Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Emmert, Scott D

Titel

Ring Lardner's Comic War

Ist Teil von

• WLA : war, literature & the arts, 2022-01, Vol.34, p.1-27

Ort / Verlag

Colorado Springs: War, Literature, & the Arts

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• When more fully recognized, Lardner's contributions to American letters include adding a "'mordant wit'" (Silverman and Silverman 387) to humor writing, conveying the unique American vernacular as a craftsman of the short story and an innovator in sports writing, satirizing the naive American abroad, and devising hilariously absurd plays.2 To this list of literary accomplishments should be added Lardner's writing about the First World War, which scholars have only recently made more available. Skeptical of an overly shaped "reality," especially if it defied actual human experience and impulse, Lardner directed his humor at false ideas about the war while maintaining overall support for it. In addition to such overt support for the U.S. war effort, Lardner offers more subtle endorsement. In "Society Does Its Bit," published on April 26, 1917, he mocked wealthy people ostentatiously "doing their bit" for the war effort: G. Worthington Smith-Smith-Smith. 1126 West Randolph, announced that he would donate his share of the County Hospital to America and its new allies.