Court Takes the Stand in Penguin Trial

By Ron Hogan on July 25, 2007 8:29 AM

As testimony wound down in the trial over the collecting of Dorothy Parker‘s uncollected poems, in which Stu Silverstein argues that Penguin‘s Complete Poems ripped off his Not Much Fun arrangement, Penguin president Kathryn Court took the stand. Court (right, from the ‘Cat archives). According to Kevin Fitzpatrick, who’s been sitting in on the trial for the Dorothy Parker Society, Court testified that she was aware of Silverstein’s project but had not actually seen the manuscript, and that “she signed off on the book, without direct knowledge of how it was produced,” so she wouldn’t have known that the Complete Poems editors basically just took photocopies of Not Much Fun and cut-and-pasted them into a new layout.

Parker expert Randall Calhoun also testified by video, and there’s a damn fascinating story about how he had wanted to edit a collection of Parker’s poetry, but Penguin turned him down, so instead he published a massive bibilographical resource book, and then Silverstein’s lawyers recruited him as an expert witness, and then Penguin tried to get him as their expert witness, which may or may not be because he wanted to do one or more books on Parker… “It was unclear if Calhoun was merely an opportunist, seeking to please Penguin because he may get a book deal,” Fitzpatrick writes, “or if he just did not understand the facts of the case when he initially agreed to help the plaintiff.” Understatement of the Year awards committee, we have a finalist! After that, there’s a recap of his testimony that Parker’s poems aren’t necessarily poetry, but frankly that was a bit anticlimactic. I swear, we’re a death short of a perfect Law & Order episode here.