Word: runyon
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...Runyon lived by a cynic's creed: "If every person in the world was taught from birth to trust no one, it would eventually be a universal state of mind." He followed a cynic's success formula: "Get the money." His cold blue eyes discouraged friendship. From his altitude in journalism he could reach a hand down to promising young comers -Bob Considine, Paul Gallico -only to turn on them if they seemed to threaten his position. One he always cut was Ring Lardner, whom Runyon suspected -rightly -was a writer of far greater in sight, substance...
Early & Alone. A gambling friend once told Runyon that the odds were 9 to 5 against everything in life. Alfred Damon Runyan,-as he was born in Manhattan, Kans., faced worse odds than that. His father was a sometime newspaper publisher reduced to typesetting and the bottle. His mother died when he was seven. Before he was out of his teens he was both a newspaperman and a drunk...
Success did not mellow Runyon. He never stopped trying to impress newsroom recruits with his $40 shoes (size 51B) and his sharpie suits. He avoided the sportswriting clan's easy fraternity, arriving early and alone at the ballpark, leaving alone and late. He was a married bachelor whose first wife died of the habit that he had kicked...
Small-Timer. Only on Broadway did he find characters with a cynicism to match his own. They told him where the bodies were buried, and he repaid their trust by miscasting them in solid-citizen roles. Assigned by Hearst to an anti-rackets crusade in 1933, Runyon led off with the charge that the Administration of President Harding was "the most brazen display of racketeering in our times." His story went on to tick off other notable racketeers-"after the bankers come the Wall Streeters"-before arriving at Al Capone, who was charitably described as "a small-timer." Biographer Hoyt...
...errant printer in Pueblo, Colo., changed his last name to Runyon. An editor on Hearst's American eliminated the Alfred...