Lize Oct 09, 10

really liked it bookshelves: 2010, biographical

Read from August 06 to 16, 2010 's review

Reading biographies about the people you idolize can be dangerous; there's always the chance you'll find out something you really wish you didn't know, and what happens then? John Keats' portrayal of Mrs. Parker's life and times is affectionate and generous, but there's no denying that she was seriously, deeply, unquestionably troubled, and, like most deeply troubled people, she made as much of a mess of the lives around her as she did her own. What would we have done with her in 2010? Probably medicated her into a bland oblivion, something, I think, she might have considered a fate worse than death.



But as I read I discovered there had to have been more than simply mental illness going on; the time she lived in must have contributed, in what would turn out to be a deadly combination. This passage gave me chills of recognition:



“In any case, her commitment to Sacco and Vanzetti, and to any and all other humanitarian causes, was unquestionably genuine, and in the closing years of the twenties, it depressed her to realize that the world was full of fears and horrors, and that the public’s reaction to virtually anything, no matter how horrible, was so nicely expressed in a catchword of the day: “It’s a lot of applesauce!”



My favorite parts of the book actually turned out to be when Keats sketched out what was going on in the 1920s:



“Reflect for a moment on the three Presidents of the United States during the twenties: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. The first was a small-bore Ohio politician whose idea of Presidential responsibility allowed him to play poker and practice adultery while his cronies systematically looted the United States Treasury. The second was the very caricature of the prating Yankee Puritan, a skinny little cheese-parer who took four hour naps every day on the job and who was the only man in modern times ever to save money on his White House salary. The third was a man who quite seriously believed the rich should be encouraged to become richer, so that they would spend more money, some of which would then trickle down to the poor, thus making everyone happier.”



And:



“The prevalent American mood was a thoroughgoing know-nothingism…of general xenophobia, of isolationism, a time of great increase in the membership of the Ku Klux Klan and of a recrudescence of revival meetings conducted by improbable evangelists from Southern and Western backwaters who banged the drum, pranced about, and shouted for that old-time religion. The twenties were also a time of tremendous concern for trivia—a concern enhanced by the press of the day. During these years, a French delegation asked President Coolidge whether the United States wished to be represented in an international art exhibition to take place in Paris. President Coolidge said “No,” explaining that there were no painters in the United States.”



Sound familiar?



The book ends up being as much a cautionary tale of what it might have been like to be a brilliant woman during her lifetime (read: often sheer hell) as it does a biography of Dorothy Parker. So I'll go right back to idolizing her, suddenly glad that she is living on through her words and wit, and not how she lived and died. Troubled or not, she'd have been worth knowing.