This book of short stories is a collection of Dorothy Parker’s written works. The longest short story is only 24 pages. All are very easy to get through. I read her more famous pieces because I wanted to get a taste of who she was, and what her writing was really like.
One of the major themes throughout most of Parker’s stories was this idea of meaningless marriages. Everyone just got married because it was supposed to happen, and that was the next step in their lives, so it had to happen. Therefore, every story that involved a husband and a wife had some sort of dilemma involved with it also.
The first story I read was Big Blonde, which was her most famous written piece. This story was basically about a large blonde woman who made meaningless relationships with men she met out at the bars, until finally she decided it was that time in her life to get married. So, she meets Herbie, and they decide to get married. However, there was never a “spark” in this relationship to begin with, and it did not take long for them to realize that this just wasn’t working out. They divorce, and she re-marries several times throughout the rest of the story.
In reading New York to Detroit, this theme was demonstrated very elaborately. The wife was home in
New York, but the husband was away on business. They were having a phone conversation, and the wife was going crazy because she missed him so badly, however the husband obviously did not feel the same and he made it very clear to her. He did not show any remorse when she told him that she was doing horrible without him, and he told her that he would be traveling even longer than he told her originally, and he would not be coming home.
