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The Sexes
Includes such stories as: 'The Sexes', 'The Lovely Leave', 'The Little Hours', 'Glory in the Daytime' and 'Lolita'.
83 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
15 people are currently reading
418 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Parker
327 books2,043 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Dorothy Parker was an American writer, poet and critic best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed as her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist.
Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker." Nevertheless, her literary output and reputation for her sharp wit have endured.
Dorothy Parker was an American writer, poet and critic best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed as her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist.
Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker." Nevertheless, her literary output and reputation for her sharp wit have endured.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 8, 2023
It's a book to read and treasure, to return to when you need something satisfying with only a few words. They've all got to punch above their weight. Dorothy Parker is one of the few people who can achieve that.
August 22, 2011
The Sexes is a small collection of Dorothy Parker's short stories about relationships, and is published as part of Penguin's mini modern classics series.
The first story, the Sexes, is a masterclass in dialogue: taught, lucid, and oozing with an admixture of cultural, emotional and interpersonal tension. As a singular comment on the complex narrative that exists between the sexes, it is an aggressive shot across the bow against those that seek to deny the differences between the genders.
The Lovely Leave offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the intricacies that lie behind the facade of a loving relationship. An education for those yet to experience loving relationships, and a mirror for everyone else, it's a pristine example of how to clothe reality in fiction.
Like all collections, not all stories are crafted equally, and the Little Hours is the runt of the litter, a meandering story with little purpose other than to showcase a litany of quotations and the sharp poise of Parker’s prose.
The final two stories, Glory in the Daytime and Lolita, bring the book to an ordered conclusion. Glory in the Daytime is a sharp vignette contrasting the human costs of fame against the droll existence of normalcy, and Lolita is a strange but elegant story of the smallness of attitude fostered by small town life.
The Sexes is an perfectly tempered collection of short stories that not only underlines the genius of Dorothy Parker, but also serves as a intricate lesson about the complexities of human emotion and sexual politics. And apart from being a taut read, it serves as a gentle reminder that–for those willing to look–the richness of life is there to marvel at just beyond the graceful vision of our eyes.
The first story, the Sexes, is a masterclass in dialogue: taught, lucid, and oozing with an admixture of cultural, emotional and interpersonal tension. As a singular comment on the complex narrative that exists between the sexes, it is an aggressive shot across the bow against those that seek to deny the differences between the genders.
The Lovely Leave offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the intricacies that lie behind the facade of a loving relationship. An education for those yet to experience loving relationships, and a mirror for everyone else, it's a pristine example of how to clothe reality in fiction.
Like all collections, not all stories are crafted equally, and the Little Hours is the runt of the litter, a meandering story with little purpose other than to showcase a litany of quotations and the sharp poise of Parker’s prose.
The final two stories, Glory in the Daytime and Lolita, bring the book to an ordered conclusion. Glory in the Daytime is a sharp vignette contrasting the human costs of fame against the droll existence of normalcy, and Lolita is a strange but elegant story of the smallness of attitude fostered by small town life.
The Sexes is an perfectly tempered collection of short stories that not only underlines the genius of Dorothy Parker, but also serves as a intricate lesson about the complexities of human emotion and sexual politics. And apart from being a taut read, it serves as a gentle reminder that–for those willing to look–the richness of life is there to marvel at just beyond the graceful vision of our eyes.
May 10, 2013
This book of short stories was a joy to read. There are five stories included and my personal favourite was" The Little Hours" ... Something about being up in the small hours of the morning was really captured well by Dorothy in this story.. This book is a wonderful addition to any booklovers shelves especially if you already a fan of the great woman.
March 9, 2011
I want to like Parker far more than I do. She can turn a very nice sentence but there's something cold and empty at the core of most of her stories.
October 10, 2011
This has been the year of the short story for me, and this miniature collection was entirely satisfying. Her talent for layering meaning and intent in a simple sentence is delicious.
November 25, 2024
picked this off my shelf purely bc the prince song got stuck in my head and then realised id accidentally stolen it from a library in 2013 :(
was very pleasantly surprised by how modern it felt! really loved the first three stories and took a lot of comfort in learning that sulking but refusing to tell your partner what theyve done to make you sulk is a toxic behaviour weve been repeating since at least the 1940s :)
was very pleasantly surprised by how modern it felt! really loved the first three stories and took a lot of comfort in learning that sulking but refusing to tell your partner what theyve done to make you sulk is a toxic behaviour weve been repeating since at least the 1940s :)
September 23, 2019
:)) cười không nhặt được miệng luôn
February 4, 2025
STILL CURRENTLY READING. I LOVE PARKER'S SENSIBILITIES AND STYLE. SHE'S SHARP, WITTY, INSIGHTFUL. Here are my notes from reading so far...
