In the following essay, Patrick surveys Lardner's stories from 1925 to 1929, noting his switch in narrative technique from first to third person.

In the following essay, Robinson traces the scholarship on Lardner and analyzes it in terms of "shifting class polarities."

In the following essay, Bordewyk traces four types of communication failures in Lardner's fiction, each of which leads to a sense of alienation among his characters.

In the following essay, Evans details Lardner's misogynist depiction of female characters.

In the essay below, Holmes evaluates Lardner's career and short fiction against earlier criticism, concluding that Lardner was "a realist, an ironist, and a satirist" who created both "a comic and distressing image of the American common man."

In the essay below, Webb asserts that the "dominant theme in Ring Lardner's writing was not the pettiness and meanness of modern life; it was the problem of communication."

In the following essay, Pellow describes how Lardner's "baseball dialect" in You Know Me Al serves to create a universe devoid of communication or logic.

In the following excerpt, Cowlishaw counters the argument that readers are helpless to battle the effects of Lardner's "authorial manipulation."

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

In the following essay, Hart argues that in You Know Me Al Lardner lampoons the "twentieth-century American," who is both egotistical and conformist.

In the following essay, Spatz surveys Lardner's short fiction, placing the major stories in the literary tradition of despair that had begun in the early 1920s with T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

In the following essay, Gilead investigates abusive language in Lardner's stories, noting its effects on both the narrator and reader.

In the essay below, Fadiman accuses Lardner of viciousness, arguing that "the hates himself; more certainly he hates his characters; and most clearly of all, his characters hate each other."

In the following excerpt, Yardley claims that although Lardner's prose style had a major affect on American journalism and fiction, critics have neglected—not rejected—the bulk of his work.

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1933, Fitzgerald eulogizes Lardner, lamenting the fact that Lardner expressed so little of what he felt so deeply.

In the essay that follows, Farrell evaluates Lardner's characters in Round Up, finding that "they are among the most banal characters in all of modern American fiction. " Yet these vile characters, Farrell concludes, ultimately lend pathos to Lardner's stories, thereby giving them "an enduring place in contemporary American fiction."

In the following essay, Pritchett argues that Lardner's principal contribution to American prose is his welding together of the "stream of consciousness " and the "stream of garrulity."

In the excerpt below, Voss provides a brief assessment of Lardner's short fiction, noting in particular those qualities that distinguish Lardner's best stories.

Virginia Woolf's Laudatory Review of You Know Me Al:

In the following essay, Payne describes how the protagonist of "The Love Nest" violently manipulates language to impose his will

In the following essay, Blythe and Sweet revise the standard interpretation of the barber-narrator as senseless in "Haircut," perhaps Lardner's most famous story, suggesting he is the principal instigator of the murder.

In the following essay, Hardwick observes that Lardner's characters are unexpectedly mean and desperate during a time when the country is booming and other authors are writing about the "Roaring Twenties. "

In the following review of Lose with A Smile, Mencken argues that critics ignore Lardner because of his attack on idealism and sentimentality.

In the following review of How to Write Short Stories, Mencken claims that no contemporary American writes better, though he doubts Lardner's work will stand the test of time.