Sorry, eNotes, but any list of ball-busting women writers without Dorothy Parker, who had the glorious effrontery to tell Norman Mailer, “So you’re the young man who can’t spell ‘fuck,'” is woefully inadequate.
© 2007, Edward Champion. All rights reserved.
I’ve seen that quote credited to different people, but I think it was Talullah Bankhead who said it, at least according to Mailer: http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1297/plimpton/excerpt.html
I love Parker, but still hold to my guns that in a chronological showdown, Stein was more influential. That’s what’s glorious and sucks about top tens, yes?