In 1943, when she was working in Hollywood, Dorothy Parker was one of the pre-eminent figures in the American intelligentsia. Her poems and critical writing in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair had made her a force to be reckoned with in highbrow circles; even if she wasn’t revered in academic circles at that time, she was still a shining example of the liberal, educated mind.


So a confession she made that year about the uneasy relationship that has always existed between intellectuals and the popular art form known as the comics was both startling and revelatory.