| List Price: | |
| Price: | $0.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details... |
| You Save: | $0.00(0.00%) |
| Binding: | Kindle Edition |
| EAN: | |
| Feature: | |
| Label: | MacMay |
| Publisher: | MacMay |
| Studio: | MacMay |
| Tags: |
Editorial Reviews
Ring Larder was one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite writers. As a beginning writer Hemingway sometimes wrote under the pen name Ring Lardner, Jr., a nod to his literary hero.
You Know Me Al was written by Ring Lardner in 1916 ans was his first successful book. The book is Written in the form of letters, written by "Jack Keefe," a bush league baseball player, to a friend back home. The letters made heavy use of the fictional author's idiosyncratic vernacular. Like most of Lardner's stories, You Know Me Al employed satire, in this case to show the stupidity and avarice of a certain type of athlete. "Ring Lardner thought of himself as primarily a sports columnist whose stuff wasn't destined to last, and he held to that absurd belief even after his first masterpiece, You Know Me Al, was published in 1916 and earned the awed appreciation of Virginia Woolf, among other very serious, unfunny people", wrote Andrew Ferguson, who named it, in a Wall Street Journal article, one of the top five pieces of American humor writing.
You Know Me Al was written by Ring Lardner in 1916 ans was his first successful book. The book is Written in the form of letters, written by "Jack Keefe," a bush league baseball player, to a friend back home. The letters made heavy use of the fictional author's idiosyncratic vernacular. Like most of Lardner's stories, You Know Me Al employed satire, in this case to show the stupidity and avarice of a certain type of athlete. "Ring Lardner thought of himself as primarily a sports columnist whose stuff wasn't destined to last, and he held to that absurd belief even after his first masterpiece, You Know Me Al, was published in 1916 and earned the awed appreciation of Virginia Woolf, among other very serious, unfunny people", wrote Andrew Ferguson, who named it, in a Wall Street Journal article, one of the top five pieces of American humor writing.
Related Reviews
An inside look at turn-of-the-century professional baseball
Ring Lardner was a newspaper sports writer in the early 1900s. He rode the trains with professional baseball players and joined in thier card games. "You Know Me Al" is a unique set of letters from a fictional rookie ball player to his friend Al back home. The book contains real teams and stats, but is a fast-reading fictional look at the lives of players. With everything from front office negotiations with Comiski to on-the-field trash talk, "You Know Me Al" is a must-read for baseball fans who miss the game of yesteryear.
This book was a real hoot to read. Ive always loved the language that revolved around the game of baseball. Ring Lardner does a credible job of creating this youthful prospect trying to make big in The Show. The format of writing letters gives it a touch a realism. The language and grammar of this semiliterates lend it a charm that is slightly reminiscent of Huck Finn. His delusional arrogance is more humorous than offensive in the long run. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the literature and journalism that surrounds this great American game.
Not being much of a sports fan, but for many years standing close beside one, I knew nothing of Ring Lardner until I visited Niles, Michigan, pursuing a story of my own. In a quaint hometown treasures museum, we discovered the local author gone national, with a first edition of "You Know Me Al" under glass. Intrigued, I purchased a modern day copy soon after for my sports fan, but I had to read it first myself.
In full agreement with Virginia Woolf in the book's Introduction, I can say you do not have to be a sports fan to enjoy Lardner's humorous portrayal of Jack Keefe, a bush-league pitcher who writes frequent letters to his best pal, Al, about his adventures on and off the baseball field. The letters are filled with hilarious misspellings, misunderstandings, and general bumblings. Jack may be a good athlete, but his mind, shall we say, is his least athletic muscle...
All of which adds to the slim book's charm. Jack writes to Al about his fortunes and misfortunes in pitching, forever blaming others for his own obvious failures, never missing a chance to boast, thumping his manly chest with threats that he will beat up this guy or that for some imagined slight. His arrogance is in high form, but just about the time it approaches the point of no return, Jack charms with his naivete. One can't help but laugh at him again, much as one laughs at a child or a wildly bounding puppy.
