Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts

Who Dealt, by Ring Lardner









Ring Lardner at the Wikipedia

Ring Lardner, by Sílvia Brunet

BIOGRAPHY


Ringgold William "Ring" Lardner (1885 -1933) was an American sports columnist and satirical short story writer who enjoyed poking fun at revered institutions such as marriage, theatre, and sports. His works were admired by his contemporaries, renowned authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and J.D. Salinger.

Born in Niles, Michigan, the youngest of nine children in a wealthy family, Lardner knew he wanted to be a newspaper man early on. In childhood he wore a brace for his deformed foot until he was eleven. As a teenager, he began work at the South Bend Tribune, then moved on to the South Bend Times, before moving to Chicago where in 1913, he published a syndicated column in the Chicago Tribune, titled "In the Wake of the News." It was carried by over 100 newspapers.

Lardner married Ellis Abbot in 1911.They had four sons, all of whom became professional writers. His son James Lardner was killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting with the International Brigades.

In 1916, Lardner published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, a collection of fictional letters by a bush-league baseball player, loaded with satire about athletics' propensity for stupidity and greed. Some of the letters were published as short stories in The Saturday Evening Post the same year. Lardner's love for writing about the game faded after the "Black Sox Scandal" when the Chicago White Sox sold out the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Lose with a Smile (1933) was his last published collection of fictional baseball writings.

In addition to sports, Lardner admired the theatre, and co-wrote a three-act play which made it to Broadway, called Elmer The Great, with the legendary George M. Cohan.

Lardner died on September 25, in 1933, at the age of 48 in East Hampton, New York, of a heart attack due to complications from tuberculosis.



WHO DEALT?


The story “Who Dealt?” by Ring Lardner was written in 1925. It is written in first person. The story happens while two young couples are playing bridge. The characters are the Cannon couple (Tom and the narrator -we don’t know the name) and the Gratz couple (Arthur and Helen) who are the hosts.

The narrator is Mrs Cannon who is talking and talking all the time during the bridge game, about her life and other matters in an innocent and silly way. During her speech we began to know information about the four characters.

First of all, we know that Tom and, Arthur and Helen were real friends all their life. And there was a special friendship between Tom and Helen when they were kids. We also know, that the Cannon were married three months ago and the Gratz were married four years ago. She knows that Helen is a good singer. And she explains that Tom is abstaining from alcoholic beverages since they were married. She says that Tom is a secretive person. She continued talking about Tom experience with horrid football people at Yale, about their honeymoon in Chicago, about clothes, about the possibility of Tom to run for mayor thanks to the Guthrie couple, about how was Mrs Guthrie… Meanwhile, she was very bad playing cards, but she doesn’t mind.

There’s a point in the story when all seems to change, is when she begins to talk about the relation with her husband Tom. She starts saying that she and Tom are made for each other and agree in everything, but not in music, not in cultural matters, not in things to eat… She continues explaining us that she broke some Tom’s habits like big breakfast or taking his shoes off when he gets home, or changing the nightgown to a pajamas…

The tension is in crescendo when she confesses that Tom is an author, because she had found a sad poem dated four years ago and it was about other girl. And she explains too, he has written a story about two men and a girl which they were all brought up together. One man was rich, and popular like Arthur, and the other was an ordinary man like Tom, with no money, but the girl like him and promised to wait for him. She got tired waiting the poor man and married the rich one. The Tom story ends when they meet again and they pretend everything was all right, but his heart was broken.

The culminant point is when Mrs Cannon starts to recite Tom’s sad poem and the characters feel reflected on it.

In that moment Helen revoked in the game and Tom starts drinking Scotch again!

I wonder if Mrs Cannon is as innocent and silly as it seems…

QUESTIONS

Talk about the different people (job, the way they play cards, financial situation, hobbies, sports, studies, habits, clothes… anything you know about them)

The narrator Mrs Cannon

Tom Cannon

Arthur Gratz

Helen Gratz

Ted Jones

Ken Baker

Gertie Baker

A.L. Guthrie

Mrs Guthrie

Mr Hastings

What is a real friend for you? How do you know when a friend is a real friend? Do you think a real friend has to be a friend from your childhood, or you can make friends at any period of your life?

What is your opinion about boasting of children/husband/wife?

Would the narrator be a good detective, as she said of herself?

Do you know this saying, “You don’t know a person until you’ve travelled with them”? I think there is another one as good as this: “You don’t know a person until you’ve been a partner in a card game with them”. What do you think?

Do you like poetry? What kind of poetry do you read? What is your opinion about Tom’s poem in the story?

What is the meaning of the last sentence, “Why, Tom!”

What do these names refer to?

Black Oxen

Bryn Mawr

Irving Berlin

Gershwin

Jack Kearns

Humoresque

Indian Love Lyrics

Ed Wynn

The Fool

Lightnin’

Robert Chambers

Irving R. Cobb


VOCABULARY

on the wagon, drop, limelight, dumb, fooled, raved, worm things out, nine, half-back, tackle, had it in for, whose lead?, odd, wild, put on the Ritz, dummy, overbids, raise, run for mayor, lumbermen, janitor, it's all apple sauce, bashful, ace, sloppy, mushiest, T.L., pull, bell-boy, lobby, paging, the inside ropes, pull