Books: Lardner, U.S.A. | TIME

ROUND UP—Ring W. Lardner—Scribner’s ($2.50).

This volume includes Ring Lardner’s stories, old and new, testifies to his long-standing importance as a reporter of the American scene. His dramatic personae, ranging from prize-fighter to debutante, cop to jazz-writer, “just folks” to “the best people,” offers more complete a panorama than Sinclair Lewis. His argot, quite as accurate as Ernest Hemingway’s, is never mannerism.

Of the old stories, Champion is most powerful, most brutal and ironic. A mean Irish boy cuffs and kicks his crippled brother for a 50¢ piece, knocks down his mother for interfering. He escapes Chicago, wallows from bad ‘to worse with liquor and women. The trainer who picks him temporarily out of the gutter, and turns him into champion boxer, he ousts unrepaid. The girl he is forced to marry he deserts penniless. But in New York he is publicized the way the public likes its champions: “Just a kid; that’s all he is; a regular boy. . . . Don’t know the meanin’ o’ bad habits. Never tasted liquor in his life and would prob’bly get sick if he smelled it. Clean livin’ put him up where he’s at. . . .”

Another old story. Haircut, proves Lardner brilliant in technique. The village barber, shearing a newcomer, drawls bits of village gossip that slowly arrange themselves into a small drama of love, jealousy, and murder done by an impressionable idiot-boy.

The new stories, simpler in design, are quite as effective. There Are Smiles records the encounters of a smart young thing in her smart new roadster with Ben Collins, traffic policeman. He chides her for reckless driving; she smiles, gives him a lift to his home in the Bronx. In conversational bicker, pleasantly casual, she touches upon the man her father wants her to marry; he warns her to drive carefully “for that guy’s sake”—and for his. Next morning the cop’s newspaper tells of her— death in a motor accident. Says the cop to himself: “I can’t feel as bad as I think I do. I only seen her four or five times. I can’t really feel this bad.”

ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9tbm5pZX9wrs6ooqxlnJa%2FpbrEq2SuZaNirnA%3D