Ring Lardner Tonight: Part 2 of "The Young Immigrunts" -- Still en route to "Shut up he explained"

The extraordinary Lardner boys: [top] John and Jim at 24, [bottom] Ring Jr. at 18 and David at 17 (from Ring Jr.'s The Lardners)

THE YOUNG LARDNERS

Just as Ring Sr.'s older brothers had preceded him as successful newspaper writers, all four of his sons established themselves remarkably early as writers. Tragically, three died young, two as war correspondents -- James (1914-1938) in the Spanish Civil War, David (1919-1944) in World War II. John (1912-1958) survived his years as a correspondent in World War II and even survived a siege of his father's nemesis, tuberculosis, but succumbed to heart disease. Ring Jr. (1915-2000), a noted film writer probably best known for the screenplay for M*A*S*H, was a survivor of a different sort -- of the McCarthy era blacklist, as one of the Hollywood 10.

"No sooner had we reached Herkimer when the clouds bersed with renude vigger and I think my old man was about to say we will stop here and have lunch when my mother sugested it herself.

"No replid my father with a corse jesture we will go on to Little Falls."

-- from Chapter 6 of "The Young Immigrunts"

by Ken

If you're coming in at this point, last night we had the first installment of Ring Lardner's "The Young Immigrunts," the story of the migration of a family very much like the Lardners from their roots in the Midwest to a new life in the East. This little book, we were told by the Father who claimed to have edited the manuscript, was written by the four-year-old son who accompanied his parents on the drive while his three brothers made the trip by train in the care of the family nurse.

As I mentioned in the update to last night's post, the question of the book's factuality -- notably, how close is it to the actual migration undertaken by the Lardner family in 1919, is it? It turns out that the question is neatly answered in Ring Lardner Jr.'s evocative 1976 memoir of his remarkable family, The Lardners, which I hadn't looked at in too long a while. "Bill" Lardner, as Ring Jr. was known, also has some valuable insight into the form of the parody his father undertook here -- and we'll get to all that in a moment, in the click-through.

You'll note a change in plan. With six chapters of "The Young Immigrunts" still to go, we already had a heavy load for tonight's installment. So I've reverted to a three-part plan -- the background from Ring Jr. plus the long Chapters 6 and 7 tonight, then the concluding Chapters 8-11 tomorrow night (instead of the usual Friday Sunday Classics Preview).


FOR RING LARDNER JR.'S INSIGHT INTO "THE YOUNG
IMMIGRANTS" AND TO READ CHAPTERS 6-7, CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT,
WILL CUPPY TONIGHT, and WOLCOTT GIBBS TONIGHT):
Check out the series to date

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