Dorothy Parker and The Algonquin Round Table

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I think I first heard about Dorothy Parker when we read her poem ‘Resume’ as part of the American Literature syllabus in my UG days. Even then, I was fascinated by the poet who managed to sound simultaneously so devil-may-care-ish and hilarious about killing oneself. By the end of the very short verse I was hooked. A quick Google search sent me down the Internet rabbit hole of the ever-glittering Jazz Age in American history and the even more glamorously controversial Algonquin Round Table gang. From a collection of many (many) websites, I read all about the wittiest woman in America and her little literary clique who captured the fascination of a nation (and the rest of the Western world) with their scandalous lives and even more scandalous writings in the papers. It was utterly captivating. A group of New York’s finest litterateurs who gathered together at the luxurious Algonquin Hotel for lunch at their infamous Round Table, with enough  “ribaldry and verbal dexterity” to “electrify all of Manhattan” (The New York Times). From celebrated novelists, editors, playwrights and the occasional Hollywood celebrity, the Algonquin Round Table was the center of the American literary world for the entirety of the fabulous 20s.

Today, such notoriety for a literary group is unimaginable. Even if the public paid writers the same attention it paid actors and influencers, our cancel culture-loving world would’ve made sure a modern Algonquin set shut down before it began. In a world where the way a celebrity stands, to the way they glance at someone for two seconds is slowed down and analyzed in painful detail, the dauntless, scathingly subversive lives of the erstwhile literary icons would’ve proven whiplash-worthy. 

And so, as I did my research on the Jazz Age for a class presentation today, I found myself recalling the magnetic personality of the one of the funniest writers to ever have lived, somehow calling out to me beyond the bounds of time and space. This is how my Sunday ended up being spent researching absolutely irrelevant (at least from from a seminar point of view) details of the Algonquin Round Table and their fashionable lives. The things I read were infinitely more interesting than my seminar, full of newly liberated women with short, chic bobs and flapper dresses, their gliterring social lives, parties where they danced to jazz music and general merriment. For instance, did you know that Gertrude Stein was a out and proud lesbian, and how her partner Alice and her were the godparents to Ernest Hemingway’s first child? Literature is indeed infinitely interesting when it isn’t prescribed in your syllabus (unfortunately for me and my presentation). I’m gonna leave you with these strangely motivational words of Dorothy (which first drew me in to the alluring world of the Roaring Twenties): 

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp;

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.