Robert E. Drennan

For one reason or another, the Algonquin Table has always fascinated me, particularly the often vicious quips of Dorothy Parker. The idea of so many brilliant minds gathering in one place enthralled me; you don't see the kind of sharp wit today that was so apparently on display in the 1920s.

For its part, this book is a collection of the famous quips of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Franklin Pierce Adams, Alexander Woollcott, George Kaufman, and others. All of the quips were gems, but it was also interesting to see the style of each, from Kaufman's love of puns to the drawling wit of Ring Lardner.

Most of the quips were fairly well-known, with only a few that I hadn't heard of before thrown in, so if you're pretty familiar with the Vicious Circle, there might not be much that is new in this collection. It's also only the quips - these are given in short, three-sentence-at-most bursts, with no background or detail other than what might be absolutely necessary to explain the joke.

As a collection of one-liners, zingers, and bon mots, it's great, but as anything more than that, not so much.… (mer)