The Best Short Stories Of Ring Lardner
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: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Large tears now repaired with non-acidic tape.
Few American writers captured the absurdity of everyday life with as much precision and wit as Ring Lardner, and this definitive anthology brings together the finest examples of his celebrated short fiction. Set against the backdrop of early twentieth-century America — its ballparks, barbershops, and bourgeois parlours — the stories chronicle the misadventures of ordinary men and women whose self-delusion, vanity, and quiet desperation are rendered with devastating comic effect. With an illuminating introduction by Alan Ross, the collection presents Lardner's genius for vernacular dialogue and satirical observation in its sharpest form, from the baseball diamonds of the Midwest to the drawing rooms of the newly prosperous. Lardner's prose style is deceptively simple — colloquial, razor-sharp, and deeply American — yet beneath the surface humour lies a mordant critique of the national character that earned him the admiration of contemporaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. His characters are not heroes but ordinary fools, and it is precisely this unflinching honesty that gives his work its enduring power and literary significance. A cornerstone of American short fiction, this collection invites readers to laugh, wince, and wonder at just how little human nature has changed.
Author: Ring Lardner
Format: Hardback
Published: 1959, Chatto & Windus
Genre: Anthology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Large tears now repaired with non-acidic tape.
Few American writers captured the absurdity of everyday life with as much precision and wit as Ring Lardner, and this definitive anthology brings together the finest examples of his celebrated short fiction. Set against the backdrop of early twentieth-century America — its ballparks, barbershops, and bourgeois parlours — the stories chronicle the misadventures of ordinary men and women whose self-delusion, vanity, and quiet desperation are rendered with devastating comic effect. With an illuminating introduction by Alan Ross, the collection presents Lardner's genius for vernacular dialogue and satirical observation in its sharpest form, from the baseball diamonds of the Midwest to the drawing rooms of the newly prosperous. Lardner's prose style is deceptively simple — colloquial, razor-sharp, and deeply American — yet beneath the surface humour lies a mordant critique of the national character that earned him the admiration of contemporaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. His characters are not heroes but ordinary fools, and it is precisely this unflinching honesty that gives his work its enduring power and literary significance. A cornerstone of American short fiction, this collection invites readers to laugh, wince, and wonder at just how little human nature has changed.