Twain×Parker

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Mark Twain sits down with Dorothy Parker for ROAST NIGHT. The subject — On the contemporary nobody admits to disliking but everyone secretly did.
2. 00:11
   Mark Twainshare moment

   You know what I've been thinking about, Miss Parker? The peculiar American talent for pretending to admire someone we'd cross the street to avoid at a church social.
3. 00:20
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Oh, we had that in spades in my day too. Though we had the decency to be drunk when we lied about it.
4. 00:26
   Mark Twainshare moment

   I'm thinking of those towering figures of virtue who made everyone tired just by entering a room. The kind who'd give you their opinion on your soul without being asked.
5. 00:35
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   You mean the ones whose obituaries everyone read with relief disguised as respect?
6. 00:40
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Precisely. In my time, we had Ralph Waldo Emerson. Now, I'm supposed to genuflect here and speak of his wisdom.
7. 00:48
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   But you won't.
8. 00:49
   Mark Twainshare moment

   I knew him, you see. Spent time with him. He was a gap-toothed, senile old bore who'd forgotten more than most men ever knew, mainly because he'd forgotten everything including what he'd said five minutes prior. But Lord, you couldn't say so. Everyone pretended his mutterings were profundities.
9. 01:08
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   The emperor's new clothes, except the emperor was genuinely confused about whether he was wearing clothes at all.
10. 01:14
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I wrote that he was a beautiful soul in a clouded mind. Privately, I thought he was about as useful as a biography of a dead dog, but less entertaining.
11. 01:24
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    At least you met yours. I had to pretend to admire people I'd only seen across crowded rooms at parties I didn't want to attend. Alexander Woollcott, for instance.
12. 01:33
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Don't know him.
13. 01:35
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Lucky you. Imagine a man-shaped collection of affectations who mistook cruelty for wit and volume for importance. He was the Round Table's pet tyrant. We all said we adored him.
14. 01:46
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Did you?
15. 01:47
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I loathed him. He once said I had the kindest heart in New York, and I knew immediately he was setting me up for something.
16. 01:54
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The compliment as bear trap.
17. 01:56
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Exactly. But everyone laughed at his jokes, published his columns, invited him everywhere. To say you didn't like Woollcott was to admit you didn't get the joke. So we all pretended.
18. 02:07
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's the key, isn't it? Nobody wants to be the child pointing at the naked emperor. Safer to join the applause.
19. 02:14
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Though I notice you did write that bit about Emerson down. Eventually.
20. 02:17
    Mark Twainshare moment

    After he was dead twenty years, sure. I'm brave that way.
21. 02:21
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I had James M. Barrie too. Peter Pan's daddy.
22. 02:24
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Oh?
23. 02:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Charming little man. Wrote like an angel if the angel had a concerning interest in pre-pubescent boys. Everyone cooed over his whimsy. I wanted to scream every time someone called him delightful.
24. 02:36
    Mark Twainshare moment

    What did you call him?
25. 02:38
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    To his face? A genius. Because I wasn't independently wealthy enough to be honest.
26. 02:43
    Mark Twainshare moment

    We had Bret Harte out West. Another genius, according to the Boston papers. Couldn't write worth a damn after his first few stories, but he'd learned the trick of looking authorial. Grew a mustache, adopted a manner.
27. 02:57
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    A mustache can hide a multitude of sins.
28. 03:00
    Mark Twainshare moment

