Dorothy Parker thought Ernest Hemingway was overrated as a novelist, but as a short story writer she valued him so much that when his story volume “Men without Women” appeared in her 1927 review in new Yorker wrote that Hemingway was her greatest living short story writer. She doesn’t know where to find a better short story book.
A few months later, in another article, she took up the new Yorker referring to this review again. In the meantime, she explained to her readers, she had received mail from a friendly gentleman who had reminded her of the excellent short story volume by another author, namely “Seven Men” by Max Beerbohm. And then she suddenly thought of Rudyard Kipling, whose short stories shouldn’t be despised either. This led her to the conclusion that it was presumptuous to resort to superlatives so hastily and defiantly for Ernest Hemingway’s “Men without Women”. She is through with it, she writes. In the future, she doesn’t even want to touch a superlative with an umbrella.
The best mustache skiing writer with World War II experience
In the following, she then thinks about how she should have formulated her praise for Hemingway more correctly. For example: “Ernest Hemingway is the greatest living American short story writer to me.” Or: “… the greatest living American short story writer, who lives mostly in Paris, skis in Switzerland, served in the Italian army in World War II, fought for medals and fought against bulls, who comes to New York in the spring is in his early thirties, has a black mustache and is still waiting for the two hundred francs I lost to him on bridge. ” Or, what is perhaps even more certain, a whispered: “Ernest Hemingway is, for me, a good author.”
And now she wants to get up from her hands and knees again and do the laundry for the week.
The other Dorothy Parker texts in this anthology are all so good too. Stop, no – but really many.
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