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You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker
"Once upon a time --just after World War I to be precise-- the world was bright and new, and Dorothy Parker was one of the brightest and newest people in it." So begins this biography of one of the wittiest American writers of her era by John Keats. It is an intriguing story, sad in many ways, but never less than interesting. Parker is still read widely all these years after her heyday, and she is remembered as a leading figure at the famous Round Table lunches at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
The book first appeared in Britain in 1971 when published by Secker & Warburg.
The book first appeared in Britain in 1971 when published by Secker & Warburg.
319 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 7, 2017
Rereading John Keats’ biography of Dorothy Parker 47 (gulp) years after my first read, I was struck by how Dorothy Parker’s life and works still intrigue readers. It seems that every generation of readers discovers Dorothy Parker. They’re initially seduced by the anecdotes of her famous wit at the Algonquin Round Table, but they soon discover the heartache and humanity of her (mostly) sad poems and short stories. This leaves them wanting to learn more about this amazing woman who was at the epicenter of the start of the original “Vanity Fair” magazine and “New Yorker” magazine. She was with Hemingway and the Murphys in France and the New York writers who gave Hollywood a go in the thirties and forties. That latter connection to the Hollywood left and her fling with the Communist Party led to eventual studio blacklisting and years of little writing in the fifties and sixties.
Keats’ work was the first biography of Parker following her 1967 death. He had the advantage that few later biographers had of actually interviewing some of Parker’s contemporaries, but those often brought contradictory opinions of events, saddled by memory or maybe Parker’s own love/hate personality. Many “friends” lived in fear of being the receipt of her rapier wit so their friendships were often shallow. Keats also had the disadvantage of no cooperation from Parker’s friend Lillian Hellman who destroyed their correspondence.
Nonetheless, if you wish to delve into the life of Dorothy Parker, this out of print book is a good place to start. It does seem to skim over the blacklist years and there are many newer books that cover that time of desperation in Hollywood in better albeit wrenching detail. Better yet, skip the biographies and read Parker’s poems, short stories and book reviews in the collection “The Portable Dorothy Parker.” As John Keats writes in “You Might as Well Live,” “Virtually every line she wrote dealt with the pain of living.”
Keats’ work was the first biography of Parker following her 1967 death. He had the advantage that few later biographers had of actually interviewing some of Parker’s contemporaries, but those often brought contradictory opinions of events, saddled by memory or maybe Parker’s own love/hate personality. Many “friends” lived in fear of being the receipt of her rapier wit so their friendships were often shallow. Keats also had the disadvantage of no cooperation from Parker’s friend Lillian Hellman who destroyed their correspondence.
Nonetheless, if you wish to delve into the life of Dorothy Parker, this out of print book is a good place to start. It does seem to skim over the blacklist years and there are many newer books that cover that time of desperation in Hollywood in better albeit wrenching detail. Better yet, skip the biographies and read Parker’s poems, short stories and book reviews in the collection “The Portable Dorothy Parker.” As John Keats writes in “You Might as Well Live,” “Virtually every line she wrote dealt with the pain of living.”
February 14, 2011
Although it definitely took me a while to finish reading this biography of one of the 20's most notable personalities, I loved that this book took me through Dorothy's life beyond that era. The book tells about the journey that her writing took as a result of the not-always-so-merry life Mrs. Parker lived.
It paints a real portrait of the writer, beyond the quips we mostly remember her for!
It paints a real portrait of the writer, beyond the quips we mostly remember her for!
September 7, 2014
I read this in one day, today in fact, and I'm glad to have it finished. On one hand I couldn't put down but I felt my spirits plummet with every page turned. I think that Dorothy Parker was one of the saddest people that ever lived. This biography, first published in 1970, does not ever become fanciful. The writing is plain - very plain - but also, I can't help feeling, exceptionally honest about its subject. Perhaps I could have done with a bit more sensitivity, a bit more curiosity about her relationships, particularly with the men she didn't marry. However I did feel that Parker would have approved of it precisely for its clean and no-frills approach. I haven't so much as smiled since I started this at 11am and now I'm going out to have fun because I need it!
