Constant Reader – Old Paper & Cats, Reviews by S. Hargrave

The New Yorker

Five years ago, we started a subscription to The New Yorker on a whim. I was ready once again to actually start reading about the news and current events after a few years kept in the comfortable dark. But I didn’t want to rely on internet news and I didn’t want to get into my grandmother’s habit of the nightly news broadcast either. So, we turned to The New Yorker mostly because it wasn’t solely current events.

It’s mostly the other things I use the magazine for these days. The book reviews, and the new critiques of older literature. Particularly, I have a fondness for the ‘Second Read’ articles and end up with a lot of the books discussed. I’m grateful for this subscription because it’s really opened up my world and showed me that there is a lot of contemporary literature out there that needs my attention just as much as work from the past. It made me stop hiding in the words of yesteryear and start craving voices that are living beside me in this insane present world.

A tabby cat leans against a red paperback book.

Reviews with a Hint of Spite

To kick off Women’s History Month, I decided to start with a short, non-fiction read in a beautiful new edition from McNally.

The Constant Reader by Dorothy Parker is a red paperback book with a sketch of a woman smoking and typing at a typewriter on the cover.

If you’ve never read Dorothy Parker, you are in for a real treat with this book. She’s a writer that was known just as much for the sharpness of her wit as for the products of her pen, and she is delightfully funny in that very special, dry, sarcastic way that I always love. Constant Reader is McNally’s collection of work from the column she wrote for The New Yorker in 1927 and 1928. Mostly, Parker wrote biting reviews, but she digresses several times into various other subjects and foibles.

However she takes books apart, she never comes across as arrogant or condescending. Instead, her humour is often self-deprecating in a way that is so hilarious. This is a solid collection of articles from a fiercely intelligent, searing writer that, even if you have never heard of the book she’s talking about, will still leave you laughing.

A sleepy tabby cat with big ears and a brown nose closes its eyes happily.

Conversations with Book People

I think what draws me most to Parker’s writing is her tone itself, and the way she writes about books. She doesn’t try to educate. She doesn’t recount every aspect of the plot to you. Instead, she seems to speak to you as if you were at a high fashionable cocktail party full of literati and she has scandalously decided to diss the book that everyone is talking about. With the author of said book across the room innocently eating hors d’oeuvres.

It’s both conspiratorial and conversational. It’s my favourite place to be. Talking about books with someone who also loves books and has some very strong opinions about how they should and should not be written. And who knows all those lovely little details that readers always love to analyse to the point of absolute autopsy. Parker does all this with the delightful brutality that avid readers are usually completely guilty of.

A tabby cat with brown fur sleeps beside a red paperback book.

I Wanted More

There are only a little over a year’s worth of articles here and, wow, I could have easily read about a hundred more. If anything, this book sparked my interest in both the books reviewed and in Parker’s other work. I’ll be seeking out more than will probably make it to my reviews in the future.

So, if you decide to read this book, know that it is merely a launch point for other books and other works and even a closer look at the New York that Parker lived in. This is a small volume but it contained literary worlds that I cannot wait to explore further.

A tabby cat sits behind a copy of The Constant Reader.

Pill Woes

For the most part Wesker has been doing very well on her medication, but part of her doing better means that she is consistently fighting the pill now. And when that happens and she accidentally bites it, it’s bad news. The pill is bitter and that means it’s a challenge to get her to eat and to drink for an entire day — sometimes more. This week we’ve had two days of her chewing the pill and now the weekly weigh-in looms before me.

It’s hard to balance careful monitoring with just out and out anxious obsession over every kibble she does or does not eat. As of right now, I’m ending up in despair most days. It’s been a long winter.