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Humor was, after all, her basic form of dress and address. And humor passes through the most ephemeral of fashions. The concept of wit, the very word, today suggests a dated elegance. Gone is the vintage innocence, masquerading as chic, that Miss Dorothy Parker symbolized. Things are now laughed about that she would have found vulgar, if not downright indiscreet. Humor today is broad and black. Perhaps it is more human; it is certainly less artificial. Yet the suspicion mounts that behind the laughter of "alienation," there is a wide streak of sentimentality, too, just as there was behind the "cynicism" of Dorothy Parker's era.