July 12, 2013
I was sad to see this one end. It was good company. I miss the book, and Dorothy, so I'll move directly to WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?. When writing is particularly good you don't notice it until it stops. I've read too many biographies of writers. I'll read too many more. I, as a rule, prefer a well-written biography of a writer to the work of that writer, especially if the best bits of that writer's writing are included in the book. There's no point in my saying anything about Dorothy Parker, except that I love her, and her writing, and anyone who says anything bad about either is asking for a sock in the eye.
November 12, 2016
I read this as a teenager and it prompted me to read Parker's short stories and then to move on to the works of others who were part of the Algonquin round table. A sympathetic and engaging biography.
August 29, 2007
After reading this book it becmomes apparent that you can't survive on wit alone. You could find yourself dying a lonely death in a hotel room.
December 23, 2020
Written a few short years after Parker's death, this biography seems like a first draft. Not in terms of style, but as an initial assessment of her legacy. The author proves a shrewd judge of her literary merit, which he estimates rises above the superficiality of the 1920s Algonquin smart set with whom she is most closely associated.
Oddly, he writes little about her childhood. One doesn't need to delve too deeply into her psyche to see how she was severely wounded by her upbringing; her mother having died in Dorothy's youth and her father remarried a figure she referred to as "the housekeeper." Both father and stepmother died shortly after Dorothy completed high school. Since she rarely spoke of her parents, perhaps her biographer followed suit.
Oddly, he writes little about her childhood. One doesn't need to delve too deeply into her psyche to see how she was severely wounded by her upbringing; her mother having died in Dorothy's youth and her father remarried a figure she referred to as "the housekeeper." Both father and stepmother died shortly after Dorothy completed high school. Since she rarely spoke of her parents, perhaps her biographer followed suit.
January 25, 2020
This was a balanced biography of Dorothy Parker. It includes a lot about her that was new to me. Dorothy had a very troubled childhood and was often a difficult person to have as a friend or lover. She excelled at writing poetry and short stories, but was such a perfectionist that she suffered from writer's block often and sometimes for years at a time. She often made a lot of money but spent it as fast or faster than she got it. She had several marriages and lovers but ended up alone when she died.
December 12, 2010
Dorothy Parker was not a very happy person. This isn't news, and yet the biography still makes it interesting to read about. The writing of the biography is OK, although at the beginning if he'd called her "little Mrs. Parker" one more time I was going to throw the book away. I realize he was being tongue-in-cheek about how some people perceived her, but it still grated after a while. Overall, decent and interesting but never threatened to keep me up past my bedtime.
February 20, 2015
"She suggested her tombstone read: This one's on me."
February 19, 2016
You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker by John Keats (Paragon House Publishers 1970)(Biography). This is a biography of an acid-tongued member of the Algonquin Round Table, which was an informal, ongoing, and highly fashionable fellowship of literary celebrities and post-Jazz Age figures who hung around together at New York's Algonquin Hotel. Dorothy Parker was a writer and literary critic who more than held her own as a hard-drinking humorist with the big names of the group; she seems in part to have been one of those celebrities who was best known for being a celebrity. She wrote some very funny poems and short stories; she also wrote some witty reviews. I find her funny, unlikable, and a figure of pity. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1980.
May 19, 2008
A sympathetic biography of Dorothy Parker, a remarkable woman who led a fascinating yet tragic life. Keats does a good job of describing the environment of the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties and includes details about the Algonquin Round Table and the Communist crackdown in Hollywood. The book is a bit dated in language and style...it referred to the "Negro question."
January 14, 2009
I really should have stopped reading this after Dorothy married Alan Campbell. Up till that point this a light and lovely biography of the witty and fabulous Dorothy Parker. I knew the end and yet I kept reading.
