Ring Lardner Tonight: Part 3 of "Champion" -- In Boston, Midge makes his mark

Paul Stewart as Tommy Haley with Kirk Douglas
as Midge in the 1949 film version of Champion

"I don't need no contrac'. He knows it was me that drug him out o' the gutter and he ain't goin' to turn me down now, when he's got the dough and bound to get more. Where'd he of been at if I hadn't listened to him when he first come to me?"

-- Tommy Haley, talking to his visiting brother Dan
about Midge, in tonight's installment of "Champion"

by Ken

You'll notice that "Champion" is very different in basic form from, say, Ring's "The Young Immigrunts" or You Know Me Al, which are written entirely in what Ring Lardner Jr. identifies in The Lardners: My Family Remembered as "the two main variants of English in which almost all his work was written until about 1925": "Semiliterate American (As Written)" and "Semiliterate American (As Spoken)." Of course "Champion" relies heavily on the "as spoken" version, but the story is written in a version of "normal" American English.

Almost everything [Ring] wrote was in one of the two variations of the idiom. Even after something impelled him in 1916 to do his first two third-person stories, "Champion" and "The Facts," he decided for himself he couldn't handle the form and didn't attempt it again for nine years."

FOR PART 3 OF "CHAMPION," CLICK HERE.

RING'S "CHAMPION" -- THE WHOLE STORY

Part 1: We make the acquaintance of young Michael Kelly
Part 2: In Milwaukee, Midge makes connections
Part 3: In Boston, Midge makes his mark
Part 4: In New Orleans, Midge reads some mail
Part 5: Back in his hometown, the champ knows how to deal with a sponger
Part 6: Back in Milwaukee, the champ rearranges more old arrangements
Part 7: In New York, the champ meets the press
Postscript: How "Champion" found its way into book form

THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

#