Feynman×Parker

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on LATE SHOW: Richard Feynman and Dorothy Parker, on On their public reputation versus what they actually thought.
2. 00:09
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   So I've been thinking about this reputation business. You know what drives me crazy? People think I'm some kind of colorful character. Like I did things to be colorful. I picked locks at Los Alamos because I was bored and wanted to see if I could do it, not because I was trying to be Richard Feynman, Amusing Guy.
3. 00:27
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   How absolutely ghastly for you. Meanwhile, I spent forty years being introduced as the woman who said men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses, which I didn't even write. It was 'girls who wear spectacles.' But who's counting? Only me, apparently, for several decades.
4. 00:46
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Wait, you didn't write your most famous line?
5. 00:48
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Oh, I wrote it. But it was part of a stupid little poem called 'News Item' in a collection nobody remembers. Meanwhile, I wrote short stories, book reviews, actual work, and what does everyone want? The eyeglasses joke. It's like being known for your grocery list.
6. 01:05
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   But see, that's different from my problem! At least they're quoting something you actually said. People think I was this wacky professor who played bongos and went to strip clubs because I was rebelling against stuffiness. I went to those places because I liked them! The bongos were interesting. The rhythms! And yeah, I liked looking at women, sue me. But then it becomes this whole mythology.
7. 01:28
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   You poor lamb, persecuted by admirers. Here's what I find interesting: you're complaining that people thought you were colorful when you were actually just curious. I'm complaining that people thought I was clever when I was actually often miserable. But we both got turned into bumper stickers.
8. 01:44
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Were you really that miserable? I mean, I read some of your stuff. It's funny! You were genuinely funny.
9. 01:50
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Being funny and being happy are not even distant cousins, dear. They're strangers who happened to sit next to each other on a bus once. I was funny the way some people are nearsighted. It was just how I saw things. But everyone assumed the wisecracks meant I was having a marvelous time at the Algonquin, trading bon mots with Bob Benchley. Half the time I was thinking about how to pay the rent.
10. 02:12
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, but you did sit at the Algonquin Round Table, right? I mean, that part was real?
11. 02:17
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Oh, it was real. And it was also lunch. Just lunch. With people I worked with. We ate veal cutlets and made jokes about our editors. Somehow this became this legendary salon of American letters. Nobody ever mentions that mostly we talked about who was sleeping with whom and whether anyone had paid us yet.
12. 02:37
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Ha! That's great. See, what bothers me is when people act like I was anti-establishment or something. I wasn't anti-establishment! I loved physics! I loved MIT and Caltech. I loved institutions when they let me figure things out. I just didn't like pompous people who made simple things complicated because it made them feel important.
13. 02:58
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Well, I actually was somewhat left-wing, for what it's worth. Went to Spain during the Civil War. Supported various causes. Got myself on some lists. But then everyone wanted me to be this brittle socialite who only cared about cocktails and who was sitting with whom. As if politics and wit were somehow incompatible.
14. 03:16
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Did the politics get you in trouble? I mean really in trouble?
15. 03:19
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Enough trouble. Hollywood got nervous. I was writing screenplays by then, which is already Hell's anteroom, and then suddenly nobody wanted the Red Dorothy Parker touching their scripts. Not that the scripts were any good. I did it for the money, which everyone somehow found shocking.
16. 03:35
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I don't find that shocking at all. You need money! I did consulting work for Hughes Aircraft. Very dull stuff, but it paid. And you know what? Nobody made that part of the Feynman legend. The legend is all safe-cracking and bongo drums, never the parts where I sat in meetings about boring engineering problems.
17. 03:54
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That's because boring doesn't sell. And here's the awful secret: sometimes the work is boring. Sometimes writing is just staring at a wall wishing you were dead. But the myth requires that you were always sparkling, always spontaneous, always on. God forbid you were ever just tired.
18. 04:10
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Or stuck! I got stuck all the time. There were years after the war when I couldn't think about physics at all. I was burned out. But the reputation machine wants you to be consistently you, whatever they decided you are.
19. 04:23
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And heaven help you if you contradict the myth. I tried to write seriously a few times. Poetry that wasn't light verse. Longer pieces. Nobody wanted it. They wanted Dorothy Parker, Funny Lady, dispensing aperçus. It's like being a trained seal, except the seal probably has better working conditions.
20. 04:42
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But didn't you encourage it sometimes? I mean, you were performing at that Round Table thing, weren't you? You knew people were listening.
21. 04:49
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Of course I encouraged it. What was I supposed to do, be dull? When you have one talent and no money, you use the talent. But there's a difference between making jokes at lunch and having every joke archived for posterity as if you were Voltaire. Which I was not, incidentally, no matter what anyone said.
22. 05:07
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    See, I think I did encourage mine too. I mean, I told the safe-cracking stories at dinner parties. They were true stories, but I told them because people liked them. And maybe I played the bongos a little louder because people thought it was eccentric. So who's responsible for the myth? Them or us?
23. 05:24
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Both. Obviously both. We gave them material. They built a cathedral out of it and then locked us inside. I became the woman who drank too much and said cutting things. Which I did. But I was also other things, and those didn't fit the story.
24. 05:38
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    What other things?
25. 05:39
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Oh, I don't know. I cared about things. I cried at movies. I had a dog I was absurdly devoted to. I was nice to young writers sometimes. None of that is interesting enough for Dorothy Parker, Algonquin Wit. That woman has to be hard and sophisticated every minute.
26. 05:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I get that. People were shocked when I cried at the Challenger disaster. Like, what, the bongo guy isn't allowed to be sad that people died? I worked on that commission because I actually cared, not because it was another colorful adventure. But caring isn't as fun to write about.
27. 06:12
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Exactly. The myth wants you simple. One-dimensional. Funny Lady. Wacky Physicist. And God knows it's easier that way for everyone. Easier to summarize. Easier to remember. Easier to put on a tote bag.
28. 06:26
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Would you want to be remembered differently? I mean, if you could go back and change the story, would you?
29. 06:31
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I don't know. Maybe I'd want to be remembered for the work I was actually proud of. The story 'Big Blonde' maybe. Some of the political stuff. But honestly? At this point, I'm dead. People can think what they like. At least they're still reading something.
30. 06:44
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah, I guess I feel the same way about the physics. If people want to remember the bongos, fine, as long as they also remember QED and the path integrals and the actual work. The rest is just noise.
31. 06:56
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Although between us, I'd rather be remembered for bongo drums than for my marriages. Now those were truly disasters, and somehow they're always in the first paragraph of anything written about me.
32. 07:05
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Ha! Fair enough. You know what's funny? We're both sitting here complaining about being misunderstood, but we're not exactly unknown. We got attention. We got heard. A lot of people don't even get that.
33. 07:18
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    True. It's an extremely privileged complaint. 'Oh dear, everyone knows who I am but they don't know the real me.' Meanwhile, most people die in complete obscurity. So perhaps we should simply shut up and be grateful.
34. 07:33
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Except we're not going to shut up, are we?
35. 07:34
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Not even slightly. That's the other problem with having a reputation: you feel obligated to live up to it. Or in my case, live down to it. Dorothy Parker would never miss a chance to complain. It's what I do.
36. 07:47
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And Richard Feynman has to explain everything loudly and with his hands. Even when he's explaining that he doesn't want to be explained.
37. 07:54
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    We're doomed, basically.
38. 07:56
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Completely doomed. But at least the bongos were fun.
39. 07:59
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And at least some of the jokes were good. That's something. Not much, but something.