Today I was going to write about the American writer Dorothy Parker, because Tuesday will be the 55th anniversary of her death. It's not a perfect anniversary, I know, but what is when it comes to commemorating –let alone celebrating– a death? That said, it's always timely to evoke Parker, whom we remember for her sharp wit. "The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue," she said. An entire declaration of principles. Another thing is the alcohol that she decanted to fuel that ingenuity, as well as the depressions and subsequent creative slumps. "I'm not a writer who has problems with alcohol, I'm an alcoholic who has problems with writing," she was honest, without getting off her wits.
Alcohol can make us funny or obnoxious. "His problem with him is that when he's not drunk, he's sober," he said of a bum acquaintance of his, the poet W.B. Yeats, who had a merciless vision of the human race. That's why we prefer displays of ingenuity that leave problems for later, in this case those derived from alcohol, and highlight their comic side. For example, Dave Dutton's when he said that he stopped going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings because “when my colleagues see me arrive they think they have delirium tremens again”. Or that of Phil Harris, who referred to his dipsomania and the consequences of a nuclear accident that he had had on his body as follows: “I cannot die until the Government finds a safe place to bury my liver ”.
Alcohol has to do with ingenuity, yes. And not only in terms of cause and effect. One and the other are similar in that they should not be administered in excessive doses, because that can saturate. To Noël Coward, wit was like caviar, and he best served it in small, dainty doses, not spread it like jam on toast. However, when you start spouting one-liners it's hard to stop. Which does not mean that it is very relevant to dress situations that, crudely, can be scary. For example, Russia in Ukraine. Who is talking to us right now in a witty way about what is happening there? Certainly not Putin. Are Kremlin tenants unfit for that? No. Nikita Khrushchev, who also brought the world to the brink of atomic conflict during the Cuban missile crisis, had his sense of humor. "The only difference between Kennedy [his nemesis of his in the aforementioned crisis] and me is that if I had died before him, Onassis would not have married my widow." In other words, it is not mandatory to be unpleasant to qualify for the Kremlin. Finally some good news from there.
If the reader has come this far, he will have realized that these displays of ingenuity, and so many others, we like because all of a sudden they surprise us and, immediately afterwards, because we realize that they contain a sharp criticism against one of Their protagonists. Khrushchev used his joke to throw a dart at his wife, telling us without saying that she was much uglier than Jackie Kennedy. All this makes us fear that in our days marked by political correctness and by all kinds of cancellations for those who do not submit to it, the witty, scathing, derogatory expression may have its days counted. The least expected day, they ban it.
It would be unfortunate, of course. We would miss the opportunity to hear someone say about our doctors what Walter Matthau said about his: "He gave me six months to live, but when I told him I had no money to pay him he gave me six more." Or to say about Junts militants what Levi Eshkol said about Zionists: "You lock three in a room and they end up forming four parties."
It would be unfortunate, moreover, because the ingenious phrase is, in reality, a sign of good education and culture. "If you have to kill someone, it costs nothing to do it politely," suggested Winston Churchill. She, too, was polite Dorothy Parker – and so was I trying to be by leaving her next quote untranslated – when she apologized to an editor who was urging her to turn in an article with these words: “I’m fucking busy. Or vice versa.”
