Life — September 16, 1926 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Life In the Throes The Precious Thoughts of an Author at Work By Dorothy Parker son can’t be expected to write without a pencil, anybody knows that much. Never saw any- thing like it—every time I turn my back, somebody takes my pencil. You'd think people would have more to do. Pencils, pencils, pencils, that’s all they care about. I bet I can use “pencil” in a sentence. Take care of the pounds, and the pencil take care of them- No, any- could do that. An extra pair pencil cost you three dollars. Oh, the hell with it. I've got my work to do, Ah, where is it? Wouldn't you think people could leave a person's pencil alone? I should think I had just about enough to put up with, without every- body's stealing my pencil. Here I am sitting at this rotten desk working my head off, and everybody else out having a good time. And me with a cold coming on, too. Probably I’ve got a fever. And not a clinical thermometer in this house. A person could burn up in this house and nobody would know. Not that they'd care. “No,” they'd say, “you just sit there at your desk and run a temperature, and we'll go out and have the time of our lives.” That's all anybody ever says to me. All I ever do is work. And these the best years of my life. Oh, don’t mind about me. I'll stay here and work, and you all go along and have a good time. And if you could manage to choke yourselves to death while you're, doing it, I'd take it as a favor. _ It seems little enough to ask for— just a pencil, so I can get to work. Everybody that ever wrote had to have a pencil. Carlyle and every- N“= where’s the pencil? A per- selves. body NOT EVEN body. Yes, and a little peach Car- lyle must have been. That's the only lucky break I ever got, that I didn’t know that boy. Throwing teacups across the breakfast table. And that thing he said about Frances Willard. When she said, “I accept the Universe,” and he said, “Gad, she'd better,” and everybody thought it was such a wow. I never saw any- thing in it. I guess it was Frances Willard. I guess it was Carlyle. 1 bet Carlyle would have been in a cute temper if anybody had taken his pencil. Just because I don’t go around throwing teacups doesn't say I’m not good and sore, myself. I'd like to know who took that pencil. Justas a matter of curi- osity. It must make a nice, satis- factory noise, a teacup — smashing against a head. ‘Took my pencil, did you? Socko! It isn’t as if it were a pencil an body would want. Not gold or thing. I hate people that have gold pencils sticking out of their pockets. I hope they all choke. I'd take an enamel pencil, though— blue or bright red. But nobody will ever give me one. Nobody ever gives me anything. All Decorated by Milt Gross they ever do is say they mustn't in- terrupt my work. And then they steal my pencil—my poor little lousy wooden pencil, without even an eraser on it. When I make a mistake, I have to spit on my finger and rub it out that w. That's the only thing I ever learned at school that did me any good after- wards. There's another pretty thing —cdueation. I ought to write sor thing about education, some tir Good and bitter, too. Yes, but how are you going to write if you haven't pencil? HERE fe for you. Spend the best years of your life stud penmanship and rhetoric and and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody s ur pencil. I'd like to know w anybody wants to be a writer for, anyhow. And what Parker? Oh, I There’s a hot job for a y woman, I wish I'd taken a interior decorating. I wish | M@caniyie turew TEAC comicbooks.com