Damon RunyonCritiques

A collection of short stories telling of a number of colourful characters. People who may come from the wrong side of the tracks but can still mean well or have a heart of gold.

The names are unusual — Harry the Horse, Big False Face, and Last Card Louie are just a few of the interesting and unique personalities.

Some of the stories may ring a bell — “Madame La Gimp” and Little Miss Marker” are two that became popular movies. “Madame La Gimp” became “Lady For A Day” and won three Oscars. I believe “Little Miss Marker” has been made a movie a couple of times.

Runyon was a top sports/news reporter and went into writing about the characters he met elsewhere in New York City. Comical and written in the rich, colourful style of the 1940s, Runyon gives life to his characters on paper. Descriptions and dialogue take the character from the page to being alive in front of you.

A fun trip back in time to another place.

Full Title is:- Runyon from first to last : containing all the stories written by Damon Runyon and not included in "Runyon on Broadway."

Great selection, though some of the non-Guys and Dolls stories are a bit ordinary.

The Broadway stories which make up the bulk of this collection mark out the territory of the runyonesque: heartfelt humble heroes full of hopeful cynicism risking everything on the next roll of the dice knowing the odds are against them but that’s still more of a chance than they started out with in life. His style is unique. His characters shape and are shaped by their time and place — New York during prohibition. A treat to read still today.

The other writings here confirm that Runyon’s strength as a short story writer emerged from his solid grounding in gritty journalism. And they remind us that his life as a writer was every bit as vibrant and colourful as his fiction implied.

Easy to recommend.

Runyon's tone is unique and delightful. Like Ned Henry, Mattie Ross and other creations of talented writers, his prose has a crispness all its own. Try one of his short stories... when you get the chance.

It only took three and a half years but I have finally finished this A+++ collection of stories.

Runyon's evocative style renders up a forgotten world of seedy Broadway, populated with loquacious, and sometimes charismatic, criminals who are always as eager for an easy buck as they are to spin you a yarn of their latest adventures. He is so good at evoking the dialect and almost circular style of speaking that believably conjures up the sort of characters who would inhabit this world.

Each story is tightly planned, with an entire world of characters and events fully realised and resolved within ten to twenty pages. They're slick, hilarious, and villainously sentimental, full of the kind of characters who patronise those 1920s New York speakeasies and racecourses. They are liberally peppered with the small time crooks and gamblers of some bygone Broadway era, who all speak in that particular Runyon old-timey gangster slang and participate in the storytelling tradition. A cross between Raymond Chandler and Dorothy Parker.

More Than Somewhat was like that fairground ride which does those sudden drops, no fuss no muss, just a straightforward ride, you know all the set-up is going to pay off and they sure do in the most satisfyingly heartwarming way that lets you romanticise the rough 20s Broadway life.

Furthermore and Take It Easy were bumpier ride, a more janky and lurching rollercoaster with unexpected and uneven ups and downs, sometimes veering into very dark humour (death is definitely more liberally dished out than before), with its last lines still delivering its usual pithy repartees to the reader and only slightly lacking the heart that was so satisfying previously.

This is maybe the best all-around taste of Runyon out there. A little poetry, a lot of stories, a bit of the Turps, a little reporting, My Old Home Town, and a few of the last stories.

Oh lord how I love Damon Runyon. I love six stories I've never read before even more! Otherwise, this is a retread of [b:Runyon a la Carte|17794406|Runyon a la Carte|Damon Runyon|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1365805870s/17794406.jpg|6891344] and [b:Take It Easy|18660662|Take It Easy|Damon Runyon|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|17232172].

***

Leopard's Spots and Maybe a Queen are the best of the new stories, but the six are a good mix of Broadway and My Old Home Town stories, which I like. All in all, worth checking out, even if you've read most other Runyon titles.

My first almost completely new-to-me Runyon in, oh, 15 years! There are four additional Turp stories in the Modern Library Runyon, but this is a comparative feast. I don't understand why this was never published in the US. So glad I finally own it!

(ETA: This doesn't look like a complete collection, the Modern Library stories notwithstanding; there are a few on this list that aren't in this book.)

***
It only took me seven years to read this—that’s carrying savoring a bit far. The stories are cute, but probably best for Runyon superfans.

Part of the Guys and Dolls omnibus.

Oh, how I love Damon Runyon. I don't love poetry, but I love Damon Runyon's poetry. Man has a way with words.

Christmas 2018 - NICE!

Amusing Guys and Dolls-era short story with a good little twist at the end

Enjoyable, but surprisingly simplistic and a bit repetitive than I remember.

Great stories of gangsters and the underworld

I found this based on one of the short stories recommended an age ago in an old writing group. Loved the story, went back to the start, and read them all. For a while I tried reading one a night as a going-to-bed treat but that fell down pretty quickly!

The voice is unique: resolutely present-tense even where explicitly referring to the past, rife with contemporary slang while avoiding contractions, and laden with euphemism and irony around the less-than-legal activities engaged in by many/most of the characters. It is perfectly delightful.

