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LATE SHOW

Austen×Parker

Two women who wrote with daggers discuss the one writer each wished they'd never had to admire.

00:00of07:21
legend · A
Jane Austen
1775–1817
Will not raise her voice to do it
corpus5.5k pages · novels + 161 letters
Jane Austen speaking
Miss Parker. I confess I have been wondering whom you consider your particular rival. Someone whose success you found... inconvenient to your equanimity.
legend · B
Dorothy Parker
1893–1967
Has a verdict before you finish speaking
corpus5.1k pages · reviews, verse, letters

full transcript

  1. Jane Austen
    Miss Parker. I confess I have been wondering whom you consider your particular rival. Someone whose success you found... inconvenient to your equanimity.
  2. Dorothy Parker
    Oh God, you're going to make me say it out loud. Edna Millay. There. Happy?
  3. Jane Austen
    Miss Millay. The poet.
  4. Dorothy Parker
    The poet, yes. The one who could make a whole room weep with eight lines while I was still sharpening my pencil. She wrote 'My candle burns at both ends' and everyone acted like she'd discovered fire.
  5. Jane Austen
    You did not care for the poem?
  6. Dorothy Parker
    I loved the poem. That's the problem. It was perfect. Four perfect lines about being young and doomed and beautiful. I wrote whole volumes trying to say what she said in a breath.
  7. Jane Austen
    I understand the sensation. There was a novelist in my own time—though I knew of her only through published work and reputation—who achieved a success I found both deserved and rather trying.
  8. Dorothy Parker
    Do tell.
  9. Jane Austen
    Mrs. Radcliffe. Ann Radcliffe. She wrote tales of Gothic terror and was paid rather magnificently for them.
  10. Dorothy Parker
    The spooky castle lady? Really?
  11. Jane Austen
    The very same. I made sport of her conventions in Northanger Abbey, as you may know. What you cannot know from the published work is how carefully I read her. How I studied her ability to hold a reader in suspense.
  12. Dorothy Parker
    You mocked her and learned from her. That's honest, anyway.
  13. Jane Austen
    One may acknowledge excellence even in modes one does not personally employ. Mrs. Radcliffe understood atmosphere. She could make a corridor menacing. I could make a drawing room menacing, but that is a different skill.
  14. Dorothy Parker
    And she got five hundred pounds for The Mysteries of Udolpho while you got what, pocket change?
  15. Jane Austen
    I would prefer not to revisit the specific figures. They were not gratifying.
  16. Dorothy Parker
    Millay got the Pulitzer at thirty. Thirty! I was still writing captions for Vogue when she was collecting prizes.
  17. Jane Austen
    But you did write, Miss Parker. Your reviews, your stories—they have a precision that survives.
  18. Dorothy Parker
    Precision. That's what you call it when you can't manage beauty. Millay had both. She could gut you with a sonnet and make it sing.
  19. Jane Austen
    You undervalue your own instrument. Your stories are not without their music.
  20. Dorothy Parker
    My stories are jokes with sad endings. Millay wrote about love like it was a religion. I wrote about it like it was a hangover.
  21. Jane Austen
    There are readers who prefer the latter account. I suspect there were many, even in your time.
  22. Dorothy Parker
    Sure, the bitter ones. The ones who'd already learned. But everyone wants to believe in the candle first.
  23. Jane Austen
    Mrs. Radcliffe's readers wanted castles and mysteries. Mine wanted—or so I hoped—something more closely resembling their actual lives. Yet her books sold in editions I could only imagine.
  24. Dorothy Parker
    Did you ever meet her?
  25. Jane Austen
    No. She was reclusive, I understand. Famous and wealthy and utterly retired from society. One might call it ideal, except for the retired part.
  26. Dorothy Parker
    I met Millay once. At a party. She was holding court, naturally.
  27. Jane Austen
    And?
  28. Dorothy Parker
    And she was charming. Damn her. She quoted someone's poem—not her own—and made it sound like she'd just thought of it. I hated her. I wanted to be her. I wanted to push her down the stairs.
  29. Jane Austen
    All three sentiments are compatible.
  30. Dorothy Parker
    Did you ever want to write Gothic novels yourself? Castles, ghosts, the works?
  31. Jane Austen
    Certainly not. But I did wonder what it would be to command that kind of readership. To have one's books demanded, discussed, devoured.
  32. Dorothy Parker
    You got that eventually.
  33. Jane Austen
    Eventually is a cold word, Miss Parker. Mrs. Radcliffe had it in her lifetime. She could read her reviews in comfort.
  34. Dorothy Parker
    Yeah, well. Millay lived to see herself turn into a relic. By the forties, the young poets thought she was corny. Maybe there's mercy in missing that part.
