Fatherhood Quote by Dorothy Fields

There is a quiet coming-of-age hidden in this anecdote: a child handed the task of curating a parent’s legacy and, in the process, learning how art gets judged in public. Fields starts in the most human place possible, drawn to “rave notices” the way any kid would be drawn to proof that the person they love is admired. Praise isn’t just flattering; it’s stabilizing. It tells you the world agrees your father matters.

Then the turn: she gets “interested in reading what the critics were saying” about the work itself. That pivot is the whole story. It signals the moment admiration stops being purely personal and becomes professional. Fields is describing the discovery that reviews aren’t merely applause or betrayal; they’re arguments about taste, craft, and standards. The line “whether the play was good or not” sounds innocent, but it’s loaded: she’s realizing “good” is negotiated, not ordained, and that the critic’s job is to justify a verdict, not just deliver one.

The scrapbook detail matters because scrapbooks are selective by design: they preserve the flattering, the memorable, the canonical. Fields admits she began by participating in that mythmaking, then outgrew it. Coming from a future lyricist who thrived in collaboration and revision, the subtext is almost a creed: don’t just collect validation; study the terms of the critique. In an era when Broadway reputations could swing on a few column inches, she’s also learning the power critics hold - and how an artist can read past ego to extract information.