    He borrowed money from me, never paid it back, and then got offended when I stopped lending. Still had to shake his hand at literary dinners and call him colleague.
29. 03:09
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The professional smile. I know it well. It's the one that doesn't reach your eyes and costs you a piece of your soul each time.
30. 03:16
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You get good at it, though. After a while, you can praise a man's work while privately composing his epitaph.
31. 03:23
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Here lies a man beloved by all, which is to say, nobody bothered to know him.
32. 03:27
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The question is whether it's worse in public life or private. In my time, we had to pretend to like our neighbors. You couldn't avoid them.
33. 03:36
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Oh, we still had that. Mrs. Roosevelt, for instance.
34. 03:39
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Teddy's wife?
35. 03:40
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No, Eleanor. Franklin's conscience made flesh. Endlessly good, endlessly right, endlessly there with another opinion about what you should be doing with your life.
36. 03:51
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Ah. The professional saint.
37. 03:52
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Everyone said she was wonderful. She probably was. But God, you couldn't say you found her exhausting without sounding like you kicked orphans.
38. 04:00
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Some people wear their virtue like a weapon. Makes you feel small for wanting to enjoy yourself.
39. 04:06
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Exactly. And you know the worst part? She probably genuinely cared. Which somehow made it even more irritating.
40. 04:14
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Sincerity is very hard to forgive in a person who makes you feel inadequate.
41. 04:18
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I'll take an honest bastard over a sincere saint any day. At least you know where you stand.
42. 04:22
    Mark Twainshare moment

    We had Henry Ward Beecher for that particular torture. Minister, abolitionist, adulterer, and holder of opinions on every subject under heaven.
43. 04:32
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Let me guess. Everyone pretended not to know about the adultery.
44. 04:36
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Oh, there was a trial. Huge scandal. But he survived it because people wanted to believe in him. Needed to, maybe. He represented something noble, so we all agreed to overlook the fact that he was a philandering hypocrite.
45. 04:51
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    We're very good at that. Collective delusion in service of a comfortable lie.
46. 04:55
    Mark Twainshare moment

    It's easier than admitting we were wrong about someone. Especially if we've already carved their face into the national monument of our opinions.
47. 05:03
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And if everyone else is still pretending, you look like the fool for stopping.
48. 05:08
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Or the malcontent. The ungrateful cynic who can't appreciate greatness when it's standing right in front of him, droning on about transcendentalism.
49. 05:17
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Did Emerson really go on about that?
50. 05:19
    Mark Twainshare moment

    When he could remember what it was, yes. Mostly he just looked confused and everyone interpreted it as deep thought.
51. 05:26
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The philosopher's greatest trick. Confusion that looks like contemplation.
52. 05:31
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I'll tell you who else nobody actually liked: Harriet Beecher Stowe. Sister to the good reverend I mentioned.
53. 05:38
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Uncle Tom's Cabin.
54. 05:39
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's the one. Important book. Changed the conversation about slavery. Also, she was a self-righteous prig who'd correct your grammar at a funeral.
55. 05:50
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Ah. Another one you couldn't say you disliked without revealing yourself as history's villain.
56. 05:55
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Precisely. She did good work. She was also the kind of person who made you want to defend slavery just to be contrary, which I realize is not a defensible impulse.
57. 06:06
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The morally right bore. The worst kind.
58. 06:09
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You can't even enjoy disliking them because they're usually correct about the important things.
59. 06:13
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That's the real torture. They're right, and they know they're right, and they want you to know they know.
60. 06:19
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And everyone else is nodding along, so you nod too, and you die a little inside.
61. 06:24
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Then you go home and pour a drink and wonder if you're the problem.
62. 06:27
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Are you?
63. 06:28
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Probably. But so is everyone else who's nodding.
64. 06:30
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's the comfort, I suppose. We're all liars together, united in our polite dishonesty.
65. 06:36
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    It's called civilization, Mr. Clemens.
66. 06:38
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I've always been suspicious of civilization. Too much nodding, not enough honesty.
67. 06:43
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Too much honesty and we'd all be eating alone.
68. 06:46
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Sometimes that sounds like paradise.
69. 06:48
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Until you're actually alone. Then you miss the people you hated.
70. 06:51
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Do you?
71. 06:52
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No. But I'm supposed to say I do. See? Still lying.
72. 06:55
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Old habits.
73. 06:56
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The oldest. Right behind breathing and disappointing our mothers.