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My choice of No. 2 of the ten best humorists has been a favourite of mine since I was a kid. He was a cult figure then, for grownups as well as a handful of schoolboys. At the time
Damon Runyon was a
cult figure even in Manhattan, New York - his strictly
limited territory of Muse. Runyon's humour - sometimes despite rather than because of its language - appealed to select colleagues in the press; to
readers of the racing sheets, and to the inhabitants of the
Bronx and a small group of cognoscenti higher up
the scale of New York society.
In South Africa, we
were a very small band of admirers indeed.
Runyon’s fame came
later- when his work was taken to Broadway and then to Hollywood.
So it is
understandable that even so fine a newspaperman as Heywood Broun did not
recognise the true status of Damon Runyon in their own lifetimes. Broun, like most of the readers of
contemporary English-language books, thought O. Henry was “the Master” of light
writing. Broun was careful to point out
in his introduction to an omnibus of Damon Runyon stories (Sun Dail Press, NY,
1944) that “the mantle of O. Henry has been distributed by many who did not own
it, to several who did not deserve it. Accordingly there will be no suggestion
here that Damon Runyon has fallen heir to the glory and dignity of” O. Henry
(who wrote almost all his short stories about life in New York).
Well that
was then, as late as the 1940s, when most critics – and children like myself –
loved O. Henry and read him avidly, whether at school or for our own pleasure.
Now I treasure most, not my 1960 edition of one hundred O.Henry stories – but
this wartime copy of the Damon Runyon omnibus, which I bought years later for
R4.
I don’t
know about the ‘dignity’ of it, but certainly Runyon, did take over the
mantle of O. Henry in no uncertain terms. Today he has many imitators. But his popular status took time, probably because O. Henry was still revered by his fans long after his death. Henry's writing was
salubrious and salutary. Runyon’s was funny and hard-core, and not the
favourite of those who chose to lead public morals and opinion. Runyon’s followers were joined by popular
opinion only when his work became theatre. It was belated theatre, emerging into film,
which liked to look back from a safe distance at the dramatic and now
‘romantic’ times of the 1920s and 30s, when hoodlums sprayed lead at each other
in the streets in their fights over territory for distributing bootlegger
booze.
Heywood Broun admired his fellow newspaperman, Runyon,
right from the beginning, of course, with sufficient enthusiasm to produce the omnibus
of Runyon’s work. But it was not a time to bestow on a student of the sporting
turf the mantle of literary leader.
Broun wrote: “To me the
most impressive thing in 'Guys and Dolls' is the sensitivity of the
ear of Damon Runyon. He has caught with a high degree of insight the actual
tone and phrase of the gangsters and racketeers of the town. Their talk is put
down almost literally. Of course, like any artist, Damon Runyon has exercised
the privilege of selectivity. But he has not heightened or burlesqued the
speech of the people who come alive in his short stories.
"It would be
presumptuous for a mere newspaperman like myself to pass any judgment on the
plot and construction of these stories. That may be left more properly to the
reader. All I can say is that the happenings excite me and sometimes move me. And
this is so because I recognize the various characters concerned as actual
people who are at this moment living and loving, fighting and scuttling no more
than a quarter of a mile from the place in which I live.”
Well, Broun sounds a little pompous, somewhat snobby in his judgement, but he reflects his times. To me,
Runyon is the second-best writer of humour I know of. He is bettered only by the master of the 2oth century, P. G. Wodehoiuse. Read Runyon, or read him again, and decide. |
