Perplexity Prompt: Create an outline for a murder mystery in the style of Dorothy Sayers Perplexity Response: Setting: The Quaint Village of Little Hampden Introduction: A Mysterious Death Key Characters Red Herrings Twists and Turns Character Development Clues and Evidence Conclusion: Unveiling the Murderer Epilogue: Aftermath and Reflection Based upon his playtime with Perplexity, he … Read more
From 1843 Magazine: In love, three is a magic number. Depending on the circumstances, that adds up to lies and betrayal, or the possibility of a brave new romantic world. Noël Coward gave us perfect proof of both sums. The first, “Brief Encounter” (1945), revolved around Laura, an English housewife, alienated, unsatisfied and deep in … Read more
From The Duke University School of Law: In 2022, the public domain will welcome a lot of “firsts”: the first Winnie-the-Pooh book from A. A. Milne, the first published novels from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, the first books of poems from Langston Hughes and Dorothy Parker. What’s more, for the first time ever, thanks … Read more
From JSTOR Daily: If there’s a style that defines 2020, it has to be “cottagecore.” In March 2020, the New York Times defined it as a “budding aesthetic movement… where tropes of rural self-sufficiency converge with dainty décor to create an exceptionally twee distillation of pastoral existence.” In August, consumer-culture publication The Goods by Vox … Read more
When I finally walked into Adolf Hitler’s salon in the Kaiserhof Hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany,” [Dorothy Parker wrote]. “In something less than fifty seconds I was quite sure that I was not. … He is formless, almost faceless: a man whose countenance is a caricature; a … Read more
From The New Yorker: hen I started my career as a young humor writer for the satirical magazine Spy, in the mid-nineteen-eighties, I heard this a lot: “So you want to be the next Dorothy Parker, eh?” I took this as a compliment, of course, and, in the course of my twenties, graciously accepted five copies of “The … Read more
From MIT Technology Review: On March 31, 1913, in the Great Hall of the Musikverein concert house in Vienna, a riot broke out in the middle of a performance of an orchestral song by Alban Berg. Chaos descended. Furniture was broken. Police arrested the concert’s organizer for punching Oscar Straus, a little-remembered composer of operettas. … Read more
From The Paris Review: In 2017, Honey & Wax Booksellers established an annual prize for American women book collectors, aged 30 years and younger. The idea took shape when Heather O’Donnell and Rebecca Romney, the bookstore’s owners, observed that “the women who regularly buy books from us are less likely to call themselves “collectors” than the men, even … Read more
If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. ~ Dorothy Parker writing about Oscar Wilde
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. ~ Dorothy Parker
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. ~ Dorothy Parker
I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid. ~ Dorothy Parker
From The Paris Review: “If one is a woman writer there are certain things one must do,” the British writer and journalist Rebecca West writes to a friend in 1952. “First, not be too good; second, die young, what an edge Katherine Mansfield has on all of us; third, commit suicide like Virginia Woolf. To … Read more
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. Dorothy Parker
From Smithsonian: “So there you are” read the kicker on Dorothy Parker’s first, somewhat hesitant review as the newly appointed theatre critic for Vanity Fair. An exploration into musical comedies, the article ran 100 years ago this month—a full two years before American women had the right to vote, when female voices in the public sphere were … Read more
From The Mission: Anne Lamott — the author of, among other books, Bird by Bird — once tweeted about the writing process: “How to write: Butt in chair. Start each day anywhere. Let yourself do it badly. Just take one passage at a time. Get butt back in chair.” Lamott is one of our favorites around here; few authors have … Read more
From My Poetic Side: While freedom of speech is generally promoted today, this wasn’t always the case, and a lot of poets have caused a stir with their unfiltered approach. Controversial topics and unfavourable connections have landed many poets in hot water, so much so that a few of them have ended up behind bars … Read more