March 18, 2018
This book was well-written, and I learned much about Dorothy Parker from reading it. It did, however, also prove the adage that some troubled people use wit to make the world a little less bitter for everyone.
December 29, 2008
An easy-reading bio of one of my favorite wits and writers, Dorothy Parker!
December 17, 2016
Fascinating woman with a sad life.
December 30, 2019
Deliciously written, this has prompted my interest in Keats' other works.
December 30, 2020
Good insights
July 19, 2021
I bought this book, new, for 68 pence in 1975 (it retailed at 85p), from a bookstall in Cambridge market. I'd no idea who Dorothy Parker was, had never read anything she'd written, but I noticed she'd gone to Spain during the Civil War, and that was enough to pique my curiosity.
The joy of this biography is its failure to pin Dottie down. Re-reading it after 40+ years, she remains an enigma.
I have little in common with Dottie other than we both had Scottish mothers - hers died when she was a child, mine lived long enough to hold her first grandchild. Dottie was taught by nuns at a Catholic school ... and was obliged to leave: I was taught by Marist Brothers ... and was expelled. She went to an exclusive girls' finishing school, I joined the Army. We both drank.
I offer snippets of my own autobiography to emphasise what's wrong with Keats' biography. He tells us his heroine had a privileged if unloved childhood / adolescence, he tells us what she did, where she went, he offers enigmatic mentions of her suicide attempts, snapshots of her questionable love of foul little dogs, he notes the men who shared her bed (or claimed to have) ... . But you never feel he reveals the person, merely conjures an elusive, spectral enigma. You're left playing, "I wonder ...".
The book reveals more about Dorothy Parker's celebrity world - I always suspected that Scott Fitzgerald lacked a sense of humour ... he must have been a very boring drunk. But Keats is weak in his analysis of the times through which Parker lived - a husband gone off to the Great War, the 'Roaring 20s', Prohibition, Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, New Deal, Spain and the beginning of the next world war, her classification as 'Prematurely Anti-Fascist' (i.e., her card being marked as a Communist sympathiser), etc. There's a roadmap, here, to 20th century USA history ... yet Keats fails to produce a compelling political biography of the country.
Re-reading the book, I kept wondering - again - if she'd been abused as a child, at least emotionally? The woman revealed by Keats seems anxious to please yet withdrawn and defensive, quick to withdraw into herself, capable of insensitivity and the launching of attacks on and putdowns of virtually anyone and everyone she knew.
That's what Keats shows us - a hall of mirrors Dorothy Parker, a chimera in both major senses of the word. She was a reflection of what people expected ... an act who'd give people what they wanted to see, one moment a fleeting image changing shape with the mood, the next a monster, then back to image and act and shape-changer.
I got the impression she never quite managed to find love, merely illusions. Maybe she felt abandoned by her mother dying, felt abandoned to a cold father and oppressive stepmother. She could only simulate love ... for dogs, for children, for people ... and simulation could quickly drain her batteries.
We learn that Ruth Gordon played some distinctly Dorothy Parker like roles on Broadway in the 1930s - I can't help wondering if she reprised these in "Rosemary's Baby"? There are, of course, no YouTube recordings of the Broadway performances.
It's a book which I'm convinced fails, or at least falls short ... and yet, enigmatically, it remains an interesting read and, as an introduction to Dorothy Parker, might well fire you with the sorts of questions you'd love to be able to answer.
The joy of this biography is its failure to pin Dottie down. Re-reading it after 40+ years, she remains an enigma.
I have little in common with Dottie other than we both had Scottish mothers - hers died when she was a child, mine lived long enough to hold her first grandchild. Dottie was taught by nuns at a Catholic school ... and was obliged to leave: I was taught by Marist Brothers ... and was expelled. She went to an exclusive girls' finishing school, I joined the Army. We both drank.
