Damon Runyon—Philosopher of City Life

T HE trend toward literary regionalism is unmistakable on the bookmarket of recent years. In libraries and on news-stands, in drug stores and book stores, in pocket-book size as well as in elaborate first editions, we are confronted with a widening range of literature that explores the environmental background of this continent as a stage setting for adventure or love story, family novel or problem fiction. We enjoy the stage setting as much-and sometimes morethan the plot of the story. Overwhelmed by this flood of premeditated environmental exploration which dissects the 48 states of the nation and probes them for literary exploitation, which adds historical "period"literature and, thus, peruses the dimension of time as well as that of space, our attention has been diverted from fiction in which background and plot are molded so well into each other that the purpose of sociological penetration becomes less conspicuous. Nobody, to be sure, has been daring enough to affiliate a writer like Damon Runyon with the proponents of literary regionalism. Yet, in plot and language and sentence structure, in mood and descriptive intention, he arrives at the symbolic presentation of new and pertinent mass experiences. In some such manner, it appears, Damon Runyon has achieved the crystallization of attitudes which we are accustomed to associate with urbanism. His effects are not premeditated. As a sportswriter and roving reporter, he gives attention to the task at hand and prides himself on having "never turned down an assignment." With his short stories, however, he falls into a pattern which transcends the immediate intention of popular entertainment. Yet, his success is based upon unreflected enjoyment. He is gathering fans, not followers. There is something evasively suggestive about his form of expression. The manner of speech with which he endows his "characters" leaves an imprint upon the mind of the reader who finds coined phrases and slang and a stereotyped sentence structure sneak into his own language. He finds himself in debt to Damon Runyon for a peculiarly detached sense of humor. The most devoted fans are by no means found among the "characters of Broadway." They are more frequent in the "smart-set" than among those more solidly barricaded behind set values. But we do find fans of his in London as well as in the Far West of this country. We find them among the rich as well as the poor. His humor appears cosmopolitan, bohemian, smart-aleckey or whatever other expression we want to use to indicate the rootlessness of the city dweller. The peculiar fascination of Damon Runyon's short stories does not derive from the exploration of a quaint and bizarre social environment as such. Harry the Horse and Isidor Cheesecake stand for a wider set of experiences than those shared in the small hours on Broadway. Mindy's restaurant is the meeting place of a larger congregation than that assembled on the spot. Damon Runyon breathes the atmosphere of city life. It shapes his rendition and it carries the story. It molds his characters and it constitutes his sense of humor. To be sure, Damon Runyon does not plunge descriptively into the stage-setting of an "urban environment" with all paraphernalia provided. The roaring of the subway and the clanking of the trolley underneath the elevated, the lack of plumbing and the stink of unsatisfactory garbage collection are not mentioned. There is none of that. Or not more than necessary to literally support Runyon's guys and dolls while they drink, gamble or make love; or necessary to convey them from one place of action to another. Yet, the atmosphere of the big city is right there, more intensely than in -WeeGee's photographic explorations. If "urbanism" means a cosmopolitan attitude rather than a pattern of real estate development, if urbanism is associated with human helplessness in a complex and artificial environment-made by man and yet not mastered-if urbanism suggests the paradox of solitude in milling crowds and that of sentimental yearning in a highly rationalized machine culture-then, indeed, Damon Runyon in his short stories has laid his finger on the very core of a phenomenon which reporters and novelists, historians, sociologists, and scribes, concerned with city life in past, present, and future, are apt to consider the central theme of our present civilization. Let's see how it works. One of the most char-