SOURCE: "Ring Lardner's Success-Mad World," in The New York Times Book Review, June 18, 1944, pp. 3, 18.

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."

Ring Lardner began his career in fiction most unpretentiously with You Know Me Al and other baseball stories. These pieces are lighter, more gay than his later work. He took the heroes of the sport pages and showed that they were made of anything but the cloth of heroism. Some of them were eccentric Yahoos; others were boasting braggarts, irascible and childish in their vanity. Later he scored the same points with greater melancholy, with increased scorn. His major work is the collection of his...