SOURCE: “New York Wits,” in The New Republic, Vol. LV, No. 708, June 27, 1928, p. 155.

Walton examines Sunset Gun, noting the devices Parker uses to “puncture old illusions and then caper wickedly among the ruins.”

A sophisticated palate, it is said, requires pungent fare. For the delight of epicures, New York has produced recently two disillusioned wits whose verse has an acrid and heady tang. Scoffers by profession, typically urban, Dorothy Parker and Samuel Hoffenstein share in common a gift of mockery which is as deadly as it is diverting. No major emotion is sacred to their venomous pens, and love, in particular, they view with a jaundiced eye. With neat, effective strokes they puncture the old illusions and then caper wickedly among the ruins. True, there are differences that separate them. Mr. Hoffenstein's gesture is a comic shrug of “fairly utter despair,” while Dorothy Parker is inclined toward a...