Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I'll refrain from quoting her. I only know the ones that have become cliche.

The NYT has a brief update on the lawsuit over the Penguin Classics edition of Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems. (I'll let you read the article for the details. There's a semi-interesting question over whether the editor of a collection of Parker's uncollected poems exercised enough of a creative function in order to merit copyright protection, especially since Parker's estate isn't involved in the lawsuit at all.)

Me, I'd like to see the Penguin collection made available again. I nearly bought a copy when I worked in the bookstore and the original lawsuit meant that we had to pull the single copy in the store off of our shelves. Parker was clever, biting, hilarious, and she left her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr. when she died. (The NAACP now holds her estate, as well as Parker's ashes.) I would have loved to hang out with her.

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