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: lower black pain.A weekly series of words arranged, typed, and spoken by Jd Michaels. Author: Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House
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Ember.
Thursday, 30 April, 2026
Dorothy Parker is my favorite writer. She was born in 1893; by the 1920’s she was one of the most famous writers in America, with an unmatched rapier wit and seemingly endless supply of clever verses.Much of her work was famously collected in “The Portable Dorothy Parker” a rather thick volume covering the majority of her fiction and reviews. I’ve had five copies (I gave two away as gifts).She moved to Hollywood in the 1930’s, where her work garnered two Oscar™ nominations (including her script for the Judy Garland version of “A Star Is Born”).Then before WW2 she spoke out against fascism and got blacklisted and no one hired her anymore.But her books were still steadily being read. Particularly the Portable.In her will, she left the entirety of her literary rights to Dr. Martin Luther King (whom she had never met) to assist in his national fight for civil rights. Upon the death of Dr. King, again at Ms. Parker’s request, these rights were transferred to the NAACP, who receives royalty checks from her body of work to this very day.That’s it. That’s the story of my favorite writer. And I must admit, when I found out about the Dr. King part, I liked her even more, even though someone at school said it was just to get back at Lillian Hellman. If so, sick burn.My first Parker story was assigned in college, presented as a breezy distraction between the more weighed tomes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The way that she depicted people who felt very deeply yet expressed themselves in extremely shallow ways made me very very happy, so I went straight to be bookstore and bought my first “Portable”.See, I’d always wanted to be a writer. From the age of four it’s what I told everybody: teachers, preachers, other people’s parents, girls I was dating or wasn’t… I had no alternative employment plan or career path narrative, save maybe someday teaching at one of those colleges with old stone buildings.And I did write. A lot. I had LOADS of extremely very bad writing, and was looking for someone to teach me how to make it better. But when I finally got into an English composition class, I found that many students had already spent summers at “writing camps” with famous author seminars and inspiring lectures, at sunset, down by the lake.These kids were in that Writer’s WORLD already, and some of them hadn’t even written anything yet. I was late to the game. I explained all this to a girl who saw me reading my Dorothy Parker in the grass, giant Sears Optical glasses on as my near-fro attempted to waft in the wind. She was intrigued by my choice, but later admitted that she’d assumed I might be what today is called a “performative male”. A bit of conversation convinced her otherwise, and we spoke all evening.We agreed that the assumed “baseline experience” at a college like this was socio-economically impossible for a vast minority of the students attending, regular kids who “summered” the same place they “wintered” and “falled”. I mean, there were lakes in Kansas City, but all I was gonna get is mosquito bites hanging out there.“Well, you should just consider Dorothy your personal teacher.” my new friend told me. “She never took any of these people seriously - neither should you. Just keep them all in your head, and write about them later.”To follow Dorothy Parker’s footsteps, I later visited the The Algonquin, the famed Manhattan hotel where most every weekday of the 1920’s, one could find the New York’s premier literati surrounding their Round Table, enjoying another long and somewhat boozy lunch. Dorothy Parker was a key member of this group, I had learned. It was also the hotel that my grandfather stayed in when visiting New York as a young county commissioner from Kansas City. I appreciated the gentle luxury, as well as the fact that my grandparents had been welcome here in the early ‘50s. The concierge asked me if he could help me. I told him I was a student studying - “- the Round Table? Of course. Would you like to see it?” “Um, sure?”It was between meal services: the man walked me into the dining room just off the main lobby. A large round table was in the center. “This isn’t the actual table” he told me. “It was that one.” he pointed to the slightly smaller round table in the corner by the door to the kitchen. “People want to take a photo of the Round Table, but that one is 80 years old, so we keep this one…” he again indicated the table in the middle, “polished for pictures. I bet you actually want to sit over there.” “I feel I should tell you now that I can’t afford to buy anything.” I told him. “Don’t worry about it… do you want some coffee? Water?” “Water would be awesome.”I sat and drank a glass of ice water where my new literary hero enjoyed many hundreds of liquid lunches.Technically, that’s what I was doing too.Due to an incredible true story, Dorothy Parker has been buried two and a half times. Her (final) resting place is now in a plot with her family in New York City, under a memorial inscribed with cleverly appropriate lines from one of her poems. I haven’t visited: for me she either lives in her work or at that table in the back of the Algonquin dining room.I would love to pay the inspiration I have received from Mrs. Parker forward. I’m not quite there yet, but I feel lucky to have the opportunity to keep working at it. I’m a little bit more optimistic than she, but she paid close attention to the human condition, and I am grateful to carry her torch of polysyllabic empathy (if not sympathy) a bit further through time, because Dorothy Parker is my favorite author.Yes, I am a fan. But I want to be the kind that feeds a flame. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com
