Why does Dorothy Parkers popularity continue?
Two reasons: first, because wit stays in style; second, because she projects an attitude that a large swathe of the popular culture finds to be attractive, that is, sharp but vulnerable, cynical yet sentimental street cred with an underlying heart. Or, then again, maybe it’s something else. What drew you to compile and research Not Much Fun? It was an accident, really. I was going through microfilm copies of the old Life humor magazine to find Robert Benchley’s famous capsule reviews of “Abie’s Irish Rose.” Benchley was the magazine’s drama critic, and one of his responsibilities was to write a one- or two-line snippet for each play in production every week. Of course he hated “Abie” it was, and is, smarmy nonsense and of course it became the biggest and longest-running hit in Broadway history, at least until that time. Every week for five years (excepting summer breaks) he had to come up with something new, and some of his snippets have become part of that classic anecdotal heritage t
