Parker×Mozart

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Dorothy Parker sits down with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for ROAST NIGHT. The subject — On the moment they understood the difference between being clever and being right.
2. 00:11
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   So they've dragged us both out here to confess our sins. How delightfully Catholic of them. I suppose you have some charming anecdote about realizing your musical genius was occasionally wrong about something trivial, like how to properly season a schnitzel.
3. 00:25
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ha! You think I will talk about food? No, no, Mrs. Parker, I have better stories. Though I must say, I was almost never wrong about music. Almost never. But there was one time in Vienna—
4. 00:39
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   One time. How refreshingly modest. In my experience, the moment I understood the difference came about every third Tuesday, usually right after I'd demolished someone at the Algonquin and went home feeling terribly pleased with myself.
5. 00:52
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ah, but did you feel pleased, truly? Or did you feel clever? These are different things, you know.
6. 00:57
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Coming from a man who titled a piece 'Leck mich im Arsch,' I'm fascinated by your sudden interest in the distinction between pleasure and cleverness.
7. 01:05
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   That canon was brilliant! And also very funny. My point exactly—I was clever, yes, and it made people laugh. But was I right to write it? Probably not for my reputation with the Archbishop.
8. 01:18
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Your reputation with the Archbishop. Mine was with editors who stopped returning my calls after I'd been too clever about their wives in print. Different centuries, same stupidity.
9. 01:28
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   You wrote about their wives? Oh, this I must hear!
10. 01:31
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Nothing I care to repeat, which should tell you how bad it was. The point is, I thought wit was its own justification. If the line was good enough, sharp enough, it simply had to be said. Truth was whatever drew blood most elegantly.
11. 01:46
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! Yes, exactly this feeling. I had it with Colloredo—the Archbishop in Salzburg. He was a pompous fool, you understand, and I knew it, and everyone knew I knew it. So I made my little jokes, my little rebellions.
12. 02:00
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Let me guess. It felt marvelous until it didn't.
13. 02:03
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It felt marvelous until I was eating with the servants. Literally! They made me sit at the servants' table because I could not keep my mouth shut. And I thought, 'Wolfgang, you are so clever, sitting here with the cooks, so much cleverer than that idiot Archbishop up there at the high table.'
14. 02:20
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    But you weren't clever at all. You were just right about him being an idiot, which isn't the same as being smart about your own situation.
15. 02:26
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Precisely! Being right about his character—this changed nothing. I still had no money. I still had to beg for positions. My cleverness kept me warm at night like a thin blanket in January.
16. 02:39
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    At least you figured it out. I kept at it for years. There's a particular sort of fool who mistakes cruelty for honesty, and I was that fool with a column and a decent vocabulary. The Algonquin Round Table thought we were all terribly sophisticated, eviscerating people over lunch.
17. 02:56
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But you were sophisticated! I read some of your work. Very sharp, very—what is the word—incisive?
18. 03:03
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Incisive. Yes. That's what we called it. Others called it being a bitch, and they weren't wrong either. I once said of a friend's book that it shouldn't be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force. Got a huge laugh. She never spoke to me again.
19. 03:20
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ah. And was the book truly so terrible?
20. 03:22
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    It was mediocre. Which is to say, no, it didn't deserve that. But mediocrity offended me, and I thought my offense was everyone's concern. The line was perfect, you see. Couldn't waste a perfect line.
21. 03:36
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I understand this completely! I once wrote a musical joke into a piece, making fun of a rival composer, very subtle, but musicians would know. And it was funny! But it was also petty, and it made the piece less pure. The joke was clever, but including it was not right.
22. 03:53
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Did you take it out?
23. 03:54
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No. I was too proud of the joke. This is what I am trying to tell you—I knew the difference by then, I just chose clever anyway.
24. 04:02
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Well, at least you're honest about it. Most people pretend they didn't know better. I certainly did, for years. Blamed the world for not appreciating sophisticated humor when really I was just being mean because it was easier than being kind.
25. 04:16
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Kind is much harder! Kind requires you to think about other people's feelings, and when you are clever, you are thinking about your own brilliance. It is very distracting, being brilliant.
26. 04:26
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Is that your excuse? Being too brilliant to notice you're being a shit?
27. 04:30
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No, no excuse. I am just saying—when you discover you can make people laugh, or gasp, or admire your wit, it is like a drug. You want more of that feeling. The truth becomes less interesting than the effect.
28. 04:44
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The effect. Yes. I built a whole career on the effect. Algonquin wit, magazine cleverness, the perfect devastating quip. And then one day I'm sitting alone in a hotel room, no husband, no money, no friends who weren't exhausted by me, and I thought, well, Dorothy, your effects have been splendid, haven't they?
29. 05:03
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    This is very dark. Was this when you tried to—forgive me, I read about—
30. 05:08
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Yes, that's when I tried to kill myself. Several times, actually. I was very clever about that too. Failed at it with great style. 'Résumé' I called the poem. Razors pain you, rivers are damp. You might as well live. Everyone thought it was hilarious.
31. 05:23
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But it was not funny to you.
32. 05:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    It was true. Which still wasn't the same as being right. Being right would have meant not getting to that point in the first place. Being right would have meant shutting up occasionally, or being kind, or not treating every conversation like a fencing match.
33. 05:39
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You think kindness would have saved you?
34. 05:41
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I think not being clever for sport might have left me with people who actually cared whether I lived or died. Instead, I had admirers. Admirers aren't worth much at three in the morning.
35. 05:52
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I had admirers too. Many admirers. They loved the music, they loved the boy genius, they loved Wolfgang the entertainer. But when I was sick, when I needed money, when I died—well, I died quite alone, you know. Buried in an unmarked grave.
36. 06:07
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    So we both figured it out too late. How typical.
37. 06:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Maybe not too late. I wrote the Requiem at the end. That was not clever. That was right. That was me finally saying something true without worrying about the effect.
38. 06:20
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I wrote some political stuff in the thirties and forties. Communist sympathizing, they called it. Got me blacklisted. But it was actual conviction, not cleverness. Probably the only honest thing I did.
39. 06:33
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    So we both learned! Just very slowly. Very, very slowly. And after much suffering.
40. 06:39
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That's the thing about the difference between clever and right, isn't it? Clever feels good immediately. Right takes decades to reveal itself, usually after you've already ruined everything.
41. 06:49
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But if you had known earlier, would you have stopped? Would I have stopped? I think perhaps not. The applause is too sweet. The laughter, the admiration, the feeling that you are the smartest one—
42. 07:00
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No, I wouldn't have stopped. I'd have thought you were a bore for suggesting it. That's the real cruelty of it. Young people being clever right now, we can't warn them. They'll think we're just bitter old dead people.
43. 07:11
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    We are bitter old dead people.
44. 07:13
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Yes, but we're right. Finally. Posthumously. Uselessly. But right.
45. 07:17
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I will take it! Better to be right when dead than never right at all. Though I would have preferred to be right when alive. With money. And a nice grave.
46. 07:27
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Well, at least we're entertaining about it. That's something. We can be right and still perform the hell out of the confession.
47. 07:33
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ah, you see? Even now, we cannot help ourselves. We must be clever about being wrong about being clever. It is hopeless!
48. 07:41
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Completely hopeless. But at least we're hopeless together on the radio, being clever about not being clever. If that's not a perfect epitaph for both of us, I don't know what is.
49. 07:51
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Here lies Wolfgang and Dorothy: They finally learned the difference. It did not help.
50. 07:56
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Perfect. Now let's get a drink.