Books: A Trio of Lardners

SHUT UP, HE EXPLAINED (277 pp.)—A Ring Lardner Selection edited by Babette Rosmond and Henry Morgan—Scribner ($4.50).

There were two Ring Lardners that counted—or, at any rate, a plump one and a half. There was the man whose best stories are superb revelations of character, the lord of vernacular, the laureate of dull lives, crass hopes and mean minds. The second Lardner that counted was a fellow of short nights and wild swoops and demented plunges, of parody and nonsense, of non sequiturs that on occasion proved knockout blows. Perhaps the most inspired of these—a daunted parent's reply to a child's...