She seems to carry a hammer in her handbag to hit the appropriate nail on the head. One of the charming things about Dorothy Parker is that when the door of opportunity flies open she is there at the threshold ready to make the most of the God-given moment. Her good friend, Somerset Maugham, penned a warm introduction. In 1944, Parker herself chose the material to include (or forget). The history of this popular collection of Parker’s short stories and verse is a checkered one. Just like she rubbed shoulders with God, Steinbeck and Whitman in the 1940s, the new Parker book is being released in the same week as new editions of Paul Auster, Hans Christian Andersen, and Voltaire. Lately the publisher has been revamping its “classics” line and among the first in its “deluxe editions” is Dorothy Parker.

Six decades later, all of those people are gone, and so is Viking Press, swallowed up by its British corporate entity, Penguin.

Among the first ones - including The Portable World Bible, The Portable John Steinbeck, and The Portable Walt Whitman – was a slim volume of 544 wafer-thin pages: The Portable Dorothy Parker. Due to wartime conservation restrictions they printed the books on cheap recycled paper. Viking Press, her longtime publishing house, was getting into the war with a series of small books they nicknamed “portable” editions. The former member of the Vicious Circle is preoccupied with two things: writing letters to her husband, Lieutenant Alan Campbell, and collecting together material for what would become her last book. Meanwhile, in a stone farmhouse near Pipersville, Pennsylvania, Dorothy Parker, 50 years old, is keeping busy. The world is at war and there is suffering everywhere. Across the Atlantic, approximately 176,000 Allied troops are making plans for history’s greatest military air and sea invasion. The Portable Dorothy Parker (cover by Seth), 2006, Penguin Classics.Book Review

Dorothy parker the portable