I offer snippets of my own autobiography to emphasise what's wrong with Keats' biography. He tells us his heroine had a privileged if unloved childhood / adolescence, he tells us what she did, where she went, he offers enigmatic mentions of her suicide attempts, snapshots of her questionable love of foul little dogs, he notes the men who shared her bed (or claimed to have) ... . But you never feel he reveals the person, merely conjures an elusive, spectral enigma. You're left playing, "I wonder ...".
The book reveals more about Dorothy Parker's celebrity world - I always suspected that Scott Fitzgerald lacked a sense of humour ... he must have been a very boring drunk. But Keats is weak in his analysis of the times through which Parker lived - a husband gone off to the Great War, the 'Roaring 20s', Prohibition, Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, New Deal, Spain and the beginning of the next world war, her classification as 'Prematurely Anti-Fascist' (i.e., her card being marked as a Communist sympathiser), etc. There's a roadmap, here, to 20th century USA history ... yet Keats fails to produce a compelling political biography of the country.
Re-reading the book, I kept wondering - again - if she'd been abused as a child, at least emotionally? The woman revealed by Keats seems anxious to please yet withdrawn and defensive, quick to withdraw into herself, capable of insensitivity and the launching of attacks on and putdowns of virtually anyone and everyone she knew.
That's what Keats shows us - a hall of mirrors Dorothy Parker, a chimera in both major senses of the word. She was a reflection of what people expected ... an act who'd give people what they wanted to see, one moment a fleeting image changing shape with the mood, the next a monster, then back to image and act and shape-changer.
I got the impression she never quite managed to find love, merely illusions. Maybe she felt abandoned by her mother dying, felt abandoned to a cold father and oppressive stepmother. She could only simulate love ... for dogs, for children, for people ... and simulation could quickly drain her batteries.
We learn that Ruth Gordon played some distinctly Dorothy Parker like roles on Broadway in the 1930s - I can't help wondering if she reprised these in "Rosemary's Baby"? There are, of course, no YouTube recordings of the Broadway performances.
It's a book which I'm convinced fails, or at least falls short ... and yet, enigmatically, it remains an interesting read and, as an introduction to Dorothy Parker, might well fire you with the sorts of questions you'd love to be able to answer.
August 9, 2022
An excellent biography of the author and "wit" Dorothy Parker, written not long after her death with tons of details and statements by friends of hers. Parker was a complicated woman who would likely be given a more forgiving view now, particular in terms of her openness, mental health issues and views on sexuality. Still, Keats is obviously fond of her and finds her important and shares plenty of reasons why we should too.
I came away thinking of her much the same as I did before reading the book. She was a firecracker who could hold her own with anybody else of her era (though she was intimidated by Hemingway), her poetry still reads as excellent, and although she wanted to be known for her short stories, there were a few that were amazing and many more that were more influential than interesting to read. Although she got pigeonholed into her role as a "wit" of her generation, it's actually one of the most significant ways she left her impact on the world. Her clever remarks and humor have lived as long as many of her writings, even though she was a perfectionist with the latter and was often sharing the former after too many cocktails.
I came away thinking of her much the same as I did before reading the book. She was a firecracker who could hold her own with anybody else of her era (though she was intimidated by Hemingway), her poetry still reads as excellent, and although she wanted to be known for her short stories, there were a few that were amazing and many more that were more influential than interesting to read. Although she got pigeonholed into her role as a "wit" of her generation, it's actually one of the most significant ways she left her impact on the world. Her clever remarks and humor have lived as long as many of her writings, even though she was a perfectionist with the latter and was often sharing the former after too many cocktails.
June 14, 2024
I read this nearly 20 years ago and still remember it. Dorothy Parker was one of my favorite poets when I was a little kid. The title is a clising line to one of her funniest and thought-provoking poems. At the time, I had no idea that she wrote prose, including an acclaimed series of book reviews under the name Constant Reader. Her review of Winnie The Poo?
"Constant Weader thwew up."
Despite her fame and money, she was a tortured soul with, arguably, unresolved mental issues. She got sick of socializing since so much pressure was put on her to be witty all of the time. At times, she became nauseatingly anti-Semetic, which might have been a symptom of her self-loathing ... or could be that she was racist. Read the book and make up your own mind about that.
