Monday, March 1, 2010

"But the One on the Right." Dorothy Parker



One-minute review: Interior monologue. Dinner party. Narrator doesn’t want to be there. “That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.” The banalities of small talk. The man on her left has a soul that can not rise above the discussion of food. The one on the right? He says nothing to her. Seems to be absorbed with the beautiful lady on his right. When he finally speaks to her, she discovers that they both hate being there. She will complain of a headache and he will offer to take her home.

Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories. Ed. James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny. A Signet Classic. New York: The New American library, 1966.

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