Channelling Dorothy
The idea of Dorothy Parker having a starring role in a book is enough to set many literary buffs’ hearts aflutter. And at first blush it doesn’t seem such a stretch. Her quips are still front of cultural mind even 90 or so years after she first uttered them.
And I’ll bet that’s just what Ellen Meister, author of the newly released Farewell, Dorothy Parker, hoped for.
After reading the first page I thought that is reads like an assignment from a creative writing class: pick the elements a commercially successful book should incorporate, then set out to tick all the boxes.
Brand name? Twentieth century writer and widely quoted quipster Dorothy Parker. Check.
Pop culture cred? Dorothy Parker again. Check.
Chick lit audience grabber? Violet Epps. Film critic by day, wimpy woman by night, this girl needs to find her voice. Check.
Strong love interest who stands by, no matter what? Hunky kung fu instructor. Check.
Longstanding family angst that needs to be sorted? Childhood incident with her now dead sister rendered her distrustful of her own voice. Check. The plot goes like this: Violet is a film critic known for her wit and ballsy reviews. She’s got an artist boyfriend she really wants to get rid of, a sister and brother-in-law who were recently killed in a tragic accident, a niece she’s fighting for custody of, and a penchant for the Algonquin Hotel in New York and Dorothy Parker. One day at the Algonquin, where she’s a regular, she’s shown the old guest book with Dorothy Parker’s signature (as you’ll recall, Parker lived at the Algonquin — and helped to make it the centre of New York culture — for a number of years). Magically, when Violet opens the book, she feels a hard knot in her stomach and, suddenly, she’s speaking as assertively as she usually writes. “. . . is there anything we can get you?” the maitre’d asks. “A loaded pistol,” she says, looking at the boyfriend she’s trying to dump.
It’s as if, wait for it, she’s “channeling” Dorothy Parker. That’s because, when the guest book opens, the spirit of Dorothy Parker was also let loose. Thanks to said checklist, I find it hard to trust Meister enough to suspend my disbelief and buy into her take of how Dorothy Parker would react in this modern-day tale. Meister has taken great pains to point out that Parker was known for her poetry, not just her quips. She also makes an effort to weave in Parker’s life story. To wit: Parker has her own cross to bear, so to speak. In real life Parker’s mother died when she was young. Parker’s fear that her mother didn’t love her is holding her back from embracing the cliché light — from moving to the other side, the afterlife. Equally, Delaney, Violet’s niece, is having trouble coming to terms with her own mother’s death. So Parker takes Delaney to the cemetery to visit her mother’s grave — helping the younger girl accept the death and move on. After, Parker writes to Violet: “I can see that my mother loved me. She didn’t have a choice, poor thing. And all this time, she’s been waiting behind that white light so she could tell me herself. What an idiot I’ve been.” Fair enough is the idea that, behind all of Parker’s quips and razor-sharp tongue, lies a soft, vulnerable centre. Problem is, I don’t buy the modern-day pop psychology angst that tries to explain that centre. Still, if you can get beyond that, which I could, it’s a fun read. And it’s nice to hear Parker’s voice in quotes scattered throughout the book. We don’t hear nearly enough from her anymore. Which is exactly the problem Meister was hoping to rectify.