Lately, for some reason, while in conversation we recalled a musing saying from years ago. It is, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” It is one of those things that sticks with you, for it is a curious saying. There was even a comical retort and song written about it in the 1990’s. Strangely enough, the saying came from the sharped tongued, New York writer and poet Dorothy Parker.
Dorothy Parker was born at the Jersey shore in 1893 and spent most of her life in New York as a pitchy humored writer and poet. Parker was self-described as “a drinker with a writing problem.” She is acclaimed as one of the most versatile writers of her time and, in 1959, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Remembered as being strangely odd and a pithy feared darling of literary New York, she was known as a sort of an icon and such that the US Postal Service even issued a stamp of her in 1992.
Parker was a writer and independent spirit who defined the Roaring 20’s and was seen by some as an anti-feminist in a world that had become hedonistic during that time. Unfortunately, her private life was described as a mess and was filled with many unfulfilled relationships. Although her tipsy turmoil of her private life became most of her story, her public life was much more honorable. Much of her writing dealt with family, race, war, and economic inequality as she became a defender for human rights. She even took her passion of those interests beyond her writing and she became actively involved in campaigning for social justice. In 1927, she protested executions of anarchists in Boston and, as an activist, traveled to Europe during the Spanish Civil War. She later became the National Chair of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee.
An unconventional but powerful lady in her own right, she suggested her own epitaph read, “If you can read this, you’re standing too close.” Nevertheless, a plaque where her ashes have been placed to rest is marked with yet another of her own suggestions, “Excuse my dust.”
She was a tough woman who suffered an arduous childhood and the death of her mother prior to age 5. She loathed her stepmother and lost her father at a young age as well. Maybe as a result of her difficult youth, she kept others at a distance with her sharp tongue and her critical writings. Above all, she was a survivor – unique, cynical, and some say troubled, but despite that she did something gracious in her death. In her final will, she left the bulk of her estate to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After his death, her estate was then passed on to his organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Dorothy Parker once again proved that there is good that can come of discomfort if we choose to do so. And, she did so.
“It is good to know some odd people in your life. You may actually be one of them.” -M. Shaw
This blog is dedicated to Bob Moses, hero of the Civil Rights Movement