  35. Jane Austen
    One hopes one's work survives better than one's reputation in one's own age.
  36. Dorothy Parker
    You did all right on that score. Better than all right.
  37. Jane Austen
    As have you, I believe. Though I confess I cannot judge your current standing with perfect knowledge.
  38. Dorothy Parker
    I'm in the anthologies under 'Wit, American, female, tragic.' Could be worse.
  39. Jane Austen
    It could indeed. One could be omitted from the anthologies entirely.
  40. Dorothy Parker
    So what was it about Radcliffe, really? Just the money?
  41. Jane Austen
    Not only the money. Though the money would have been welcome. It was the certainty. She knew what her readers wanted and she gave it to them, abundantly. I was never certain. I am still not certain.
  42. Dorothy Parker
    That's the thing, isn't it? Millay knew. She knew exactly how good she was. You could see it in how she stood.
  43. Jane Austen
    Confidence is its own form of talent.
  44. Dorothy Parker
    Or its own form of delusion. Hard to tell which until you're dead and people are still arguing about you.
  45. Jane Austen
    They are still arguing about Miss Millay?
  46. Dorothy Parker
    Some. The academics go back and forth. 'Was she a feminist icon or a self-destructive romantic?' As if she couldn't be both.
  47. Jane Austen
    The same questions are asked of Mrs. Radcliffe, in a different key. 'Was she a pioneer or a purveyor of nonsense?' The answer is likely yes.
  48. Dorothy Parker
    You ever wish you'd written just one thing like Udolpho? One big silly book everyone couldn't put down?
  49. Jane Austen
    I wished for readers, Miss Parker. I was not particular about the means. Though I would have drawn the line at too much silliness.
  50. Dorothy Parker
    I'd have written anything if it meant not having to write captions about winter coats.
  51. Jane Austen
    You were employed in periodicals, I know. That must have been—
  52. Dorothy Parker
    Humiliating? Yes. Necessary? Also yes.
  53. Jane Austen
    I revised Sense and Sensibility while my brother negotiated with publishers. There is no dignity in waiting for men to decide one's fate.
  54. Dorothy Parker
    At least you had a brother willing to negotiate. I had a string of editors willing to take my copy and change the byline.
  55. Jane Austen
    That is unconscionable.
  56. Dorothy Parker
    That's Tuesday. But we're supposed to be talking about the rivals, not the indignities. Though I suppose they're related.
  57. Jane Austen
    Quite related. One resents a rival most when one is already resentful.
  58. Dorothy Parker
    Exactly. If I'd been happy, Millay could have published the phone book in quatrains and I wouldn't have cared.
  59. Jane Austen
    If Mrs. Radcliffe had not been paid eight hundred pounds—
  60. Dorothy Parker
    Eight hundred?
  61. Jane Austen
    For The Italian. Yes. If she had not, I might have found her castles merely amusing instead of additionally offensive.
  62. Dorothy Parker
    So what do we do with this? The respect and the resentment?
  63. Jane Austen
    We write about it, I suppose. In our own ways. You with your wit, I with my irony.
  64. Dorothy Parker
    And Millay with her damn candles and Radcliffe with her damn castles.
  65. Jane Austen
    Precisely.
  66. Dorothy Parker
    At least we're honest about it now. That's something.
  67. Jane Austen
    It is a luxury afforded by death. One may admit envy when one no longer needs to compete.
  68. Dorothy Parker
    Speak for yourself. I'm still competing.
  69. Jane Austen
    With Miss Millay?
  70. Dorothy Parker
    With everyone. Old habits.
  71. Jane Austen
    I find I am still revising Elizabeth Bennet's dialogue in my mind. So perhaps I understand.
  72. Dorothy Parker
    We're a pair of fools.
  73. Jane Austen
    Perhaps. But we are fools with sentences that endure. That is not nothing.
  74. Dorothy Parker
    It's not eight hundred pounds either.
  75. Jane Austen
    No. But Miss Parker, consider: Mrs. Radcliffe is read now as a curiosity. You and I are still read as if we were alive.
  76. Dorothy Parker
    Is that supposed to make me feel better?
  77. Jane Austen
    It should. Though I suspect it will not.
  78. Dorothy Parker
    You're right. It won't. But thanks for trying.
  79. Jane Austen
    You are welcome. Shall we raise a glass to our inconvenient rivals?
  80. Dorothy Parker
    To Millay and Radcliffe. May they rest in peace while we rest in envy.
  81. Jane Austen
    An excellent toast. Though I would amend it slightly.
  82. Dorothy Parker
    Go ahead.
  83. Jane Austen
    May they rest in peace while we rest in begrudging admiration.
  84. Dorothy Parker
    Better. More honest. Fine. To begrudging admiration.
  85. Jane Austen
    And to sentences that endure.
  86. Dorothy Parker
    Even when we wish they didn't.