Constant Reader - Dorothy Parker

A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:
Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:

support the site

Constant Reader

by
Dorothy Parker

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Constant Reader
Author:	Dorothy Parker
Genre:	Book reviews
Written:	(1927-8)
Length:	209 pages
Availability:	Constant Reader - US
	Constant Reader - UK
	Constant Reader - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

The New Yorker Columns 1927-28
With a Foreword by Sloane Crosley
Most of these pieces were previously also published (along with several more) in Constant Reader (1970); many were also published in The Portable Dorothy Parker (1973)

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B : good fun

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The NY Times*	.	12/10/1970	C.Lehmann-Haupt
The NY Times Book Rev.*	.	11/10/1970	Arlene Croce
The Washington Post	.	31/10/2024	Mark Athitakis

(* review of the (not identical) 1970 edition of Constant Reader)

From the Reviews:

"Constant Reader reading -- or returning from a Swiss Alp, or suffering “a nasty attack of the rams” “much like the heebie‐jeebies” from a stalk of bad celery, or “Fwowing up” over The House at Pooh Corner -- is more interesting by a long shot, or even a big one, than the books she was reading. At least she makes it sound that way." - The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

"Constant Reader, you understand, is not reviewing books, she's writing a humor column. That is why she selects such soft,juicy targets (.....) Between 1927 and 1933 some literature was also published, but the woman had no head for writing criticism." - Arlene Croce, The New York Times Book Review

"Parker the reviewer was frequently entertaining and didn’t always deliver hatchet jobs (.....) More often, though, Parker’s knife glints. (...) But to an almost absurd degree, she took potshots at deeply unpromising titles: a book on appendicitis, a businessman’s memoir, poetry inspired by Charles Lindbergh." - Mark Athitakis, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       As Joan Acocella writes in a 1993 profile of Dorothy Parker: "From 1927 to 1931, under the nom de plume Constant Reader, she was The New Yorker's lead book critic", and this volume collects thirty-four of Parker's columns from 1927 and 1928.
       Apparently, The New Yorker's book coverage at the time was not quite as extensive as it is nowadays, when one generally finds several essay-length reviews in each issue; Parker's columns are fairly short and often deal with more than one title -- but what is even more striking is the books that are discussed by Parker: these are not the cream of the crop of that (or any) time -- but then that seems to be part of the point, as she has good fun making fun of many of these titles. (In her review of an earlier collection of many of these columns in The New York Times Book Review Arlene Croce seems to have hit the nail on the head in noting that: "Constant Reader, you understand, is not reviewing books, she's writing a humor column".)
       Books by a few well-known names are covered, but even here they are generally lesser titles: Sinclair Lewis rates a column, for example -- but the book she discusses is The Man Who Knew Coolidge. Among better-known titles, she does review a new edition of Emily Post's Etiquette -- though her evisceration in that case doesn't focus very much on its literary worth. Among the few works still much read that she does cover is one of A.A.Milne's -- concluding her brief mention with the observation that: "it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner" at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up".
       Indeed, she does at least have strong reactions to what she reads -- often going for the quite extremely melodramatic. Writing about the (admittedly awful-sounding) collection of poems in tribute to Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis:

I have it here. I have it in my left hand now. With my right hand, I am guiding the razor across my throat.

(Time also wasn't impressed by the volume, finding that the vast majority of the poems: "vary from slightly above the mediocre to the incredibly poor".)
Writing about perusing short stories in the "more popular and less expensive magazines" of the day she finds:

There were the same old plots, the same old characters, the same old phrases -- dear Heaven, even the same old illustrations. So that is why I shot myself.

It's a wonder she survived all this reading ..... But then, as she also admits, she often struggled with the very reading: of André Maurois' biography she notes: "there are pages in Disraeli which I turned by two and by threes", while of Benito Mussolini's novel, The Cardinal's Mistress, she admits: "I am absolutely unable to read my way through it". (She does, however read enough to judge: "if The Cardinal's Mistress is a grande romanzo, I am Alexandre Dumas, père et fils".)
Parker presents herself, very clearly, as not your typical or traditional book reviewer (much less literary critic) -- pointedly differentiating herself from that breed in, for example, writing about Fannie Hurst's A President is Born:

This is, they say, her Big Novel. (If you were a real book-reviewer, you would say, "Miss Hurst has chose a far larger canvas than is her wont." I wish I could talk like that without getting all hot and red.)

But then what one expects and wants from Parker are the sharp and cleverly-turned barbs that seem to so easily and effortlessly to find and burrow their way into their marks:

That gifted entertainer, the Countess of Oxford and Asquith, author of The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (four volumes, neatly boxed, suitable for throwing purposes), reverts to tripe in a new book deftly entitled Lay Sermons. it is a little dandy if I have ever seen one and I certainly have.

       Still, there's also the occasional honest enthusiasm -- Hemingway's Men Without Mention is one stand-out, "a truly magnificent work" -- and proper discerning judgment, as in her admirable recognition of Claude McKay's Home to Harlem as, despite a few reservations she has, "a vitally important addition to American letters". (She also concludes her review of the McKay with the nice little dig: "And for his easily achieved feat of putting even further into their place the writings of Mr. Carl Van Vechten, I shall be grateful to him from now on".)
       There's good fun in the immediacy and extremity of Parker's reactions, from the parenthetical observations ("The book shows a cross-section ("cross section!" -- I've been reading too many publishers' blurbs!)") to the strong swings in her stands: "Time was when A.A.Milne was my only hero. [...] But when Mr. Milne went quaint, all was over. Now he leads his life and I lead mine". It's hard to pull off (often absurdly) extreme reactions such as Parker presents here, especially at such a rate and density, but she manages far better than most -- not least because she's also always quickly moving on to the next thing. But that also means there's only limited insight on offer here most of the time, and so these columns only function so well as book reviews: sure, it's easy to ignore the books she is completely dismissive of (a fair share of those discussed in these pages), but she also only gives a quite limited idea about the ones which might be of some interest (and, indeed, is far better when she's critical than trying to explain what she wants to praise).
       But then one doesn't really read these columns -- certainly not now, almost a century later -- as book reviews but rather for their entertainment value -- and as such they hold up surprisingly well. Parker turned a nice phrase and certainly was witty. It's fluff, of a sort, but, yes, it's still entertaining, making Constant Reader an enjoyable volume to dip into.

- M.A.Orthofer, 22 December 2024

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

Constant Reader:

McNally Editions publicity page

Reviews (* review of the (not identical) 1970 edition of Constant Reader):

Kirkus Reviews*

Dorothy Parker:

Dorothy Parker Society

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Books on Books
See Index of Literary Essays
See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

American writer Dorothy Parker lived 1893 to 1967.

- Return to top of the page -