1/21/25 Tuesday
Read two short stories by Dorothy Parker today. Her collected stories was a recommendation by David Sedaris in his Masterclass on humor writing. y appetite for her writing was whetted. I looked her up while at work and found a PDF of some of her short stories. I read two today: “Arrangement in Black and White” and The Sexes.” It felt it would have been clear even if you had taken her name off them and given me both stories in a “blind” reading test that I would have known they were both written by the same author. The voice was clear though the message was different in the two works. Punchy dialogue. Brevity. A breathless pace. A revelation of thoughts behind words in a way that felt truly masterful.
“Arrangement” powerfully captured a woman with a backwards attitude toward black people trying to pretend hers was a forward-thinking attitude. She attends a party, this hoity-toity lady, and on her host’s arm she prattles on about her eagerness to meet a talented black singer and the good laughs she has arguing her husband on the merits and place of black people. She tries to pretend he’s only somewhat backwards toward black people. Her host gives mostly terse replies. The host goes unnamed. The host seems to be thinking a lot behind those terse responses but keeping up an air of politeness. Why the host indulges the woman at all in her vapid commentary and subjects Mr. Wallace Williams to her foolery is an unanswered question and one you’d like answered but kind of forget until a solid few efforts of meditation on the story’s value… Because whatever the host’s motive, it provided the opportunity to hear the inane woman vocalize a mindset that should be, as it is here, suspended forever for observation like a fly trapped in amber. It’s just a few pages, this story, and as I mentioned, breathlessly paced. A modern reader feels something between secondhand embarrassment and outright rage at the woman’s thoughts toward another race, and she feels that the author is with her in thinking the main character silly, a feeling underscored by the host’s dialogue and the fact that the host goes unnamed so it almost feels like John calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” — like the author was the host of the party and recorded the whole interaction afterward. It feels real as hell.
“Sexes” captured, in kitschy phrasing, a timeless experience: a man confounded by his woman’s attitude toward him, her stubborn refusal to give outright a reason for it, the deliberate effort at understanding on his part, the final blossom of revelation, a cause (even if imagined) for her jealousy which led to childish sulking and his further efforts to quell the storm in her head and redeem the relationship. Seriously. It was a wonderful experience and so funny — to read so well written a truly timeless man-woman dynamic. To roll my eyes at her but to understand her fully, knowing I’VE BEEN HER AND SAID SIMILAR IN NEWER PHRASING. Truly, loved reading it.
1/23/25 Thursday
Read Dorothy Parker’s “The Standard of Living,” which I found delightful like her other works. It’s about a couple of girlfriends with old-times names and unfashionably tiny weekly salaries (less than I make per hour at my day job) who find connection and joy in playing the game of “what would you do with a million dollars?” The story hinges on their brash investigation of the real cost of a beautiful pearl necklace seen in a store window which leaves them deflated for a couple of city blocks before the game gets its great revision to “what would you do with $10 million?” It’s funny for the parts that are so clearly current to when Parker wrote it and shocking for the ways that it feels like it could have been written today — like the price of the gorgeous pearl necklace at $250,000… Enjoyed reading.
1/25/25 Saturday
Yesterday I read these stories by Dorothy Parker: “The Lovely Leave,” “Mr. Durant,” “The Waltz,” “The Wonderful Old Gentleman.” “The Love Leave” is the story of a woman and her soldier husband whose time together is reduced from a promised 24 hours to less than one. As reader, you’re sympathetic to both the woman and her husband and their two emotional experiences in these circumstances; you also wanna shake her and tell her to make the best of the time with him, and then you understand her ultimate response: “It was lovely!” The story “Mr. Durant” captured hypocrisy and bad character really well — he’s completely unlikable and it’s well-done — and then the story ends and you feel pity for his family, stuck with this jerk. “The Waltz” had me cracking up! It was the inner monologue of a woman who feels forced to dance with someone she doesn’t want to dance with, but entertainingly, her view of him shifts back and forth between like and dislike through the dance. (Funny lines: “Oh, my shin. My poor, poor shin, that I’ve had ever since I was a little girl!” And “I guess I’m as well off here. As well off as if I were in a cement mixer in full action.”) Parker’s “The Wonderful Old Gentleman” is an interesting story. It started a little slow, maybe, with a couple of pages describing knickknacks. It felt a little forced the way the patriarch whose death was imminent is called “Old Gentleman” throughout the story rather than referred to by his name, and how his two daughters are referred to by their married names through most of the story, except in dialogue where they call each other by first names. It made the relationships confusing initially. Without the forced formality, the relationships could have been clearer from the start. The sister referred to as Mrs. Whittaker was particularly unlikable and rude. Mrs. Whittaker is demonstrably selfish, calculated, and callous: she has 3 servants and so could have easily taken in her father when he could no longer live alone but she refused and made her poorer sister take him in; clearly obsessed with receiving the bulk of the inheritance; disparaging of both her nephew and their brother and callous toward her sister when her sister expresses missing her own son. And Mrs. Bain, the other sister, is considerably more sympathetic and it’s her grief in the end that feels genuine and compelling (“Among them they got Mrs. Bain up the stairs.”).
