Paul Schleifer

According to www.dictionary.com, pithy means “brief, forceful, and meaningful in expression.” According to the OED, it means “full of concentrated meaning; conveying meaning forcibly through brevity of expression,” though it can also be used about a person, one who “speaks or writes pithily.” Of course, it can also mean “containing much pith; covered in or consisting of pith,” but only when it is referring to fruit.

So where does it come from. One might guess that pithy comes from pith, and one might be right. Pith comes from “Old English piþa ‘pith of plants’ also ‘essential part,’ from West Germanic *pithan- (source also of Middle Dutch pitte, Dutch pit, East Frisian pit), a Low German root of uncertain origin. Figurative sense was in Old English,” according to www.etymonline.com. In other words, the pith of a fruit is the important stuff inside the fruit, and the pith of someone’s remarks is the important stuff at the center of the remarks. And someone who is pithy is able to communicate their message in a concise fashion that delivers the important stuff without a whole lot of fluff.

Today in Venice, CA, the Pacific Resident Theatre staged the first full production of The Dorothy Parker Project. It is based on a concept by Robert Cannon with material by the playwright Katherine Bates, and it’s co-directed by Michael Cooper and Marilyn Fox. It stars Diane Hurley as Parker, and it features a cast performing five of her short stories and a few of her poems, according to Pressreader.

Who was Dorothy Parker? you ask. She was a writer and critic in the early part of the 20^th century well known for her sharp wit.

Here are a few quotes, courtesy of Mental Floss.

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

“To me, the most beautiful word in the English language is cellar-door. Isn’t it wonderful? The ones I like, though, are ‘cheque’ and ‘enclosed.'”

“There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

“Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.”

“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

And I’ll conclude with a poem by Parker:

ON DEATH:

Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.

Parker was pithy.

 

The image is a photograph, by an unknown photographer, or Dorothy Parker in the 1910s or 20s, when she would have been in her 20s or early 30s. She was born in 1893 and died in 1967.