Is [Sunset Gun] as good as Enough Rope? Yes. And that might constitute a review, mightn't it. A eulogium, at least. Well, there were, perhaps, one or two gems of purest ray unserene in the former book that surpass anything in this; but there were also one or two sets of verses not up to the general high level. Your microscope may be better than ours when you come to examine Sunset Gun, but you will have to peer pretty intently to detect flaws.

There is a hackneyed remark made about conversationally clever people (and we are always left at the post, pawing for a rejoinder, when Mrs. Parker chooses to declare herself in a word or two,—or in danger of that old apoplexy of ours),—but they say, you know, about such people, “Oh, if she only wrote as she talks!” The most amazing thing about Dorothy Parker is that she writes precisely as she talks. Well, no, we have never heard her talk in rhyme, exactly. But, leaving that aside—.

This is a book, like the other, that you cannot put into a particular pigeonhole. It is a perfect representation of the author, who is a paradox. A moth-gray cloak of demureness hiding spangled ribaldry, a razor-keen intellect mocking a heart dark with desperation; “Ain't we got fun!” and “Weh! Weh!” rising to the lips at the same instant. And all the time, in spite of her telling you that you'll only find her in step with Trouble or Gloom, there she is off on a rainbow writing down a diamond-hard summary of the situation in a large round hand.

The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlock
Were—shall we say?—born out of wedlock …

or

“I wouldn't have him back!”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I hope
Her mother washed her mouth with soap.

or

People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

or

There and there and well and well—
Did he prick his finger!

She can contemplate the fretful porcupine with aplomb and a brilliant dexterity of rhyme, she can epigrammatize with the effectiveness of

A heart in half is chaste, archaic;
But mine resembles a mosaic.

and she can achieve a lustral and beautiful sonnet, as in “Fair Weather.” What the devil can you do with such a girl? You can be moved to sympathy by some expression of evident distress, or to admiration for some gallantry of attitude, or to gravity at an occasional tenderness,—and then she flips a last line at you like a little carmine fire-cracker exploding under your nose. And it is all Dorothy Parker.

We shouldn't wonder if this ability completely and idiomatically to present the shimmering paradox of herself were not the secret of the deserved popularity of Mrs. Parker's verse. “Shouldn't wonder”? We know perfectly well it is. Long may she wave!