As a writer of urban/dark fantasy stories (Gun Street Girl, Hungry Ghosts (a graphic novel and also a related-but-not-the-same prose novel by the same name), The Talking Cure, and Song to the Siren), I had originally planned to write this essay about obscure female fantasy/horror writers that deserved more attention. I wanted to write about the Weird Tales writer Mary Elizabeth Counselman (“The Monkey Spoons,” “Mommy”) and the quiet horror writer Rosemary Timperley (“Harry,” “The Sinister Schoolmaster”). However, I ran into a psychological block: it’s extremely difficult to find these fine ladies’ works. Oh, if you’re lucky, you may find “Harry,” one of the finest quiet horror stories out there, in a ghost story anthology. If you’re extremely lucky, you may find Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s “The Monkey Spoons,” a tale of fate and tragedy, in a horror anthology. But if you liked their work and wanted more, unless you’re an internet detective the way my husband and writing partner, Park Cooper, is, finding more stories by these women will be an exercise in frustration, as their works are, sadly, long out of print.
So, I’ve decided to write a personal essay about two women named Dorothy and how they influenced my writing. The first one is an ace short story writer. The second is a mystery author.
The first Dorothy is Dorothy Parker. I discovered her work at a young age. I was probably ten or eleven years old and had just started reading books for adults, as opposed to YA fiction. Like a lot of impressionable young women, I loved Parker’s humor and her status as a celebrity author and member of the Algonquin Round Table, a de facto literary movement of the 1920s, which consisted mainly of authors having lunch and making fun of everyone and everything under the sun. I thought it would be wonderful to be a wit, a stylish, snappish woman whom everyone knew.
I grew out of that idea eventually, thank Providence.
However, after all these years, I still admire the woman’s writing. That’s the problem with being a celebrity author: everyone knows who you are, but who actually reads your work?
It’s really too bad, as Dorothy Parker is one of the best (humorous) short story writers out there. Frankly, her celebrity status as a wit overshadows her true gifts as a writer and a poet. Perhaps, as a freshman college student, one might still find “The Phone Call” and/or “You Were Perfectly Fine” in an anthology, but who has actually read “Big Blonde,” “The Lovely Leave,” or “Horsey”? I have read them all, and, after all these years, I am still impressed.
Parker has a gift for interior monologue. She is a genius at showing what people, particularly women, are really thinking. Read “The Waltz,” for instance. In that story, a woman is asked to dance, but she doesn’t wish to, since she really doesn’t like the guy who asked her to do so. However, she is too polite to say, “I would rather have a root canal underwater with an amateur dentist than to dance with you.” So, she dances with him, all the time thinking hilariously bitter thoughts because she’d rather be home playing with her dogs and drinking bathtub gin than to be stuck with this reject from Arthur Murray’s Dance School.
The story matters because, as a woman, I have actually been in similar situations. How many times have women– because society trains us to be polite– smiled and done things we do not wish to do? How many times have our thoughts been angry and bitter while our outer demeanor is just soooo nice?
Parker has an amazing ability to make a viable short story out of the smallest situations. “The Small Hours” concerns insomnia and how the human mind jumps from subject to subject when we can’t sleep. “The Phone Call” is about a woman waiting in vain for a phone call from a romantic partner. One of my favorites, “You Were Perfectly Fine,” is about a young man who made a little too merry, got blackout drunk, and can’t remember how badly he behaved the night before. The young woman who is with him, while seemingly blissfully unaware of how embarrassed the young man is to hear of his exploits, keeps telling him, “Oh, you were perfectly fine.” Reader, he was no such thing. He made a total ass of himself.
I learned the art of interior monologues from Dorothy Parker. I learned that any subject matter, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, can be fodder for a good short story. Also, I learned that characters may say one thing, but be thinking something totally, completely different. Finally, I learned that characters need a sense of humor to not only make the audience like them, but to also make the audience understand exactly how the characters face the challenges in a story.
Onwards and upwards. As I grew older, I became a fan of mystery novels, mostly of the hardboiled sort (Raymond Chandler is a bit of an influence on my work). I read soft-boiled mystery stories, but I didn’t like them as much as the tough-guy detective genre.
Then I met Lord Peter Wimsey and Dorothy L. Sayers. Lord Peter, in Sayers’ early stories, comes off as a P. G. Wodehouse character, a silly upper-class twit, albeit a clever and funny one. However, behind that façade is a brilliant gentleman detective who cares little about class and privilege, and a lot about helping people obtain justice.
He also had a secret: as a brave soldier in World War I, he was briefly buried alive after an enemy attack. He ended up being shell-shocked, or, as we know it now, having a serious case of PTSD. Without making this psychological issue the main focus of the Wimsey stories, that issue is always there, and it does give the character a gravitas that he might not otherwise have.
As someone who has PTSD, I am so happy that an author chose to give her character the same issue, as it made me feel less alone. Authors can write books that tell us, “It’s okay. I understand what you’re going through.”
Later, Sayers gave Lord Peter a romantic equal in the form of fictional mystery novelist Harriet Vane, introduced in the novel Strong Poison. Harriet was framed for murder and was made out to be a “scarlet woman” at the (public) trial. Spoiler Alert: Lord Peter cleared her name, fell in love with her, and proposed to her. And they lived happily….
…I’m kidding. She turned him down flat. She felt, because he saved her from hanging, that the relationship was lopsided, and while she was very fond of him, she had no wish to marry him.
Spoiler Alert: It takes years and two other books to get them to happily-ever-after.
The two novels Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night show Harriet as a person whose life has been turned upside down by the trial. Her reputation is in shreds, and she has grown distrustful of others, even the man who loves her deeply. Harriet, on occasion, could be quite cruel, making cutting remarks that hurt Peter deeply. Yet, he is patient, kind, and persistent without being creepy. He is understanding of her problems. And, in the process, Peter Wimsey grows up.
I’m not someone who is enamored with most romances, as I do not see myself in any of them. But, with the Vane/Wimsey mysteries, I saw myself… and I saw the man I love.
I saw my husband’s patience with me. I saw his forgiveness when I felt distrust towards others because of how I’d been treated in the past. And, I saw how love between two people only works if they see each other as equals.
As a writer, Sayers taught me that, when it comes to my characters, the road to true love never runs smooth. And, when it comes to getting to happily-ever-after, take as many stories as you need to get your characters there.
Finally, Sayers taught me that characters can grow up, can change, and can learn from their mistakes.
So, thank you, Dorothys, for helping me become a better writer. I couldn’t have done it without you.
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NOTE: this article was originally written for the Women Writers, Women’s Books website! So thanks to a fellow Barbara, Barbara Bos, of that website, for motivating me to write this! http://booksbywomen.org/a-tale-of-two-dorothys-and-how-they-influenced-me-by-barbara-lien-cooper/
–Barb