Ring W. Lardner's comic narrator treats turning 35 as both a crisis and a joke, delivering a mock-serious guide to middle age filled with slang, self-mockery, and sharp observations about masculinity. He riffs on age, marriage, children, hair loss, drinking, and the absurdity of people acting as if 35 is ancient, while also teasing his own name, vanity, and social awkwardness. As he invents "research" about mortality and domestic life, he argues that marriage and middle age somehow make a ...

Ring W. Lardner's The Big Town follows a dryly comic Midwestern husband whose unexpected inheritance from his wife Ella's stepfather sends the family from modest South Bend into a whirl of money, ambition, and social pretension. With Ella and her sister Katie eager to trade restraint for glamour, the narrator watches their hopes for dresses, parties, and a suitable husband for Katie collide with the awkward realities of class and small-town life. A disastrous social gathering and a disappo...

Nina Wilcox Putnam turns marriage into a fast, funny battleground of memory, manners, and mutual exasperation. Prompted by a publisher's dare and her husband George's alarmed objections, she delivers a sharp, conversational monologue that skewers husbands' bad grooming, repetitive stories, car trouble, and uncanny talent for making wives wait. But the satire stays affectionate, finding comedy in the ordinary give-and-take of domestic life. Putnam contrasts husbands' selective memory with w...

In "You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters," Ring Lardner employs a distinctive epistolary format to narrate the experiences of a naïve, small-town baseball player named Jack Keefe. Through a series of humorous and often sardonic letters written to his friend Al, Lardner cleverly critiques the world of professional baseball in the early 20th century. The book showcases Lardner's keen ear for dialogue and his mastery of colloquial speech, reflecting the intricacies of American vernacular. The ...

This beautifully illustrated volume brings together the finest works of Ring Lardner, one of America’s most distinctive literary voices of the early 20th century. Known for his sharp wit, ear for dialogue, and keen sense of irony, Lardner masterfully captured the quirks of American life through sports, relationships, and social satire. The collection features You Know Me, Al, a groundbreaking series of fictional letters from a naive baseball player that brilliantly parody fame, ambition, a...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

First published in 1929, public domain. Lardner, American humorist and short-story writer, is known for his mordant wit, exemplified in satirical stories and sketches of American life in the early 20th century told in the language of athletes, stockbrokers, secretaries, chorus girls, etc. This is a compilation of almost all of his best stories.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

At the height of the Jazz Age, Ring Lardner was America’s most beloved humorist, equally admired by a popular audience and by literary friends like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson. A sports writer who became a sensation with his comic baseball bestseller, You Know Me Al, Lardner had a rare gift for inspired nonsense and an ear attuned to the rhythms and hilarious oddities of American speech. He was also a sharp and dispassionate observer of the American scene. His best stori...

"Treat 'em Rough: Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer" is a compelling collection of correspondence that captures the raw emotions and experiences of soldiers during World War I. The letters, penned by Jack Lardner, provide a vivid glimpse into the life of a soldier, detailing the camaraderie, struggles, and the harsh realities of war. Lardner's unique voice and perspective bring to life the challenges faced by those on the front lines, making the reader feel the weight of each word and th...

Published in The Saturday Evening Post between 1916 and 1917, the stories that make up Gullible's Travels follow the comical misadventures of a long-suffering husband and his aspiring socialite wife. The unnamed protagonists and their hapless attempts to climb the social ladder serve as a canvas for Ring Lardner to satirize marriage, social dynamics, and the newly emerging middle class of the late 1910s. In 1917, the first five stories about the unnamed narrator and his "Missus" were compi...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes.Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore them...