Books: Melancholy Marabou

WHAT OF IT?—Ring Lardner—Scribner ($2.00). Shakespeare has often been called, doubtless with complimentary intention, "the myriad-minded." If to be myriad-minded means to have an intellect which is supremely like the intellect of the myriads, Ring Lardner is the Shakespeare of the U. S. In person, great-nosed, lean—a melancholy marabou of a man—he understands as no one else alive the U. S. buddy ballplayer, salesman, cop, yegg, bootlegger and poobah. His wit crackles like static, loud enough to disguise, but never to obscure, the grave or bitter tune that runs behind it. In...