Of the writers of the 1920's and 1930's who produced stories on the order of those of Ring Lardner, only [Dorothy Parker] came close to matching his telling irony and satire and his ear for recording common speech. Narrower in range than Lardner, she excelled in witty and humorous monologue and dialogue rather than in storytelling, as attested to by most of the pieces in her two collections of sketches and stories, Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933). Undoubtedly her finest story is "Big Blonde," a trenchant portrait of a shallow woman devoid of any inner resources who becomes an alcoholic. (p. 284)
Arthur Voss, "Social Protest and Other Themes in the Short Story, 1930 to 1940," in his The American Short Story: A Critical Survey (copyright 1973 by the University of Oklahoma Press), University of Oklahoma Press, 1973, pp. 262-87.∗
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