Critical Essay | Otto Friedrich

Otto Friedrich

SOURCE: Ring Lardner, University of Minnesota Press, 1965, pp. 1-48.

In the following excerpt, Friedrich discusses Lardner's sports stories and notes how Lardner's prose changed the style and candor of sports journalism.

Nevins Surveys Lardner's Strengths and Weaknesses:

[Beyond] skill in reporting, thorough knowledge of the ordinary American and his mind, and a satirical talent which gives the slightest of his sketches an edge, Mr. Lardner's endowments are not remarkable. He does not touch the tender stops of various quills—not as yet. We fail to find in him that richer comprehension of life, that intensity of feeling, which we find not merely in a very great short story writer like Kipling, but in the short stories of Mary E. Wilkins or Hamlin Garland. His ability to observe and expose is remarkable. The ability to identify himself with his characters, to present their strongest emotions, to show how even the moron has his relations with heaven and...
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