unearths some literary gems.
From a collection of pieces that appeared in the original Vanity Fair mag between the mid-teens and the mid-thirties:
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The Little Blue Devil, at the Central, can be traced back through a maze of vulgarity (adv.) to an indistinct beginning in Clyde Fitch’s The Blue Mouse.
—Dorothy Parker, in a column of theatrical reviews
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It is a good thing to know that someone is writing letters and, as a reward, receiving them. It makes you feel that all that is being taken care of, and so you can just sit back and take off those heavy shoes.
—Parker, in a piece about Alexander Woolcott
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The chaps I should really like to vote for [in the magazine’s “Ten Dullest Authors” symposium] are the really first-class Sedatives who can fatigue you in a paragraph. You don’t have to plow through pages and pages to know whether they weary you or not. No: these fellows are considerate, they ring the gong instantly.
—Christopher Morley
