Selected Stories of Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker’s subject is New York and its social classes. Many of her characters are from a vaguely defined middle class.  They’re aware of the upper class but also aware of their inability to rise economically or socially. They are partially sensible people who lead dreary lives. The women are defined by dissatisfaction with their station, their marriages, their futures. In one story a young woman in her late 20s who after a socially active period of years meets a man and after six weeks marries him. He is a salesman and a heavy drinker, which she sees no problem with. Theirs is a marriage of convenience: she wants to get married and so does he. But he soon grows tired of her, and she finds friends elsewhere. She takes to drink. When he leaves her, she becomes the lover of a man whom she met at a social gathering in a neighbor's apartment. He later abandons her, and she has a series of dreary meaningless relationships with men and finally finds herself in her 40s exhausted and depressed. She tries to commit suicide but fails. Parker sees such women as morally empty, as spiritually bankrupt (she would probably hate that phrase). Another story focuses on a man in his late 40s who seduces a young woman in her early 20s who works in his office. He is married and has children. She is, as the story makes out, a virgin who's had no relationships with anyone. Because she has no experience, she never realizes his clumsiness or his apparent paunch and succumbs to his entreaties. She becomes pregnant, and he sees this as a horrible inconvenience and an insult to himself. Another secretary in the office arranges an abortion, and the young woman goes home to her family. The man is totally insensible to her feelings and her situation. It's pretty clear that this event for her has been a horrible episode. He is glad to have her out of his life. He goes home to his family and discovers that his wife has allowed his son and daughter to bring a young dog into their house. He is open to the idea of his children having a pet, but when he discovers that the dog is a female, he's enraged. He remonstrates with his wife and tells her that after the children go to bed he will simply put the animal out the door. The next day they will tell the children it ran away. His attitude towards the female dog is exactly his attitude towards the young woman whom he got pregnant. It's a rather obvious parallel on the one hand, but it's vicious accuracy works well.

These stories are well told and skillfully written. Some of them go on too long. The characters are dry and two-dimensional for the most part, and partially I think this is Parker’s intent. But it may also be a matter of her disposition as a writer. One senses that she hates the people she writes about, that she sees them as deserving targets of sarcasm and irony rather than as human beings.

The audiobooks edition of the Selected Stories of Dorothy Parker (2018) is narrated by Elaine Stritch. The combination of Stritch's caustic often sarcastic voice with Parker's satiric, often sarcastic tone is a problem. It's difficult to separate Parker from Stritch. On the other hand, if you don't worry about that separation, Elaine Stritch reads the stories well enough.