This morning I’ve read Parker’s “Song of the Shirt, 1941.” It’s the first time I’ve read a story that ends with a character trying to figure out a solution to another character’s dilemma and the reader sees that the main character’s own dilemma is the answer to the other’s dilemma. There’s no neat, tidy solution (last sentence: “And as she stitched, faithful to her promise and to her heart, she racked her brains.”); just the obvious next step that the reader sees for the characters involved. And yet… that last sentence, upon reflection, indicates the ultimate truth of the character, Mrs. Martindale: She of the big heart would not dare outsource or delegate what she has promised herself to do. The story had this funny moment that made me literally laugh and read it aloud to Jeremy: “The size of Mrs. Martindale’s heart was renowned among her friends…. Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom. Mrs. Martindale’s breasts were admirable, delicate yet firm, pointing on to the right, one to the left; angry at each other, as the Russians have it.” It also contained a neat simile: “She was tall, and her body streamed like a sonnet.” The story really does seem, upon reflection, to have the ultimate effect of conveying this about big-hearted people: They will not see when the things they’ve promised to do for others might be better done by others, but will instead overcommit themselves.
1/26/26 Sunday
Last night before bed I read “A Telephone Call” by Dorothy Parker. It was similar to “The Waltz” in that it was first person POV and an internal monologue. The narrator was awaiting a phone call from the man she loves. The story took on the likeness of a prayer — the kind of importunate prayer that comes in lovesickness. It was a thing I recognized, a representation of so many nights I spent longing for someone to call me. (And stirred a gratitude in my heart that I’m no longer there, no longer longing for a man who doesn’t want me but find my heart safe in a relationship with a man who doesn’t make me question what he feels for me.)
Tonight on the train home to Philly, I’ve read Parker’s “Here We Are,” which ironically takes place on a train. It’s a dialogue between a very newly married couple and you see people who maybe shouldn’t have gotten married or who at the very least are so anxiety-ridden about the activity most newlyweds can’t wait for that they are at each other’s throats. She accuses him of having said mean things about her style and of being overly interested in her girlfriend/bridesmaid. It was the kind of funny that isn’t totally funny but is funny… I don’t have the proper words for it right now…
2/3/25 Monday
Finished reading “Dusk Before Fireworks” by Dorothy Parker. It’s the story of the failed date of one particular woman and what we’d call in modern parlance, a fuck boy. This is before the age of multiple cell phones and silent mode, and Hobie’s phone rings three times in his apartment while he’s on his date. And his date is jealous. She wants him to herself. She fears the other women showing up. She’s done this before — the prior Wednesday they’d been together and she left in a huff as she ends up doing this time. And Hobie pretends to be sensitive and caring and to want her but she leaves and he takes his phone off the hook after making a date with another woman! The dialogue is, again, masterful.
1/21/25 Tuesday
Read two short stories by Dorothy Parker today. Her collected stories was a recommendation by David Sedaris in his Masterclass on humor writing. y appetite for her writing was whetted. I looked her up while at work and found a PDF of some of her short stories. I read two today: “Arrangement in Black and White” and The Sexes.” It felt it would have been clear even if you had taken her name off them and given me both stories in a “blind” reading test that I would have known they were both written by the same author. The voice was clear though the message was different in the two works. Punchy dialogue. Brevity. A breathless pace. A revelation of thoughts behind words in a way that felt truly masterful.
