More Dorothy

 A love affair, as Dorothy Parker would attest, I'm sure, needs to get beyond its initial infatuation. Anybody can be enamoured on a short term basis with different people from one day to the next but anything lasting that might justify that many-splendoured term, Love, needs to have the durability that enables it to survive difficulties.

There was a possibility that after a dozen stories I might have seen a pattern emerging. It might have been something to do with ladies hopelessly devoted to men who were strongly suspected of being devoted to other ladies, too, as well as their goodtime crowd of dubious other men. That was not compensated for by the dim view she took of the dull security of marriage, though.

While that is a compelling point of view, brilliantly observed in her case, one might think it not quite enough of a theme to make her 'great', like Shakespeare. It was important that further stories in the Collected went further or did it in different ways or else it was only going to be variations on a theme.

One of the many memorable sentences in what I first read was in The Little Hours, about a sleepless night that extends into an essay about La Rochefoucauld,

Twenty minutes past four, sharp, and here's Baby wide-eyed as a marigold. 

Isn't that slick, isn't it just the prettiest thing you ever saw, relegating Ted Hughes's use of 'marigold' in October Dawn to an honourable but clear second best.

I almost ordered La Rochefoucauld on the basis of it but had a look at him and found his Maxims trite, maybe true but far too easy to do.

But what I read today piled evidence upon evidence of what a great writer she is and, if anything, almost improved upon first impressions because the genuine artist improves as they go along rather than repeats the same trick with diminishing returns. 

Glory in the Daytime is like Maupassant in glamour-stricken 1920's or 30's America, the downbeat, suburban wife having the chance of meeting an actual actress, who turns out to be outrageously overdone, but she can't see that because she's starstruck. She thinks she's been taken outside of her ordinary life but she's probably witnessed something even more meaningless but thought it looked good. It's a brilliant piece of work.

 

The Dorothy titles are piling up. Good. Each new one that arrives is further insurance against despair because although they will contain much of it, it's like a flu or Covid jab. One is innoculated against wholesale infection by the whole shebang by knowing that a class act like Dorothy thought the same as what you think.

She didn't end happily and neither does it seem do most of her characters but, like she said, there have been millions and millions of human beings and not one of them ended happily.

I commend her stories to you with the highest reference on the understanding that you've read other things on this website, too, and didn't disagree with too much of it.