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