Constant Reader: The New Yorker Columns 1927–28 (McNally Editions)

By: Dorothy Parker

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Synopsis: Dorothy Parker&’s complete weekly New Yorker column about books and people and the rigors of reviewing.When, in 1927, Dorothy Parker became a book critic for the New Yorker, she was already a legendary wit, a much-quoted member of the Algonquin Round Table, and an arbiter of literary taste. In the year that she spent as a weekly reviewer, under the rubric &“Constant Reader,&” she created what is still the most entertaining book column ever written. Parker&’s hot takes have lost none of their heat, whether she&’s taking aim at the evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson (&“She can go on like that for hours. Can, hell—does&”), praising Hemingway&’s latest collection (&“He discards detail with magnificent lavishness&”), or dissenting from the Tao of Pooh (&“And it is that word &‘hummy,&’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up&”). Introduced with characteristic wit and sympathy by Sloane Crosley, Constant Reader gathers the complete weekly New Yorker reviews that Parker published from October 1927 through November 1928, with gimlet-eyed appreciations of the high and low, from Isadora Duncan to Al Smith, Charles Lindbergh to Little Orphan Annie, Mussolini to Emily Post