I confess: its a dark time around the world and I’ve been using “Claude” the AI platform built by Anthropic to amuse myself. I’ve been asking it to write in the voice of Dorothy Parker, Parker in turn writing as other writers. This is Claude’s rendition of Dorothy Parker as Henry David Thoreau:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. I stayed because the alternative was being asked how I was.
The house cost twenty-eight dollars and twelve and a half cents. I know the half cent because I mention it constantly, usually to people who have only asked me the time. I have been told that thrift is a virtue. So is silence, and I notice no one has pinned that one on me.
My mother sends a pie every Saturday. I accept it in the spirit of a man who has renounced the world but not baked goods. Ask me whether I have simplified my life and I will say yes, with my mouth full.
I keep three chairs: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. The third is for show. Society has never once required a chair. It stands in the doorway, comments on the draft, and leaves before the dishes.
The pond is the color of a clear conscience, which I admire in the way one admires a stranger’s. I bathe in it daily, to remind myself that I am alive, and to remind it that I am not impressed.
The mass of men, I wrote, lead lives of quiet desperation. I meant it kindly. I have since noticed that the mass of men also have dinner invitations.
I do not own a clock, having discovered that time passes perfectly well without my supervision. It is the only thing in Concord that does.
Be warned that I shall not be pitied. I have the beans, the birds, and the unshakable conviction that I am right. It is a modest estate, but the upkeep is nothing, and I never have to share it.
Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University
