Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyon

Before reading this book, all I knew of Damon Runyon came from the movies that had been inspired by his short stories: Guys and Dolls, Little Miss Marker, The Lemondrop Kid, Pocketful of Miracles, and such. So I picked this book up more out of curiosity than anything else, but I have to say that I now know Damon Runyon to be one of the absolute masters of the short story, one of the most unique world-builders who ever put pen to paper, and the creator of one of the most uniquely American narrative voices. His "citizens" and "characters" are the denizens of Broadway, as you can see in "Delegates at Large": "Sometimes you can see very prominent citizens sitting with me on the bank steps, including such as Regret, the horse player, and old Sorrowful, the bookie, and Doc Daro and Professor D and Johnny Oakley and The Greek..." "Well, one night I am sitting on the bank steps with Big Nig, the crap shooter, and a guy by the name of Skyrocket, who is nobody much, when all of a sudden I notice three guys standing on the sidwalk taking a very good long gander at me, and who are these guys but certain characters from Brooklyn by the name of Harry the Horse, and Spanish John and Little Isadore, and they are very hard characters indeed." "In fact, these characters are so hard that I am glad that none of the depositors of the bank can see them standing there, as such a scene is just naturally bound to make any depositor nervous. In fact, it makes me more nervous than somewhat, and I am by no means a depositor." The language, as the above shows, is one of the greatest delights of reading Runyon. His narrative voice is unlike any other with a cadence and grammar that truly draw you in to his world. This bit in particular from "Johnny One-Eye" is a good example of Runyon-speak: "So Rudolph decides to go on a journey but then he gets to thinking that maybe Freddy will remember a little matter that Rudolph long ago since dismisses from his mind and does not wish to have recalled again, which is the time he and Freddy do a job on a guy by the name of The Icelander in Troy years ago and he drops around to Freddy's house to remind him to be sure not to remember this." "But it seems that Freddy, who is an imporant guy in business organization work himself, though in a different part of the city than Rudolph, mistakes the purpose of Rudolph's visit and starts to out with this rooty-toot-toot and in order to protect himself it is necessary for Rudolph to take his Betsy and give Freddy a little tattooing. In fact, Rudolph practically crockets his monogram on Freddy's chest and leaves him exceptionally deceased." Many of the stories take place in the Broadway of the 1920's, 30's and 40's, but Runyon often delights in taking his citizens and characters out of New York and into the most improbable settings and situations: in "Delegates at Large", a gangster attends a political convention to impress a doll; in "Butch Minds the Baby", a safe-cracker takes his baby so

I am sitting around one night years ago and my sister comes into the room and hands me these short stories and says ' you gotta read em' cause they got characters in them like Little Augie and Nibsy and ' the Walking Encyclopedia of Baseball Knowledge' and ' Posey' and 'Itchie Samiof ' and all the guys we know from Richman's gambling joint. So I sit down and I begin to read and its like these people on the page are the very spitting image very spitting of those we are meeting every day just on our corner . And these characters are very much like those my Uncles Jack and Reddy are inviting in the house all the time to play pinochle only even more funny and almost as nasty .So I say this book comes out of American life and is the genuine article although someone else tells me a lot of these guys most of been reading Damon Runyan and so started acting and talking like his characters just to make it seem that they are bigshots which is of course what they all are-when they are not broke which is most of the time. Well this has not been a very successful effort at parody or paraphrase or whatever is, but it is a way of saying you will really really enjoy reading about ' Nicely Nicely' and 'Nathan Detroit ' and all the other Runyan characters. Ring Lardner may have been a smarter guy but old Damon Runyan why he could almost make colloquial as good as old JD Salinger would a little later from a bit further uptown. Try it , try it you'll really really like it.

Damon Runyans writing is very amusing. He is sort of the American P.G. Woodhouse without all the spondulucks. His shorts also remind me of Roald Dahls in their twisted endings. I wish someone would hunt up and publish all his newspaper columns and war correspondence. Read his stories and you will be amazed at how often you recognize his plots in film. He was one of the great American writers and belongs in the same sentence as Twain Hemmingway Steinbeck and London.

Damon Runyon's collection of short stories was first published in the early 1930's - and lights up the seedy side of New York at that time. It is a world where all men seem to be shysters, gangsters, crooked lawyers, or somehow on the make - and all the women are Dolls. Runyon has the most wonderful voice - it is disarmingly confessionaly, sort of like you would expect a poorly educated but street smart gangster to talk in front of judge. So for instance in "Blood Pressure" which I think is one of the best stories he writes - "..Charley opens a door and we step into a room where there is a pretty red-headed doll about knee hight to a flivver, who looks as if she may just get out of the hay, because her red hair is flying every which way on her head, and her eyes seem still gummed up with sleep. At first I think she is a very cute sight indeed, and then I see something in her eyes that tells me this doll, whoever she is, is feeling very hostile to one and all."There are a great number of repeated characters that litter these tails, Nicely-Nicely, Regret, Dave the Dude - and everyone hangs around at Mindy's - a restaurant somewhere in New York. Nice, funny reads - Runyon and Saki rate as the two top short story writers ever.

This is an intelligent compilation of Damon Runyon's short stories, dating from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. The stories are very funny, peppered with the catchy slang of Runyon's small-time con artists, racetrack touts, Broadway characters, and guys who are "just around." You don't have to be a Runyon fan to enjoy such stories as "Broadway Incident" (drama critic Ambrose Hammer goes nightclubbing), "Madame La Gimp" (hoodlums pass off a bag lady as a society matron), "A Piece of Pie" (the gang wants to bet on Nicely-Nicely Jones in an eating contest), "Delegates at Large" (Harry the Horse and his associates attend a political convention), "Hold 'Em, Yale" (the gang attends a "very large football game between the Harvards and the Yales"), and many more. "Most pleasant" reading for comedy fans.