A very entertaining, but very seriously dated set of twenty humorous tales set in the 1920's and early 30's in New York. A very big Broadway musical hit in its day but it can now be seen as historical rather than contemporary. The musical was drawn principally from two stories.½

Review: This poetry revolves around the current events of the time. I found it tedious.

A collection of all of Runyon’s stories not included in “Runyon on Broadway”. Runyon paints wonderful lively characters from the New-York demi-monde of gambling.
I like his style (even if slightly repetitive)! Best to be enjoyed once a while one story at a time. (VIII-14)

A large collection ofg Runyon's stories. As a Yale man, I appreciate "Hold 'em, Yale."

Very well-known stories told in comic New York dialect

Funny stories in the usual Runyon vein

The day I started this, I just read the introduction to the first book, 'More than Somewhat' by EC Bentley, and the first story 'Breach of Promise'. Bentley's intro is full of love for Runyon's writing, and says of the characters that 'you cannot help liking his guys and dolls', gangsters and racketeers, dancers and murderers in New York's criminal underclass during Prohibition. But 'they have a reckless, courageous vitality that makes you like hearing about them'.
You like hearing from them too. In 'Breach of Promise', Harry the Horse rounds up Spanish John, Little Isadore and his 'klob' partner Educated Edmund and they drive along the Hudson River 'and it is a very enjoyable ride for one and all on account of the scenery. It is the first time Educated Edmund and Spansih John and Little Isadore ever see the scenery along the Hudson although they all reside on the banks of this beautiful river for several years at Ossining. Runyon, as a ournalist, had reported electrocutions at Ossining prison. Harry the Horse's picturesque imagery and diction...oooh.. I didn't want to swallow too much of this rich diet on day one!
Runyon's stories include epithets for people. The repetition of 'ever-loving wife' reminds me of Rudyard Kipling, and someone else pointed out Homer to Bentley.
Some of the stories make me think too of Brer Rabbit, like a Deep South cousin, and I adored these stories as a kid. 'Pick the Winner' in the second book 'Furthermore' does, for example, where Miss Cutie Singleton gazes nto her crystal ball to foretell which horse will win tomorrow's race. The Professor is being set up, but he interprets her prediction as 'Mistral' rather than 'Breezing Along', wins 2Gs, Miss Cutie Singleton and his dignity. Hot Horse Herbie, and the anonymous narrator, have to look up the word 'mistral' to discover it means a cold, dry, northerly wind.
Feet Samuels, down on his luck is thinking of doing something very desperate. Our anonymous narrator remarks 'I cannot think of anything very desperate for Feet Samuels to do except maybe go to work. Feet decides to sell his body to a doctor.
The 'Lemon Drop Kid' rips off an old man in a wheelchair, then his own fate spirals down and down. When eventually the old man catches up with him, and would have been his saviour years ago, 'the Lemon Drop Kid begins to laugh in his low voice, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, but somehow there does not seem to be any laughter in the laugh, and I cannot bear to hear it.' Some of this is disturbingly dark. But then, isn't 'The Three Wise Guys' a great title! Featuring the Dutchman: 'The last I hear of the Dutchman he is in college somewhere out West for highway robbery, although afterwards he tells me it is a case of mistaken identity. It seems he mistakes a copper in plain clothes for a grocery man.'
These are fables. The baddie usually gets his come-uppance, like the terrifying Big False Face in 'The Brakeman's Daughter' with his sinister clown-like smile. And Runyon pops crack at himself now and then. Here, Big False Face plays a sick trick on 'doll-dizzy' girls, and Runyon lists 'a justice of the peace, three G-guys, eighteeen newspaper scribes, five prize-fighters' etc.
Some of the guys can love, some can't, some of the dools are loveable, some are feisty and many are just dangerous. Calvin Colby in 'Tight Shoes' is a spoilt brat with rich parents. He drives around, crashing cars with dolls in the passenger seat. 'Calvin Colby personally never experiences love, and regards dolls as only plaintiffs.' And I'd recommend 'Dream Street Rose' and 'Earthquake' for a couple of other great stories and characters.
There's so much you want to remember, reading these stories, so I'll be reading them again in a week or so.

A collection of short stories by Damon Runyon, some of them from his earliest works and some from his latest. All hilarious. Runyon has a fabulous voice, and the expressions he uses had me smiling throughout. Be forewarned, though: This book is NOT politically correct, not even a little bit. But the time of his writing wasn't a PC kind of time either (1907-1945). The stories range from a few of his Broadway works to a section from "My Old Home Town" and "Grandpap and Grandmaw." Much fun.

Pure pleasure on the page! Damon Runyon seems to have fallen out of favor these days and that's a shame. He has been, I suppose, a victim of his own success -- "Guys and Dolls" has eclipsed Runyon's original stories, from which the musical sprang.

His snappy writing, amazing ear for dialect and dialogue, and rambunctious sense of humor (and justice), is unique. These stories of a New York underworld long gone (and that perhaps never existed) are delightful.½

I've been looking at some of our classic American humorists, and I think he may be the best. Recent review of latest collection in the New Yorker (sorry, can't remember issue) says it all, is worth looking up.