Click on title to link to "Wikipedia's" entry for the great short story writer and Broadway character in his own right, Damon Runyon.
Book Review
Guys and Dolls: A Damon Runyon Reader, Damon Runyon, Viking, New York, 1993
Every working class neighborhood has produced (and produces), if those that I have lived in are indicative, its fair share of drifters, grifters, lamsters, short moneymen, wise guys and just plain big talkers. In classical Marxist speak this element is called the lumpenproletariat and in political terms is a drag on the class struggle and the feeding grounds for fueling reactionary and counter-revolutionary movements. In short, bad news.
I am willing to bet, and make that bet 6/5, that any interested reader looking at this review to get the 'skinny' on Damon Runyon's short stories probably did not bargain for the above analysis. Fair enough. Okay, we will suspend disbelief about the true nature of these types for as long as it takes to get through this collection. Damon Runyon has taken that collection of drifters, grifters and con artists and their `dolls' and headquartered them, mainly in one place, New York's Broadway, the Great White Way of the 1920's and 1930's and given us some very memorable stories about the sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, sometimes, baffling trials and tribulations of this motley crew.
Runyon's great art was to have an ear for the kind of dialogue that those on the hustle would produce if such a rogue's gallery of lumpen types as the Hot Horse Herbies, Skys, Sam the Gonolphs, Bookie Bobbies and the rest of the cock-eyed tribe who people his stories every had time to talk to each other (Woody Allen in “Broadway Danny Rose has captured an updated of the tribe, but it is the same tribe, no question).
It is no secret that every little sub-culture has its own mores, language and sense of what passes for honor. Runyon takes this and exaggerates the effect but also in many cases puts an edge on it. Some stories are just straight out funny like “A Story Goes With It,” with its improbable ending in the omnipresent world of the race track; some are tragic-comic like “Lily of St. Pierre,” a vignette of the seamy side of lumpen existence for those on the run; and others are just plain tear jerkers like “Little Miss Marker.”
Some commentators have argued that Runyon was just a cynic and had contempt for his characters (or for the real life characters that he based them on). Maybe, so. But if you want several hours of enjoyable reading about a time and place that never really existed, except as caricature, then this is your stop. By the way- Buddy, can you spare a dime?
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