ISO
PARTISAN REVIEW
queries but all of these finally appear unimportant in a total assess–
ment: this is a genuinely significant work which attests that socialist
theory retains vitality and capacity for development.
lewis Coser
RING
RING LARDNER. By Donold Elder. Doubledoy. $4.75.
Mr. Elder writes that Ring Lardner was an instance of "the
popular writer who was a genius," and that in the early 1920s he was
"famous and prosperous, an acknowledged genius; he had a large and
attractive home and entertained a great deal; he played golf and
bridge, he was sociable and amusing, and he belonged to a half a dozen
clubs. He knew everyone worth knowing. .. ." We realize that a demo–
cratic dream has been fleshed. And to be a genius without being an art–
ist! Yet at this point, at the very time he was so famous and so widely
imitated, and Edmund Wilson was challenging him from the
Dial
to
go on "to his
Huckleberry Finn,"
a change was taking place. F. Scott
Fitzgerald spoke of this time in his obituary: "It was obvious that he
felt his work to be directionless, merely 'copy' "-at forty he was "getting
off." He remained the endearing friend, the proper and devoted father
of many sons, the dutiful professional meeting deadlines, but hopeless–
ness, disease, alcohol (by then he was a "two-bottle man"), and boredom
had set in, smothering the fine but coy and secret artist within. But
not before the fifteen or sixteen books, hundreds of comic and mimic
pieces, and the short stories, which delighted such different readers as
H. L .
Mencken and Sir J ames Barrie, as well as "the millions," had
been written.
Ring Lardner was born as long ago as 1885 in Niles, Michigan,
into a large, interesting, and genteel family of established wealth, and
he was always loyal to the values of that childhood. "It was the world
outside that was to repel him." The umbrella of wealth blew away
and instead of going to college at Ann Arbor he was enrolled in Armour
Institute, which he soon left. He was then hired by a South Bend news–
paper, began writing for a living and never stopped. Mr. Elder is under–
standing and conscientiously encyclopedic about all this background and
he mentions no literary passions, such as a young writer usually has, no
decisive shaking of the dust of home from his feet, no loss or gaining of
