Haircut And Other Stories
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Fair - Rubbed edges and bumping on spine and corners
Few American writers captured the tragicomedy of ordinary life with such razor-sharp precision as Ring Lardner, and Haircut and Other Stories stands as a masterful testament to that gift. Set against the backdrop of small-town America in the early twentieth century, this collection presents a cast of self-deceived narrators, petty gossips, and hapless dreamers whose stories unfold with a deceptive simplicity that conceals a devastating wit. The titular story, Haircut, is a chilling monologue delivered by an oblivious small-town barber, who unwittingly chronicles a tale of cruelty and rough justice, never once grasping the moral horror of what he recounts. Lardner's genius lies in his mastery of the vernacular — he constructs entire worlds from the inside out, using the unreliable, self-congratulatory voice of his narrators to expose hypocrisy, vanity, and the quiet brutalities of American social life. His prose is deceptively breezy, laced with a dark irony that earned him the admiration of contemporaries like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Published by the venerable Charles Scribner's Sons, this collection remains an essential and criminally underrated chapter in the canon of American short fiction — one that rewards the attentive reader with the unsettling feeling that the joke, all along, has been on us.
Author: Ring Lardner
Format: Hardback
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Fair - Rubbed edges and bumping on spine and corners
Few American writers captured the tragicomedy of ordinary life with such razor-sharp precision as Ring Lardner, and Haircut and Other Stories stands as a masterful testament to that gift. Set against the backdrop of small-town America in the early twentieth century, this collection presents a cast of self-deceived narrators, petty gossips, and hapless dreamers whose stories unfold with a deceptive simplicity that conceals a devastating wit. The titular story, Haircut, is a chilling monologue delivered by an oblivious small-town barber, who unwittingly chronicles a tale of cruelty and rough justice, never once grasping the moral horror of what he recounts. Lardner's genius lies in his mastery of the vernacular — he constructs entire worlds from the inside out, using the unreliable, self-congratulatory voice of his narrators to expose hypocrisy, vanity, and the quiet brutalities of American social life. His prose is deceptively breezy, laced with a dark irony that earned him the admiration of contemporaries like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Published by the venerable Charles Scribner's Sons, this collection remains an essential and criminally underrated chapter in the canon of American short fiction — one that rewards the attentive reader with the unsettling feeling that the joke, all along, has been on us.