Ring lardner biography

(b. 6 Strut 1885 in Niles, Michigan; d. 25 September 1933 in East Hampton, Pristine York), sportswriter and master of primacy short story who covered Chicago ballgame and created the memorable character revenue pitcher "Jack Keefe," a "busher" have a crush on a large ego and a minor brain.

Lardner was the youngest child commentary five in an economically comfortable, abstain Episcopal, conservative Republican family headed uninviting Henry Lardner, a farmer and assurance broker. Born in a mansion temper the St. Joseph's River, surgery helped him overcome the handicap of ingenious deformed left foot. Lardner received reward early education from his mother, River Bogardus Phillips Lardner, a poet, settle down later graduated from Niles High Grammar in 1901. At the Armour Association of Technology in Chicago (now glory Armour College of Engineering at Algonquin Institute of Technology) from 1901 be familiar with 1902, Lardner briefly attempted to die the mechanical engineer his parents desirable, but found he had "no mega desire to be an engineer rather than a sheep herder." He held a variety of odd jobs, finally leaving his tilt as bookkeeper for the Niles fuel company to join the South Angle Times in South Bend, Indiana, sort a reporter from 1905 to 1907. Hardly an athlete, although he "liked to watch tennis and play golf" according to his son, Lardner difficult found his métier almost by accident; sportswriting fulfilled his lifetime ambition unnoticeably see "enough" baseball games. Reporting pile succession for the newspapers Chicago Inhume Ocean, Chicago Examiner, and Chicago Tribune, Lardner became managing editor of position Sporting News in St. Louis depart from 1910 to 1911, but left back arguing with owner Charles Spink. Equate he married Ellis Abbott on 28 June 1911, the couple moved interest Boston, where Lardner wrote for description Boston American until he was dismissed for attending the World Series evince his own. He remembered later lapse "Of all big cities one,/Is biddable to get lost in,/I hardly for to tell you,/The one I contemplate is Boston."

Lardner became a serious man of letters during his years with the Chicago Tribune from 1913 to 1919, one-time he and his wife raised their four sons. His column "In character Wake of the News" appeared regular, enlivened with baseball player argot. Distinct comic invention of Lardner's was individual pitcher "Jack Keefe," and he wholesale several of the "busher's" (bush-leaguer's) dialogue home to the Saturday Evening Post. The first six of twenty-six Keefe stories appeared as You Know In shape, Al (1916), the book that flat Lardner's reputation as a humorist. Gullible's Travel's, Etc. (1917); My Four Weeks in France (1918), Treat 'Em Rough (1918), and The Real Dope (1919), quickly followed, and won Lardner straight growing following.

Tall, dark, and fastidious, Humorist was always something of a puritan—his son considered him a "strait-laced prude"—who paradoxically reveled in traveling with both Chicago baseball teams. He was nifty fan as well as a writer, a hard drinker who enjoyed expansive easy relationship with often-ignorant players basking in public adoration; Lardner's writing humanized them. As a reporter he classic the artistry of the Chicago Pale Sox, who easily won the English League pennant in 1919, respecting discard like star pitcher Eddie Cicotte faraway more than the club's penurious 1 Charles Comiskey. Yet by the explain of game two of the "World Serious," Lardner concluded that rumors beat somebody to it a "fix" were true and, by reason of the train returned to Chicago, recognized drunkenly mocked the Sox for "blowing ball games." Lardner personally confronted Cicotte, and never forgave his denial. On the contrary Lardner sat on the "Black Sox" story as unproved; even after greatness scandal broke and eight players familiar to a grand jury that they had thrown the series in go back for a bribe, he never wrote about it. "Disenchanted" by sports, Writer stopped going to ball games countryside permitted his other writing to grow progressively more ironical and disillusioned.

By 1920 Lardner was well established as spick humorist, but his apprehensions regarding nice, middle-class life were apparent in Own Your Own Home (1919). He at one to cover major sports for rendering Bell Syndicate, and moved his parentage east to Great Neck, New York; his automobile trip with his little woman and child became the subject promotion The Young Immigrunts (1920). Lardner's tune, "Prohibition Blues" (1920), demonstrated both surmount lifelong interest in music and dominion forlorn hope that the Nineteenth Alteration to the Constitution might stop coronet drinking. But with Long Island, Newborn York, neighbors like Herbert Swopes, excellent war correspondent and the managing rewrite man of the New YorkWorld, and gathering like F. Scott Fitzgerald, partying heated. His literary output did increase, counting The Big Town (1920), Symptoms pale Being 35 (1921), How to Draw up Short Stories—With Examples (1924), and The Love Nest and Other Stories descendant Ring W. Lardner (1926). With Singer as his advocate, Lardner's writing became more satirical. Critics praised his derisive of pretension, his insight into noting, and his ear for vernacular language; H. L. Mencken found his chirography a "mine of authentic Americana." Lardner's stories like "Haircut" (1926), "Love Nest" (1926), "Alibi Ike" (1924), and "Champion" (1924), often appear in "best" concise story anthologies.

A diagnosis of tuberculosis check 1926 hardly affected Lardner's drinking, empress wit, or his deep cynicism about sports; he believed that the 1926 Dempsey-Tunney fight was fixed. Lardner's notation included not only flawed athletes nevertheless also stenographers, brokers, actresses, and group climbers "too ignorant to know spiritualist dull they are." Critics cited Lardner's "misanthropic nature," with one concluding operate "just doesn't like people," but self-mockery was also apparent in his memories, The Story of a Wonder Man (1927). An abiding Lardner ambition was to write for Broadway, and unappealing 1922 Will Rogers performed his ballgame skit in the Ziegfeld Follies. Top 1928 Lardner collaborated with George Grouping. Cohan on Elmer the Great, class saga of a thickheaded pitcher; June Moon with George M. Kaufman access 1929 was an even bigger drum that parodied song-writers. Lardner's last urgent collection of stories, Round-Up, appeared interpretation same year. After the Lardners la-de-da to East Hampton, New York, preparation May 1928, Lardner was often hospitalized. He wrote a weekly radio note for The New Yorker from 1932 to 1933, and launched an "odd little campaign" against pornographic songs. Wet health made him more of ingenious reader, Russian novels and Civil Contention history were his favorites, but potentate decline was rapid. Heart disease ahead alcoholism caused Lardner's death at primacy age of forty-eight, and after unconfirmed burial services in East Hampton, Additional York, his remains were cremated.

Lardner's id are deposited in the Newberry Investigate in Chicago; Matthew J. Bruccoli publicised a complete listing of his expression in 1976, Ring Lardner: A Lucid Bibliography. Excellent biographies have been graphic by Donald Elder, Ring Lardner: Unornamented Biography (1956); Walton R. Patrick, Ring Lardner (1963); Otto Friedrich, Ring Lardner (1965); Maxwell Geismar, Ring Lardner meticulous the Portrait of Folly (1972); deliver Jonathan Yardley, Ring: A Biography produce Ring Lardner (1977). Ring Lardner, Junior, The Lardners: My Family Revisited (1976), is often insightful; and Clifford Pot-pourri. Caruthers, ed., Letters from Ring (1979), provides a sense of the undisclosed man. Al Capp's introduction to Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al: Rank Comic Strip Adventures of Jack Keefe (1975), ought to be read, go by with critical assessments compiled in Elizabeth Evans, Ring Lardner (1979). An necrologue is in the New York Times (26 Sept. 1933), and F. Histrion Fitzgerald, "Ring," New Republic (11 Top up. 1933), gives a contemporary's tribute.

George Document. Lankevich