Short Stories
38 Ring Lardner (1885–1933)
Biography
Ringgold Wilmer “Ring” Lardner (1885–1933) was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings on sports, marriage, and the theatre. His contemporaries, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and celebrated critic Edmund Wilson, professed strong admiration for his writing.
Lardner began his writing career as a sports columnist in South Bend, Indiana. In 1913, the Chicago Tribune became the home newspaper for his syndicated column.
In 1919, his love for baseball was changed after the Black Sox scandal, when the Chicago White Sox sold out the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. This scandal led to a sense of betrayal for Lardner, who had been close to the White Sox team.
Lardner influenced Ernest Hemingway, who sometimes wrote articles for his high school newspaper using the pseudonym Ring Lardner, Jr. In 1923, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson described him as “America’s best humorist” in the March issue of Vanity Fair magazine, praising his “rare true ear…[which] has set down for posterity the accents of the American language.” Fitzgerald then encouraged his own distinguished editor, Maxwell Perkins of Scribner’s, to publish a collection of Lardner’s stories. Perkins agreed, and in the following year, Scribner’s published that story with several more in the book How to Write Short Stories (With Samples).
Both “The Golden Honeymoon” and “Haircut” (1925) feature grammatically-challenged narrators and demonstrate Lardner’s facility in humorously capturing the voice and values of his semi-literate characters. Lardner was in some respects the model for the tragic character Abe North of Fitzgerald’s last completed novel, Tender Is the Night.
Lardner died in 1933 at the age of 48 due to complications from tuberculosis.
Haircut
I got another barber that comes over from Carterville[1] and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain’t no New York: City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and don’t have no leisure to drop in here and get themselves prettied up.
You’re a newcomer, ain’t you? I thought I hadn’t seen you round before. I hope you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain’t no New York City or Chicago, but we have pretty good times. Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed. When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin’ done here than any town its size in America.
Jim was comical, and Hod was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim’s gone, Hod tries to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it’s tough goin’ when you ain’t got nobody to kind of work with.
They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jam-packed Saturdays, from four o’clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper round six o’clock. Jim would set himself down in that big chair, nearest the blue