Word: lardners
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ALTHOUGH baseball influenced much of Lardner's earlier work, he stopped writing about the game after 1919 and took on practically every available topic on American life, including politics. He became most famous, though, for his short nonsense pieces and a weekly letter written for his nationally syndicated newspaper column. Lardner had a national following which today can only be compared to Jimmy Breslin, although the styles of the two differ tremendously--Breslin writing about busing riots and massive looting in a New York City blackout, while Lardner chose a much lighter subject matter, depicting the lives of boxers...
...reason people loved Lardner, says Yardley, was because he managed to capture a scene perfectly and the response of his readers was "Yes, that's exactly how it is." Yardley is especially fond of Lardner's ability to "distinguish the subtleties of the way people talked and thought and then to turn them into effective fiction." Because Lardner's books were never best-sellers, the assumption is that he achieved his popularity in the media--for instance, his stories which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and New Yorker were more successful than such books as "You Know...
...that "what is considered a real howl of a story--as far as newspaper humor stories goes, often winds up being very unfunny years later when you go back to look at it--because when the news goes out of it, the heart goes out of it,." Some of Lardner's work, however, is timeless. One such piece was originally written for the Saturday Evening Post in 1920, entitles "The Young Immigrunts." It's written in the voice of a nine-year-old boy, perhaps Ring's son. As Ring as his son head for their home in Connecticut, Yardley...
...Ring, Yardley has attempted to portray Lardner largely through his work. He offers comments which are essential to providing an understanding of the era. Also included, however, is a section on Lardner's courtship with his future wife, Ellis. Because Lardner was traveling with the White Sox throughout his courtship, he and Ellis rarely saw one another. They wrote each other constantly, however, and the letters reveal Ring's charm and innocence. At a later point in their relationship, Ring has been looking for an apartment for the soon to be married couple. He writes Ellis, describing a place...
...LETTERS are the only original source materials Yardley has access to, besides the conversations with Ring's friends which Donald Elder provided in the only other Lardner biography in existence. Ring, if it misses anything, is lacking in any real insights into Lardner's personality. Yet Yardley can hardly be faulted for this, because all of Ring's friends are long gone. One is left wondering, for instance, why Lardner projected such a severe image, as revealed by many of the pictures Yardley has gathered of him. Lardner never looks happy, and Yardley mentions one factor which may have contributed...