other people’s novels and plays, we’re treated to Franklin Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor Day address, a simplistic textbook lecture on manic depression, a comparison of the Bloomsbury set to the Algonquin crowd, and a mixed bag of other unexpected and irrelevant filler, up to the fair use limit and way beyond into special permission country.

Hegira Continues

Many of Parker’s own poems and stories are included, followed by the biographer’s ponderous meditations on their relevance to her life. Considerable space is given to her years in Hollywood (“Poughkeepsie With Palms”) with Alan Campbell; a chance for Frewin to describe, one more time, the wild and wonderful history of the Garden of Allah, with its entire guest list enumerated and all the hoary old pranks exhumed. The hegira continues with Parker and Campbell’s Bucks County phase; complete lists of famous neighbors, worse weather, leering allusions to Campbell’s sexual proclivities and drinking problems; the entire section quoted from S. J. Perelman with further commentary by Lillian Hellman, neither of whom can be called an unimpeachable source, though their prose style is a vast improvement over Frewin’s. Back to Hollywood and the bleak years of political radicalism, the McCarthy hearings, the death of Campbell; Parker’s deteriorating health and the disappointing tries at playwriting.

The book lumbers to a close with Parker’s death in a small New York hotel in 1967--a sad and solitary end, but marked by an elegiac New York Times obituary longer than almost any single piece Parker ever wrote--just the sort of cosmic joke she would have relished. That obituary was all the biography Dorothy Parker ever needed.