Constant Reader

Dorothy Parker née Rothschild (1898–1967), grew up on New York’s Upper West Side. She became famous for her comic poems, her short stories, her reviews, and her repartée, as recorded by the columnist Wolcott Gibbs over lunches at the Algonquin hotel. A prolific magazine contributor in her youth and a successful screenwriter (she co-wrote the original A Star is Born), she struggled all her life with alcoholism and wrote very little in her later decades, though continued to be a vocal champion of progressive causes, especially civil rights. Sloane Crosley is the author of the essay collections I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor), How Did You Get This Number, and Look Alive Out There (a 2019 Thurber Prize finalist); the novels The Clasp and Cult Classic; and, most recently, her memoir, Grief Is for People. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, she lives in New York City.

“Does anyone know how hard it is to be that funny? . . . Read her book reviews. Read them now and see how good they are.”—Fran Lebowitz“In Parker’s hands, the humble book review becomes an instrument as expressive as a lyric poem.”—Nicholas Frankel, The Wall Street Journal, Five Best Books by Great Wits“All I wanted in this world was to come to New York and be Dorothy Parker. The funny lady. The only lady at the table. The woman who made her living by her wit . . . Who always got off the perfect line at the perfect moment, who never went home and lay awake wondering what she ought to have said because she had said exactly what she ought to have.” —Nora Ephron, Esquire“The Constant Reader columns are not really book reviews; they are standup-comedy routines. You don’t have to listen to her opinion, she says. If she didn’t like the book, maybe that’s just her hangover speaking.”—Joan Acocella, The New Yorker“I was far more beguiled . . . by her New Yorker book reviews . . . [They] contain the best of what we’ve been trying to do all these years—we ‘booksy‐wooksies,’ as she called us. She snuck into the tradition with a razor in her stocking, and we’ve been trying to slice things her way ever since.”—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times“Can anyone ever get too much of Dorothy Parker? . . . Here is the happy news that McNally Editions is republishing her book column “Constant Reader,” from The New Yorker, a gig that lasted only a year but whose critiques read as fresh and as wonderful as when they first appeared, in the late 1920s . . . Sloane Crosley provides a witty and perceptive foreword.”—Jim Kelly, Air Mail, Editor’s Picks“Parker’s column helped to establish the New Yorker voice; wry, puckish, world-weary . . . When she turns to the books themselves, she is of course very funny, with jokes sustained over paragraphs, pages and months . . . This is the Dorothy Parker we recognize: glittering, at the peak of her humorous powers, in an eternal pre-Depression New York.”—Violet Hudson, Times Literary Supplement“What gives her writing its peculiar tang is her gift for seeing something to laugh at in the bitterest tragedies of the human animal.”—Somerset Maugham“A bestselling poet who moved on to fiction, Dorothy Parker . . . was equally innovative as a critic, pioneering a first‑person style and busting the taboo on hatchet jobs by women . . . She was arguably the first female celebrity wit since the 17th century, outperforming her illustrious male peers.”—John Dugdale, The Guardian“Constant Reader contains the kind of wit that no longer flourishes. I laughed loudly throughout and sobbed softly in memory. There would be fewer bad books published today if Mrs. Parker were alive to have at them.”—George Oppenheimer“Length doesn’t increase depth, necessarily, and just because her little characterizations of a book were short doesn’t mean they weren’t true.”—Gloria Steinem

• Foreword by Sloane CrosleyOct 1, 1927: The Highly Recurrent Mr. Hamilton—Al Smith, and How He Grew—Bad News of May SinclairOct 8, 1927: Mrs. Colby’s Second Novel—The Private Papers of the Dead—The Philosopher Takes a Long Look at HimselfOct 15, 1927: An American Du Barry—A Biography of Henry Ward BeecherOct 22, 1927: Re-enter Margot Asquith—Something Young—A Masterpiece from the FrenchOct 29, 1927: A Book of Great Short Stories—Something About CabellNov 5, 1927: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light—Short Stories from One Who Knows How to Do Them—Sketches, Mostly Unpleasant—A Biography of a Much-Talked-About LadyNov 12, 1927: Mr. Morley Capers on a Toadstool—Mr. Milne Grows to Be SixNov 19, 1927: Adam and Eve and Lilith and Epigrams—Something More About CabellNov 26. 1927: Madame Glyn Lectures on It, with IllustrationsDec 3, 1927: The Most Popular Reading MatterDec 10, 1927: The Socialist Looks at Literature—A Lyricist Looks at His NeighborsDec 17, 1927: The Short Story, Through a Couple of the AgesDec 31, 1927: Mrs. Post Enlarges on EtiquetteJan 7, 1928: More Troubles for Colonel Charles A. LindberghJan 14, 1928: Poor, Immortal IsadoraJan 28, 1928: Re-enter Miss Hurst, Followed by Mr. TarkingtonFeb 4, 1928: A Good Novel, and a Great StoryFeb 11, 1928: Literary RotariansFeb 18, 1928: Excuse It, Please—Americans at Play—This Sentimental Grand VizierFeb 25, 1928: Our Lady of the LoudspeakerMar 10, 1928: Unfinished EndeavorsMar 17, 1928: The Compleat BunglerMar 24, 1928: Ethereal MildnessMar 31, 1928: A Very Dull Article, IndeedApr 7, 1928: Mr. Lewis Lays It On with a TrowelApr 14, 1928: Mrs. Norris and the BeastApr 21, 1928: These Much Too Charming PeopleMay 19, 1928: Hard-Boiled Virgins Are Faithful LoversMay 26, 1928: Mr. See Sees It ThroughAug 25, 1928: Back to the Book-ShelfSep 15, 1928: Duces WildSep 29, 1928: How It Feels to Be One Hundred and Forty-SixOct 20, 1928: Far from WellNov 17, 1928: Wallflower’s Lament