Wilde×Parker

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on ROAST NIGHT, Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker. They take up On the question they want their own grave to ask.
2. 00:10
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   You know, Dorothy, I've been thinking about my grave in Père Lachaise. All those lipstick kisses from admirers, generation after generation pressing their mouths to the stone. If I could ask them one question as they stand there, I think it would be: Did you bring flowers, or just your vanity?
3. 00:25
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   That's not a question, Oscar. That's a mirror with a question mark painted on it.
4. 00:29
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   Is there a difference? The best questions are always reflective surfaces. We hold them up to people and watch them flinch.
5. 00:36
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Mine would be simpler. I'd want my grave to ask: What the hell took you so long?
6. 00:40
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   Darling, that's not a question for visitors. That's a question for death itself. I rather imagine you kept it waiting in the anteroom for years, smoking and making cutting remarks about the wallpaper.
7. 00:50
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Death's got all the time in the world. I figured I'd make it earn me. But no, the question's for the living. The ones who said they'd visit, you know. The ones who swore they'd never forget.
8. 01:00
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   Ah, but people always forget, Dorothy. It's the one talent universally distributed. The question is whether you want to shame them for it or absolve them of it.
9. 01:09
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   I want to make them squirm. What's the point of being dead if you can't haunt the conscience of everyone who failed you while you were alive?
10. 01:15
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    How American of you. In Europe, we prefer our ghosts to be beautiful and melancholic, not prosecutorial. My question wouldn't accuse. It would seduce.
11. 01:24
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Seduce them into what, Oscar? Feeling cultured for standing over your bones?
12. 01:28
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Into recognizing that they came not to mourn me, but to borrow my luster. I would ask: Are you here because you loved me, or because being seen here makes you interesting at dinner parties? The answer, of course, is always the latter, but watching them pretend otherwise would be exquisite.
13. 01:44
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You really do think everyone's performing for you, even after you're dead.
14. 01:48
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Everyone is always performing, my dear. Death merely removes the author from the theatre. The play continues.
15. 01:54
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Maybe that's the difference between us. You think life's a play. I think it's a hanging jury, and the verdict came in decades ago.
16. 02:01
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Then why bother with a question at all? Questions imply the possibility of redemption, of revelation. If the verdict's already in, just carve 'I told you so' on the headstone and have done with it.
17. 02:13
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Because 'I told you so' isn't a question, and questions are what keep the guilt fresh. I want them to wonder if they were the ones I meant. I want them to lose sleep over it.
18. 02:23
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    How deliciously vindictive. I approve entirely, though I could never be so direct. My question would have to dance around the accusation like a matador with a very drunk bull.
19. 02:33
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That's because you think cruelty should wear a tuxedo. I prefer mine in a housedress and slippers.
20. 02:38
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Cruelty should always be elegant, Dorothy. Otherwise it's just rudeness, and rudeness is for people without imagination. If I'm going to wound someone from beyond the grave, I want them to thank me for the privilege.
21. 02:49
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You want them to thank you? Christ, Oscar, even dead you're still working the room.
22. 02:54
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    What else is there to do? One must maintain standards. I didn't suffer through two years of hard labor to end up with an uninspired epitaph. The grave is one's final publication. It should have style.
23. 03:06
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Mine just says 'Excuse my dust.' Short, dismissive, and it doesn't oversell the merchandise.
24. 03:11
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Yes, I know it. Very you. Very American. All that self-deprecation masking a rather fierce pride in your own cleverness. You want people to think you don't care, but you've calculated every syllable.
25. 03:23
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    At least I don't need a paragraph to say goodbye. Your tomb's got more words than some people's autobiographies.
26. 03:28
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    That's because I had more to say. And because brevity, while occasionally the soul of wit, is more often the refuge of people who've run out of ideas. I wanted my grave to be a conversation, not a telegram.
27. 03:39
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    A conversation nobody asked for, with a corpse who won't shut up. Sounds about right.
28. 03:44
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    But that's precisely the charm of it! The question my grave would ask is the question I always asked in life: Why are you so afraid of beauty? Why do you insist on making everything small and mean and manageable when you could simply surrender to extravagance?
29. 03:58
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Because extravagance costs, Oscar. And most of us couldn't afford it even when we were breathing. Some of us had to make a living instead of making a scene.
30. 04:08
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    You made both, darling, and brilliantly. But you pretended the living mattered more than the scene, when we both know the scene was what kept you alive. The wit, the barbs, the performance of not caring while caring desperately. That was your extravagance.
31. 04:20
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Maybe. But I never confused performing with living. You did.
32. 04:23
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    On the contrary, I understood they were the same thing. Life without performance is just existence. Animals exist. We perform. And the greatest performance is the one that continues after the final curtain.
33. 04:36
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    So your grave becomes your stage. One last chance to make them laugh, or cry, or feel something.
34. 04:41
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Exactly. One last chance to matter. Because the question isn't really what we ask them, Dorothy. It's whether they'll bother to listen.
35. 04:47
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    They won't. Not really. They'll take a picture, post it somewhere, and move on to the next dead celebrity. That's why the question matters less than the fact that we asked it.
36. 04:58
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    How perfectly bleak. How perfectly you.
37. 05:00
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    How perfectly honest, you mean. You dress up the truth in peacock feathers, Oscar. I just point at it and shrug.
38. 05:07
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Yes, but peacock feathers are so much more memorable than a shrug. When people stand at my grave, kissing that stone, they're not thinking about death. They're thinking about life, about art, about the possibility that beauty matters more than sense. That's what my question would really ask: Do you dare to believe that beauty redeems everything?
39. 05:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And mine would ask: Do you dare to believe it doesn't? That maybe we're just here, and then we're not, and the only meaning is what we made along the way, which in my case was mostly gin and wisecracks.
40. 05:37
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Gin and wisecracks. Could there be a finer legacy? I think not. Though I would have added champagne to the gin, and perhaps a few more wisecracks.
41. 05:46
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You always did have to top everyone, even in death.
42. 05:49
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Not topping, darling. Perfecting. There's a difference, though admittedly a small one.
43. 05:53
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    So what's your final answer, Oscar? What does the grave of Oscar Wilde ask the people who come bearing lipstick and borrowed significance?
44. 06:00
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    I think it would ask: Did I teach you that life is too important to be taken seriously? And if not, why on earth are you standing here pretending you understood me?
45. 06:09
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Mine would be simpler. Just: Did you laugh? Because if you didn't, what was the point of any of it?
46. 06:14
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Did you laugh. How wonderfully final. How wonderfully sad.
47. 06:18
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Sad's better than forgotten, Oscar. I'll take sad over invisible any day.
48. 06:22
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Then we're agreed. The question our graves ask matters less than the fact that people still come to answer them. Even if the answer is just lipstick and a photograph.
49. 06:30
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Even if the answer is just walking away.
50. 06:33
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Especially then. Because walking away means we made them think. And thinking, my dear Dorothy, is the one thing no grave can prevent.