donald elder

This is more than a biography of the great humorist from Niles, Michigan. In a penetrating full-length portrait, Donald Elder has explored Ring Lardner’s whole world—the vibrant and inventive times in which he lived, the unforgettable people who surrounded him, and the impudent words that came from his typewriter.

At the height of Lardner’s fame in the middle twenties he was known simultaneously as a baseball reporter unlike any the world had ever seen; a newspaper columnist part gadfly and part reporting etymologist; a writer of short stories as rich in native, idiom as they were polished in execution; and as a humorist who deplored the telling of “stories” as such. Whenever anyone said. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one, “Ring would never hesitate to say, “Stop.”

Lardner spent an idyllic if somewhat unorthodox youth as the youngest among nine children—(at sixteen he knew how to say “Ich war ein und zwanzig Jahre alt,” to a gullible German-speaking local bartender). Mr. Elder chronicles the Lardner career from the earliest years through the sports-writing days in Chicago, his marriage and love of home life, and the continued flowering of his literary talents. Then comes the pathetic decrescendo in which he fought his appetite for liquor, tried to beat TB, and finally died at the age of 48, in 1933.

Mr. Elder, who grew up in Ring Lardner's hometown, has included liberal selections from Lardner's writing all through the book, and there is a complete listing of all his published work at the end. Four years of meticulous research went into the writing of this valuable and entertaining appreciation of Ring Lardner's career.

“A fine biography of Ring Lardner”—Kirkus Review