Foreword: Marion Meade
Cover: Natalie Ascencios
Publisher: Roaring Forties Press
Year: 2013 (2nd edition), 2005 (1st edition)
Format: Softcover & E-Book
Pages: 148, Illustrated with photos and maps
ISBN: 978-1-938901-07-2
Order: Publisher | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Signed by Kevin Fitzpatrick
Take a journey into the city of theaters, bars, and hotel rooms where Dorothy Parker sharpened her wit, polished her writing, and captured the edgy mood of her times. This eye-opening volume explores Mrs. Parker’s favorite salons and saloons as well as her homes and offices (most of them still intact); charts her colorful career and intense private life; and recounts her political activism, theatrical exploits, and final years.
Of her hometown, Dorothy Parker wrote, “I take New York personally. I am, in fact, somewhat annoyingly tender about it. A silver cord ties me tight to my city.” Readers of A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York will learn why. Exploring more than 100 locations associated with the celebrated wit, poet, and critic, it provides an in-depth look at how Manhattan influenced Parker and how the writer held sway over her favorite city.
This unique book is a guide to Mrs. Parker’s glorious speakeasies, her haunts, the places where she wrote, and the apartments where she lived, loved, and even died. As Broadway’s first female drama critic, Mrs. Parker’s stinging reviews are still enjoyable eight decades later. One chapter is devoted to the theaters where she reserved an aisle seat; visit the lobby where she famously remarked of Katharine Hepburn, “She ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.”
The new edition of A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York is packed with more than 150 illustrations, many rare and never published before, and updated information on all the sites. Readers can use the maps to trace the footsteps of the most celebrated member of the Algonquin Round Table across Manhattan. This book will appeal to both longtime Parker devotees and those just discovering her charms, as well as to fans of New York City. “I supposed that is the thing about New York,” Mrs. Parker wrote in 1928. “It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day.”
The foreword is by Marion Meade, the author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (1988) and editor of The Portable Dorothy Parker (2006).