“Arrangement” powerfully captured a woman with a backwards attitude toward black people trying to pretend hers was a forward-thinking attitude. She attends a party, this hoity-toity lady, and on her host’s arm she prattles on about her eagerness to meet a talented black singer and the good laughs she has arguing her husband on the merits and place of black people. She tries to pretend he’s only somewhat backwards toward black people. Her host gives mostly terse replies. The host goes unnamed. The host seems to be thinking a lot behind those terse responses but keeping up an air of politeness. Why the host indulges the woman at all in her vapid commentary and subjects Mr. Wallace Williams to her foolery is an unanswered question and one you’d like answered but kind of forget until a solid few efforts of meditation on the story’s value… Because whatever the host’s motive, it provided the opportunity to hear the inane woman vocalize a mindset that should be, as it is here, suspended forever for observation like a fly trapped in amber. It’s just a few pages, this story, and as I mentioned, breathlessly paced. A modern reader feels something between secondhand embarrassment and outright rage at the woman’s thoughts toward another race, and she feels that the author is with her in thinking the main character silly, a feeling underscored by the host’s dialogue and the fact that the host goes unnamed so it almost feels like John calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” — like the author was the host of the party and recorded the whole interaction afterward. It feels real as hell.
“Sexes” captured, in kitschy phrasing, a timeless experience: a man confounded by his woman’s attitude toward him, her stubborn refusal to give outright a reason for it, the deliberate effort at understanding on his part, the final blossom of revelation, a cause (even if imagined) for her jealousy which led to childish sulking and his further efforts to quell the storm in her head and redeem the relationship. Seriously. It was a wonderful experience and so funny — to read so well written a truly timeless man-woman dynamic. To roll my eyes at her but to understand her fully, knowing I’VE BEEN HER AND SAID SIMILAR IN NEWER PHRASING. Truly, loved reading it.
1/23/25 Thursday
Read Dorothy Parker’s “The Standard of Living,” which I found delightful like her other works. It’s about a couple of girlfriends with old-times names and unfashionably tiny weekly salaries (less than I make per hour at my day job) who find connection and joy in playing the game of “what would you do with a million dollars?” The story hinges on their brash investigation of the real cost of a beautiful pearl necklace seen in a store window which leaves them deflated for a couple of city blocks before the game gets its great revision to “what would you do with $10 million?” It’s funny for the parts that are so clearly current to when Parker wrote it and shocking for the ways that it feels like it could have been written today — like the price of the gorgeous pearl necklace at $250,000… Enjoyed reading.
1/25/25 Saturday
Yesterday I read these stories by Dorothy Parker: “The Lovely Leave,” “Mr. Durant,” “The Waltz,” “The Wonderful Old Gentleman.” “The Love Leave” is the story of a woman and her soldier husband whose time together is reduced from a promised 24 hours to less than one. As reader, you’re sympathetic to both the woman and her husband and their two emotional experiences in these circumstances; you also wanna shake her and tell her to make the best of the time with him, and then you understand her ultimate response: “It was lovely!” The story “Mr. Durant” captured hypocrisy and bad character really well — he’s completely unlikable and it’s well-done — and then the story ends and you feel pity for his family, stuck with this jerk. “The Waltz” had me cracking up! It was the inner monologue of a woman who feels forced to dance with someone she doesn’t want to dance with, but entertainingly, her view of him shifts back and forth between like and dislike through the dance. (Funny lines: “Oh, my shin. My poor, poor shin, that I’ve had ever since I was a little girl!” And “I guess I’m as well off here. As well off as if I were in a cement mixer in full action.”) Parker’s “The Wonderful Old Gentleman” is an interesting story. It started a little slow, maybe, with a couple of pages describing knickknacks. It felt a little forced the way the patriarch whose death was imminent is called “Old Gentleman” throughout the story rather than referred to by his name, and how his two daughters are referred to by their married names through most of the story, except in dialogue where they call each other by first names. It made the relationships confusing initially. Without the forced formality, the relationships could have been clearer from the start. The sister referred to as Mrs. Whittaker was particularly unlikable and rude. Mrs. Whittaker is demonstrably selfish, calculated, and callous: she has 3 servants and so could have easily taken in her father when he could no longer live alone but she refused and made her poorer sister take him in; clearly obsessed with receiving the bulk of the inheritance; disparaging of both her nephew and their brother and callous toward her sister when her sister expresses missing her own son. And Mrs. Bain, the other sister, is considerably more sympathetic and it’s her grief in the end that feels genuine and compelling (“Among them they got Mrs. Bain up the stairs.”).
