'that would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.'

just came across this portrait of dorothy parker. i love dorothy parker. she was undeniably a participant in the heady, vulgar glitz of 1920s new york 'society', yet beneath her often witty, always razor-sharp observations on such a lifestyle, there lay an undeniable vulnerability and poignancy. in the words of the philosopher irwin edman, parker was the only writer of that time and place who could 'combine a heartbreak with a wisecrack'.

this portrait caught my eye because, for someone who epitomised the youthful abandon (and all that that entails) of that era, it consistently shocks me that she outlived it, dying at the distinctly unglamorous age of 73. here, she is in her fifties, looking tired, lonely and about a million miles away from her heydays at the algonquin. 

Aidan John Moffat - A Very Short Song (originally by Dorothy Parker)