SOURCE: "Short-Story Writers of the 1920s: Wilbur Daniel Steele, Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Conrad Aiken, and Stephen Vincent Benét," in The American Short Story: A Critical Survey, University of Oklahoma Press, 1973, pp. 199-219.

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.

A journalist turned short-story writer, who began his careers as a sportswriter and newspaper columnist in Chicago, Ring Lardner (1885-1933) first achieved popularity with a series of humorous letters purportedly written by one Jack Keefe, a bush-league pitcher who is signed by a big-league team in Chicago and who reports on his experiences to a friend back in his Michigan home town. Published in the Saturday Evening Post, beginning in 1914, they were collected in You Know Me Al (1916) and later volumes. Most of Lardner's short stories about baseball players follow...