This morning I’ve read Parker’s “Song of the Shirt, 1941.” It’s the first time I’ve read a story that ends with a character trying to figure out a solution to another character’s dilemma and the reader sees that the main character’s own dilemma is the answer to the other’s dilemma. There’s no neat, tidy solution (last sentence: “And as she stitched, faithful to her promise and to her heart, she racked her brains.”); just the obvious next step that the reader sees for the characters involved. And yet… that last sentence, upon reflection, indicates the ultimate truth of the character, Mrs. Martindale: She of the big heart would not dare outsource or delegate what she has promised herself to do. The story had this funny moment that made me literally laugh and read it aloud to Jeremy: “The size of Mrs. Martindale’s heart was renowned among her friends…. Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom. Mrs. Martindale’s breasts were admirable, delicate yet firm, pointing on to the right, one to the left; angry at each other, as the Russians have it.” It also contained a neat simile: “She was tall, and her body streamed like a sonnet.” The story really does seem, upon reflection, to have the ultimate effect of conveying this about big-hearted people: They will not see when the things they’ve promised to do for others might be better done by others, but will instead overcommit themselves.
1/26/26 Sunday
Last night before bed I read “A Telephone Call” by Dorothy Parker. It was similar to “The Waltz” in that it was first person POV and an internal monologue. The narrator was awaiting a phone call from the man she loves. The story took on the likeness of a prayer — the kind of importunate prayer that comes in lovesickness. It was a thing I recognized, a representation of so many nights I spent longing for someone to call me. (And stirred a gratitude in my heart that I’m no longer there, no longer longing for a man who doesn’t want me but find my heart safe in a relationship with a man who doesn’t make me question what he feels for me.)
Tonight on the train home to Philly, I’ve read Parker’s “Here We Are,” which ironically takes place on a train. It’s a dialogue between a very newly married couple and you see people who maybe shouldn’t have gotten married or who at the very least are so anxiety-ridden about the activity most newlyweds can’t wait for that they are at each other’s throats. She accuses him of having said mean things about her style and of being overly interested in her girlfriend/bridesmaid. It was the kind of funny that isn’t totally funny but is funny… I don’t have the proper words for it right now…
2/3/25 Monday
Finished reading “Dusk Before Fireworks” by Dorothy Parker. It’s the story of the failed date of one particular woman and what we’d call in modern parlance, a fuck boy. This is before the age of multiple cell phones and silent mode, and Hobie’s phone rings three times in his apartment while he’s on his date. And his date is jealous. She wants him to herself. She fears the other women showing up. She’s done this before — the prior Wednesday they’d been together and she left in a huff as she ends up doing this time. And Hobie pretends to be sensitive and caring and to want her but she leaves and he takes his phone off the hook after making a date with another woman! The dialogue is, again, masterful.
September 22, 2016
Reading this the second time I still liked these short stories but did not love them. While they're clever and entertaining the dialogue just never rings true to life for me, there is something very carefully constructed about them (I'm not sure how much of a bad thing that necessarily is, though?). Still, I'd be interested in reading more of her. If not, I'll probably re-read this book in another 3 years anyway.
May 8, 2011
Reading Dorothy Parker is like curling up under a warm, colorful blanket. This is a nice new Penguin series that makes very good writing accessible and portable.
November 9, 2023
Strongly reminiscent of the language used in 'Catcher in the Rye', these short stories paint a vivid portrait of everyday longing, hardships, triumphs... An excellent introduction to Parker's work.
January 23, 2014
Disappointing short stories with surprisingly mundane dialogue.
March 13, 2015
Common theme: at least one character is upset at being left, and in words and deeds express the sentiment: "You can't leave me alone like this."
February 5, 2016
If you need an introduction to Dorothy Parker, this is a quick and compelling starting point.
September 8, 2019
I found the first story rather interesting with cool themes but the rest were bland and forgettable.
March 13, 2020
Really hate that kind of the main female character. After all it’s the fight between couple, but i would like someone who is more direct than her :)
December 22, 2022
fun that borders on frivolity
June 28, 2023
The Sexes – 4
The Lovely Leave – 3
The Little Hours – 2
Glory in the Daytime – 3
Lolita – 3
Conto favorito: The Sexes
The Lovely Leave – 3
The Little Hours – 2
Glory in the Daytime – 3
Lolita – 3
Conto favorito: The Sexes
September 25, 2023
7/10 great read, classically written, it felt timeless.
August 12, 2025
‘Šta ti ja znam..’ eto taj opis; koji uglavnom se u Mostaru koristi kada je nešto osrednje ili neupečatljivo. Šta ti ja znam, nekako mi je nakon prve dvije priče, postalo malo naporno a malo dosadnjikavo i stilom i likovima… Eto, neka ostane 3*
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews