Word: lardner
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...Geller, the same producer who transformed some John Updike stories into a fine network movie, Too Far to Go, last year. This time out he has created eight new movies based on stories by such diverse writers as Thurber, Hawthorne and Twain. The lead-off shows, adapted from Ring Lardner's The Golden Honeymoon and Willa Gather's Paul's Case, are standouts. Geller has an uncommon knack for translating literature to the screen...
...Golden Honeymoon would seem an especially hazardous undertaking. Like many Lardner stories, this account of an elderly couple's Florida vacation is told in '20s slang by an inarticulate character. The narrator here is a gabby, boorish husband who never really grasps that he is describing a near fatal crisis in his 50-year marriage. As he prattles lightly about painful events, the gap between his words and deeds becomes the basis for a classic black comedy...
...Gingrich was a taste for good writing. At a time when Ernest Hemingway's stories were too unconventional for the Post, Gingrich admiringly sent him free slacks and a windbreaker, and got him as a regular contributor. For Esquire's first issue, Hemingway brought with him Ring Lardner Jr. and John Dos Passos. Gingrich believed that an editor edits best who edits least. Esquire's third element was sex-from the Petty and Varga pinups to harem cartoons- which got the magazine in early trouble with the postal authorities...
This may explain why such crafty old twirlers as Ring Lardner, James Thurber, Damon Runyon and P.G. Wodehouse spun tales about the sport. Usually they played it for laughs. Lardner's Alibi Ike dealt with a peculiar rookie, using comic vernacular: "I've heard infielders complain of a sore arm after heavin' one into the stand, and I've saw outfielders tooken sick with a dizzy spell when they've misjudged a fly ball. But this baby can't even go to bed without apologizin', and I bet he excuses himself...
Lovers of Hemingway. Fitzgerald, Wolfe, Lardner and company will devour Berg's book if for nothing more than the anecdotes about the writers. Though Berg adds little to the voluminous scholarship on these writers, there emerges from Perkins' letters and trivia a picture of the writers maintained over and over again that they didn't give a damn about what the critics said; but they always listened to Perkins' advice and--as the letters show--followed it closely. Perkins, of course, remained equally loyal to his writers, giving a seemingly limitless supply of encouragement, advice and advance money from...