She spent a lot of her life with dogs, but didn't seem to know how to take care of them. Just what happens to them is not gone into. Granted, this book's subject is not Dorothy Parker's dogs, but that would make a great topic for a future non-fiction book, provided any information is left after a century.
In short, a page-turning look at a flawed genius.
"Constant Weader thwew up."
Despite her fame and money, she was a tortured soul with, arguably, unresolved mental issues. She got sick of socializing since so much pressure was put on her to be witty all of the time. At times, she became nauseatingly anti-Semetic, which might have been a symptom of her self-loathing ... or could be that she was racist. Read the book and make up your own mind about that.
She spent a lot of her life with dogs, but didn't seem to know how to take care of them. Just what happens to them is not gone into. Granted, this book's subject is not Dorothy Parker's dogs, but that would make a great topic for a future non-fiction book, provided any information is left after a century.
In short, a page-turning look at a flawed genius.
August 1, 2017
I think Dorothy Parker is probably the best example of the social philosophy which emerged following World War I, after the horrors of war made ideals and traditions seem naive, even ridiculously false. A new appreciation of sardonic wit emerged, with Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table members leading the way. Throw massive egos stoked by bootleg liquor into the mix and, over time, the new edgy camaraderie and contempt for tradition created deep trauma with lasting scars just as real as war wounds.
Keats nobly tries to protect Parker's legend as much as possible in his narrative but, unquestionably, she was her own worst enemy... and I'm reasonably sure even she would agree with that assessment. He provides a stable timeline of her life and tries to connect the dots of events with recollections from those who thought they knew her. But, truth is nobody knew Dorothy Parker — not even Dorothy Parker. The closest we can ever get to knowing her is through her writing, and discovering her there is much more satisfying.
Keats nobly tries to protect Parker's legend as much as possible in his narrative but, unquestionably, she was her own worst enemy... and I'm reasonably sure even she would agree with that assessment. He provides a stable timeline of her life and tries to connect the dots of events with recollections from those who thought they knew her. But, truth is nobody knew Dorothy Parker — not even Dorothy Parker. The closest we can ever get to knowing her is through her writing, and discovering her there is much more satisfying.
March 4, 2022
A sad life from beginning to end. Dorothy Parker only wrote three volumes of poetry and two of short stories and yet we have all heard of her. How many of us have read her stories? These were ranked beside Hemingway's in their day. She wanted to be remembered as a short story writer. She detested Hollywood but wrote scripts for dozens of films including A Star is Born. Her wit brought her fame and fortune but she was a serious artist who battled with depression and sought solace in alcohol. This short biography ends with - 'She had a far better talent than most of her friends had, and she respected it and wasted it and seemed all the while to stand outside herself, watching herself kill the thing she called a gift from God.'
June 22, 2018
Amazing, a boring biography of an interesting person. NO personal insights.
March 14, 2019
3.5 stars, but not quite good enough to round up to a 4.
November 26, 2025
Fun book about an icon end was a bit of a drag but I enjoyed it
December 9, 2022
I became fascinated with the Algonquin crowd during the 1970s & read biogs on several of them, including the masterful Gorge S. Kaufman & His Friends by Scott Meredith, which I have read twice. I have now read this Parker biog three times, first in 1979, & would not be surprised if I read it again. She led an unusual, to say the least, life & was a fascinating character, & Keats seems to capture her perfectly. While he rightly praises her strengths he doesn't shy away from her weaknesses & so presents a complex personality that may be as close to the truth as one could get to someone who embroidered it so regularly. If you also have an interest in American literature, theatre & film of the first half of the 20th century this is a must.
May 10, 2007
Interesting account of the life of Dorothy Parker.
July 30, 2008
i really appreciate intellectual wit and dorothy parker is proving to be quite an inspiration to the 1920's.
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February 9, 2010You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker by John Keats (1970)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews