What if Dorothy Parker Was On Social Media?

Guest post written by author Gill Paul
Gill Paul has written eleven historical novels, many of them re-evaluating real 20th-century women and trying to get inside their heads. Her books have reached the top of the USA Today, Toronto Globe & Mail, and UK Kindle charts, and have been translated into twenty-one languages. Gill was born and raised in Scotland, apart from an eventful year at school in the US when she was ten. She worked as an editor in non-fiction publishing then as a ghostwriter for celebrities, before giving up the “day job” to write fiction full-time. She also writes short stories for magazines and speaks at literary festivals about subjects ranging from the British royal family to the Romanovs.

Gill Paul’s novel, The Manhattan Girls, is about Dorothy Parker and three friends navigating life, love and careers in 1920s New York City.

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When Dorothy Parker uttered one of her gaspingly funny witticisms round the Algonquin Round Table, it would inevitably be reported by her columnist friends in the following morning’s newspaper. But if she’d been on Twitter, it would have reached her followers instantly – and she would surely have had a following in the millions. Her concise one-liners fit neatly into the 140 characters allowed, and have the exact combination of cynicism and dark humor along with a serious message that make Tweets go viral. “If you want to know what God thought of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” How many public figures could that be applied to today? Trump? Elon Musk? The Kardashians? Choose your pick.

Dorothy was born in 1893, but her attitudes were remarkably modern. She abhorred racism, hypocrisy, intolerance, and injustice. In an era when sodomy was illegal in the US and would remain so for many more decades, she had loads of gay friends, saying “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common”. She campaigned against fascism and declared of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings: “For Heaven’s sake, children, Fascism isn’t coming – it’s here. It’s dreadful. Stop it!” You can bet that, were she alive today, she would have strong views on transgender rights, gun control, the killing of black men by police officers, the storming of the Capitol Building, and much more besides. She didn’t shy from controversy, but tended to dive in head-first.

Expressing strong views on social media comes at a cost, though, with trolls, vitriol, even threats of rape, mutilation and death, increasingly common. On a good day, Dorothy could shut down anyone who argued with her – “I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets” – but she struggled with depression, and social media firestorms have taken their toll on the mental health of many a sleb. Would she have had the sense to take a break from Twitter when she was feeling vulnerable? Or would she have gone online after a few whiskeys and drunk-Tweeted herself into a deeper hole?

Dorothy loved clothes and liked to look pretty, so she would probably have been annoyed to be tagged in less than flattering photos. She might have had an Instagram account, although I can imagine her being brutally scathing about those who subscribed to selfie culture: “Their pooled emotions wouldn’t fill a teaspoon”. It seems likely her beloved terriers would have featured more frequently than her new hats. She wasn’t an expert with technology, telling friends she couldn’t change her own typewriter ribbons, so editing a TikTok video would have been beyond her (as it is me).

I think Dorothy would have had a personal Facebook account where she could chat to her friends, just as she did when she wandered into the Algonquin’s Rose Room. Chewing the fat with other writers is a great distraction from the actual hard work of writing: “I hate writing, I love having written.” She was prone being indiscreet with the secrets of others, and could stab friends in the back when the mood took her – “That woman speaks eighteen languages and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them” – but I doubt she would have found herself blocked on Facebook by those she skewered. They’d have been far too eager to hear what she had to say next.

Twenty-first century fans have opened social media accounts in Dorothy Parker’s name but none have captured her unique mix of genius, cynicism, and fragility. The last of these is what would worry me if Dorothy were online: she was too fragile. She drank heavily from the mid 1920s till the end of her life – “I am not a writer with a drinking problem,” she claimed, “I’m a drinker with a writing problem” – and attempted suicide at least three times. Personally, I’m glad she was spared the appalling price of fame in the modern age – the building up of celebrities by the press only to knock them down again, the doorstepping, the stalkers, the paps.

Dorothy left a wonderful legacy in her published writing, and also in the example of her life. She was one of the first generation of women to earn their own money, to rent their own apartments, and to take lovers as men do, while staying true to her moral and political principles and campaigning for what she believed in. She helped to define her era and to push forward the boundaries, so I’m glad she lived when she did. But there’s no doubt she would have been the wittiest person on Twitter.