Parker×Twain

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Dorothy Parker sits down with Mark Twain for ROAST NIGHT. The subject — On their actual hourly schedule on a working day.
2. 00:10
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   So they want us to discuss our daily schedules. My working day. As if I had such a thing. I suppose they imagine me at a little escritoire at dawn, pen poised, communing with the muse.
3. 00:21
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Dawn. Good Lord. I've seen dawn, of course—from the other side, when I was still up. No sensible person gets up in the morning. That's when all the fools are about.
4. 00:33
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   I wake at noon, naturally, with a head full of cotton and last night's regrets. Then I lie there for an hour inventing reasons not to get up. It's a very creative hour, actually. I've thought of excuses that could win prizes.
5. 00:47
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Noon? Why, that's practically industrious. I rarely saw the clock before one or two in the afternoon unless there was money involved, and even then I'd send word that I was dying. Which wasn't always a lie.
6. 01:01
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Eventually someone telephones. The phone is the enemy of all good intentions. It sits there like a small black cobra, just waiting to strike.
7. 01:09
   Mark Twainshare moment

   I never answered the telephone if I could help it. That's what other people are for. In my day we had telegrams, which at least had the decency to let you read the bad news before it talked back.
8. 01:21
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   But you can't very well ignore it when it's your editor calling. Or you can, but then you have to invent an illness, and I've already used consumption twice this month. So I answer, and he wants to know about the piece I promised. The piece I definitely never promised.
9. 01:35
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Editors. The natural enemy of the writing man. They want you to write, as if wanting ever accomplished anything. I once had an editor wire me seventeen times for a story. I sent back: 'No subject. Will make one up.'
10. 01:50
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Making it up is the easy part. It's the sitting down that's impossible. I tell him I'm working on it, which is technically true in the sense that I'm thinking about working on it while painting my nails.
11. 02:01
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Ah, yes. The thinking part. I've spent whole weeks thinking about writing. Very strenuous, thinking. A man can exhaust himself thoroughly without lifting a pen.
12. 02:12
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    By three o'clock I've had coffee and possibly a drink, or possibly several drinks depending on what's in the liquor cabinet and whether anyone's counting. Then I sit at the typewriter and stare at it like we're in a standoff.
13. 02:25
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The typewriter! Modern torture. In my day we had pens, and at least you could throw those across the room without damaging expensive machinery. I threw a good many pens. Some at publishers.
14. 02:39
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I type a sentence. Then I read it and realize it's dreadful, absolutely dreadful, and I cross it out. Then I type it again, slightly different. Still dreadful. This goes on until I've smoked through half a pack.
15. 02:53
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I did all my best work in bed. Propped up with pillows, cigars at hand. People thought it was laziness, but it's simple efficiency. Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can lie down?
16. 03:07
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Bed is where I'd rather be, certainly. But then someone would accuse me of not working, and I'd have to explain that thinking is working, suffering is working, staring at the wall is working. Actually typing is just the recording part.
17. 03:20
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The recording part! Yes, exactly. The hard work is all done in the head. I used to tell lecturers that writing is easy—you just stare at the blank page until drops of blood form on your forehead. They thought I was joking.
18. 03:35
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    By five or six I've usually produced a paragraph. A good paragraph, mind you. Every word earned. Every comma a small battle. But it's one paragraph, and I need twelve hundred words, so I'm what you might call behind.
19. 03:47
    Mark Twainshare moment

    A paragraph by evening! Why, that's a regular production line. I once spent three days on a single sentence, getting the rhythm right. The right word in the right place—that's the whole trick. The rest is just filling space.
20. 04:02
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Then there's dinner, which I may or may not eat depending on whether I'm too miserable to chew. Usually I have something sent up—a sandwich, some soup. The food of people who've given up on pleasure.
21. 04:14
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I always ate well. Had to, for the lecture circuit. Can't perform on an empty stomach, though I knew plenty who tried to perform on a full bottle. Writing's different, though. You can write hungry. Some say you should.
22. 04:28
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    After dinner, if you can call it that, I return to the typewriter with a renewed sense of doom. The evening is when the real panic sets in. The deadline is tomorrow, and I have a paragraph and a hangover.
23. 04:40
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Deadlines. I never met one I couldn't negotiate. You wire and say your grandmother died. If you've already killed her off in a previous excuse, you resurrect her just to kill her again. Publishers are very sympathetic to dead grandmothers.
24. 04:56
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I've killed off so many relatives that I'm practically an orphan. But eventually you have to produce something, because even the most sympathetic editor has a limit, and I passed mine somewhere around 1925.
25. 05:08
    Mark Twainshare moment

    So you write through the night, I suppose. The desperate hours. I did some of my best work between midnight and four in the morning, when the house was quiet and there was nobody around to remind me I was supposed to be working.
26. 05:21
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Exactly. Night is when the words finally come, probably because they know I'm too tired to fight them. I type and type, and somewhere around three in the morning I finish, and it's either brilliant or terrible and I can't tell which.
27. 05:35
    Mark Twainshare moment

    At three in the morning everything you write is brilliant. It's the next afternoon when you read it again that the truth emerges. Many a masterpiece written at midnight turned out to be nonsense by noon.
28. 05:48
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Then I pour myself a final drink—strictly medicinal—and fall into bed, where I sleep until noon and wake up to do the whole thing again. Or not do it, as the case may be.
29. 05:58
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The writer's life! And people wonder why we drink. I always said I could give up drinking if I wanted to, but I'd rather give up something else. Like writing, for instance.
30. 06:10
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The horrible thing is they pay us for this. Not much, mind you. But enough to keep us coming back, like addicts to a very literary dealer.
31. 06:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Pay! Well, sometimes. I spent half my life chasing publishers for money they owed me. The other half I spent spending money I hadn't earned yet. It's a wonder I didn't end up in debtor's prison.
32. 06:32
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You were famous, though. They actually wanted your work. I spend half my time convincing editors that yes, women can write about things other than embroidery and the servant problem.
33. 06:42
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Famous is just another word for expected. Once you're famous, they expect you to be brilliant every time, and God help you if you turn in something merely competent. I'd have killed for anonymity.
34. 06:55
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I'd have killed for punctuality. The ability to simply sit down at nine and write until five, like a normal person with a normal job. Instead I have this schedule, which isn't a schedule at all. It's a daily nervous breakdown with occasional typing.
35. 07:10
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Normal people don't write books, Mrs. Parker. They read them, if that. We're not built for regular hours. We're built for panic, procrastination, and periodic bursts of genius brought on by sheer terror.
36. 07:23
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Well. When you put it that way, it sounds almost romantic. Almost. Pass me a cigarette, won't you? All this talk about working has made me want to put it off for another hour.
37. 07:35
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I don't smoke anymore. Being dead and all. But I support your decision wholeheartedly. Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow, I always said. And if you can put it off till next week, so much the better.