SOURCE: "Comic Alienation: Ring Lardner's Style," in Markham Review, Vol. 11, Spring, 1982, pp. 51-7.

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.

Mark Twain once said that "an author's style is a main part of his equipment for business."¹ and Ring Lardner was fastidious in his use of this tool. In fact, some crities believe that Lardner's chief contribution to American letters is the style he employed in his stories, a vernacular voice that is authentically middle-class and Midwestern.² Lardner's style is apparently spontaneous, fresh and natural, but it is not simply intuitive. Although Lardner had a good ear for the nuances of phrasing and the vagaries of pronounciation, he also systematically categorized his observations, and within a story his characters use or abuse language according to a consistent pattern.

Lardner's...