Tag Archives: Dorothy Parker

The Points of View Challenge – But the One on the Right – Dorothy Parker

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Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967)

Poet, satirist, wit, critic, essayist and notable exponent of wisecracks.

But the One on the Right, originally published in The New Yorker magazine, 19th October 1929

Available to read online here (search for page 86 of the document)

Given the style classification Interior Monologue by Moffett and McElheny: “In these first two stories somebody is speaking to himself, thinking. We merely overhear his thoughts. These stories are the equivalent of soliloquies in a theatre, except that a character thinking alone on stage would have to talk aloud so that the audience could hear his thoughts. Reading these stories is like listening to a soliloquy.” More on what makes an interior monologue when we come to the other short story listed under this category!

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

But the One on the Right

 

So short, it’s barely a story, more like a fictional article! Dorothy Parker is invited to dinner by a hostess; she clearly knows no one there and is seated next to a boring man on her left. He’s polite, answers her small talk directly, but with no sense of creativity or interest; and her brain gives a running commentary on the occasion. She’s stuck with the one on the left, but the one on the right is being engaged by another lady who bagsied him first, and, despite his attractive shoulders, Dorothy decides to play fair and not try to muscle in on the conversation. At the end, the man on the right reveals that he too finds the whole experience exasperating and surprises Dorothy with an inventive chat-up line.

If ever you’ve been invited to dinner with the intention of getting people who don’t know each other to get to know one another, you know how ghastly the experience can be. And Dorothy Parker nicely conveys that cliff edge of politeness and boredom, of doing what the host expects of you rather than doing what you really want to do. We can all appreciate the disaster that a dull dining partner can provide. It’s a fun twist at the end, when the man on the right is found to be having an equally awful time, and the two of them plan a getaway which might lead on to something more interesting.

Messrs Moffett and McElheny must have decided they wanted an extremely light hors d’oeuvre to start this anthology, and Dorothy Parker is always a reliably witty entertainer with her yarns and bon mots. “I should have stayed at home for dinner. I could have had something on a tray. The head of John the Baptist or something.” I love the phrase vin triste, (not sure if it was an invention of Parker’s but I’d never heard it before) which superbly describes what happens when you have too much of the former and it inevitably descends into the latter. Times change if Chablis was considered a rotten wine, as it is in this story; it’s rather classy nowadays. And I also enjoyed her few literary moments; saying that red wine gave her The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane) or referring to the boring man on the left as “Boy Thoreau” – in an ironic nod to Henry Thoreau’s dense and packed narrative style.

Much as Dorothy Parker might have enjoyed (or endured) a wafer thin starter to her meal, so can we regard this four-page amuse bouche as a precursor to some more meaty fayre to come. The next short story in the book, and the other to be classified as an interior monologue, is This is my Living Room by Tom McAfee. I think this will be a very different kettle of fish.

The Points of View Challenge – 41 Short Stories

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No, nothing to do with an old BBC programme where you praised their efforts to the sky (Well done the BBC, another winner!) but a book of short stories that’s been hanging around my bookshelves for over forty years. Let me explain…

Back in 1979 I saw the musical of Flowers for Algernon, and it really impressed me – even though it didn’t last long, it still remains one of the top ten shows I’ve ever seen. It was based on Daniel Keyes’ short story of the same name, and I decided I had to track it down and read it. In those pre-Internet days it was harder to find a short story in an anthology without having a clue as to who might have published it. But, as luck would have it, I found it an American book called Points of View, edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R McElheny. Moffett (1929–1996) was an American teacher of English, author, and theorist of the teaching and learning of language arts and especially writing – so says Wikipedia, anyway. McElheny – who doesn’t get a Wikipedia entry of his own, alas – taught Creative Writing at the Arlington School, Belmont, Mass. at the time of publication, and had also taught at the Phillips Exeter Academy, as did Mr Moffett, which is presumably where their collaboration began. But I’m guessing here.

Anyway, I bought the book, read the story, put the book on the bookshelf and never looked at it again – until recently. It turns out that this anthology has quite a good reputation for being a) an assortment of excellent short stories and b) for being arranged in an unusual manner. They are listed by their narrative styles. So, for example, the first two stories are listed as Interior Monologue; then there are two under Dramatic Monologue, three under Letter Narration, two under Diary Narration, etc, etc and etc. There are actually forty-one short stories in this book, listed under eleven different narrative styles.

It was published in 1966, but a second edition appeared in 1995 with a revised selection of stories. Thirteen of the original 1966 selection made it into the revised edition, alongside thirty-one new choices. I only have the first edition, so my Points of View Challenge is to read – and write about – each of the forty-one stories lurking within its pages. And, if it goes well, who knows, I might buy the second edition too. Both books are very easily available on the Internet through the usual second hand sources, if you’d like to get a copy and read them along with me. I should add though, that all the writers are very well known and, with a couple of exceptions, you could easily find each of these stories in other collections. Even more convenient, most of these stories are available to read on the Internet, and I’ll provide an online link to the text in each blogpost wherever I can. That means we can all read them together!

The first story in the book – under the heading of Interior Monologue – is Dorothy Parker’s But the One on the Right. I’m going to give that a read and then write up my thoughts – probably tomorrow. Hope you find this an interesting challenge too!