Quote: What fresh hell can this be? (antedating Dorothy Parker - probably 1970)

[Jonathan Lighter]

One thing about hell though - it never gets stale.

JL

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 4:56 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Quote: What fresh hell can this be? (antedating Dorothy
> Parker -
>              probably 1970)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The challenge is to antedate the 1988 date for the following Dorothy
> Parker quotation: What fresh hell is this?
>
> There is a close variant of the quotation attributed to Parker in a
> book dated 1970 by Google Books. The same book is referenced by the
> Yale Book of Quotations and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations using
> the 1970 date. I will try to check it on paper in the coming days.
>
> Circa 1970, You Might as Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy
> Parker by John Keats, GB page 124, Simon and Schuster, New York.
> (Google Books snippet view; Not verified on paper; Citation may be
> inaccurate; Worldcat agrees with date; Oxford and Yale Quotation books
> cite this book with a 1970 date)
>
> If the doorbell rang in her apartment, she would say, 'What fresh hell
> can this be?' — and it wasn't funny; she meant it.
>
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=7t0EAQAAIAAJ&q=%22fresh+hell%22#search_anchor
>
>
> A similar expression is used sardonically in 1928 by famed New York
> newspaper columnist Oscar Odd McIntyre.
>
> 1928 June 29, Olean Times, "New York Day by Day" by O. O. McIntyre
> Olean, New York. Page 5, Column 1. (NewspaperArchive)
>
> There's an idea—bathtub bookracks. More entire glass building fronts.
> What's become of feather boas? Brass sign. "Pituitary Science." What
> fresh hell is that? A plump dowager without a yapping Peke.
>
> Plus for a limited time only a free bonus quotation:
>
> 1906 July 8, Anaconda Standard, News Values, Page 4 Part 2 (NArch Page
> 24), Column 2, Anaconda, Montana. (NewspaperArchive)
>
> But journalism proverbially is fertile in expedients and when there is
> no fresh hell to serve, it does the next best thing and dishes up some
> warmed-over hell.
>
> Garson
>
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