SOURCE: "The Meaning of Ring Lardner's Fiction: A Re-evaluation," in American Literature, Vol. 31, January, 1960, pp. 434-45.

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."

Our judgments of Ring Lardner and of his work have become stereotyped and thus distorted. Because of the seeming finality of Clifton Fadiman's argument that "Except Swift, no writer has gone farther on hatred alone,"¹ we have come to think of Lardner as a man who despised his fellowman. Because of the clarity with which he caught the social, professional, and linguistic traits of his characters—has "athletes, salesmen, surburbanites, song writers, barbers, actresses, stenographers, and the like"²—we have come to believe that his achievement went no further. So long as we rest with these conclusions, we will miss the more fundamental...