The letters are not just about baseball, however, but just as comically illustrate Jack's romantic flailings, as he imagines Violet is ever so smitten with him, then decides to marry another, only to drop her for another, only to long for the first again, only to marry Florrie. With whom the threat of divorce comes up again and again in similar cyclings. Jack waffles with all decisions in his life: team trips, moving from one city to another, borrowing and repaying funds to the silent and surely most patient and near saintly Al.
It is the lack of hearing from the other side that keeps me from adding a fifth star to this review. We have only Jack's view of himself and his world, charming bumbler that he is, and I found myself often wishing for Al's side in response. Nonetheless, this is a classic that can obviously be enjoyed even over a great passage of time since its original writing some eighty years ago, and with or without a penchant for sports.
In full agreement with Virginia Woolf in the book's Introduction, I can say you do not have to be a sports fan to enjoy Lardner's humorous portrayal of Jack Keefe, a bush-league pitcher who writes frequent letters to his best pal, Al, about his adventures on and off the baseball field. The letters are filled with hilarious misspellings, misunderstandings, and general bumblings. Jack may be a good athlete, but his mind, shall we say, is his least athletic muscle...
All of which adds to the slim book's charm. Jack writes to Al about his fortunes and misfortunes in pitching, forever blaming others for his own obvious failures, never missing a chance to boast, thumping his manly chest with threats that he will beat up this guy or that for some imagined slight. His arrogance is in high form, but just about the time it approaches the point of no return, Jack charms with his naivete. One can't help but laugh at him again, much as one laughs at a child or a wildly bounding puppy.
The letters are not just about baseball, however, but just as comically illustrate Jack's romantic flailings, as he imagines Violet is ever so smitten with him, then decides to marry another, only to drop her for another, only to long for the first again, only to marry Florrie. With whom the threat of divorce comes up again and again in similar cyclings. Jack waffles with all decisions in his life: team trips, moving from one city to another, borrowing and repaying funds to the silent and surely most patient and near saintly Al.
It is the lack of hearing from the other side that keeps me from adding a fifth star to this review. We have only Jack's view of himself and his world, charming bumbler that he is, and I found myself often wishing for Al's side in response. Nonetheless, this is a classic that can obviously be enjoyed even over a great passage of time since its original writing some eighty years ago, and with or without a penchant for sports.
I had not never heard of Ring Lardner until a visit to his home town in Niles Michigan right near outside of Kalamazoo. Born in Niles Michigan in 1885 Lardner was a sports writer for the Chicago Tribyoon but he is best well known for these busher letters that he rote as instalmints for The Satirday Eevning Post.
The best letters were collected for this book You Know Me Al that were first published in 1914. It cronikles a bushers rise to the major league threw a serious of letters written to his pal Al in Bedford Illinoy. Jack Keefe is a right hander pitcher who has got some good stuf but he is offten his own worse enemy. He sees the baseball world round him threw child inocents seeing his skills as supeerier to every one. Think Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham. His qwik tempurr shows when he looses it is because he got no support from his team and so he blaims every one but him. And in these letters to his pal Al he shows how all too human he is even as he shows no skill with girls his team mates his manager or at writing. No atemped is made to kleen up miss-spelled words or fix up bad grammer. These letters show a glimpse into the great game of baseball threw the eyes of some one who played for Charles Comiskey, ohner of the White Sox and against Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson.
You dont have to be a fan of the game to like this book. In fact I never knowed what a fadeaway fast ball was until I red this book. It is a fast ball that when the hitter hits it it fades away over the fence. And it can be red in a lot of ways. As historik fikshun a baseball book or a caractor study that shows that athaletes even then lived in a difrent world then ours. You can't not like this book.
Hily reckomended.
The best letters were collected for this book You Know Me Al that were first published in 1914. It cronikles a bushers rise to the major league threw a serious of letters written to his pal Al in Bedford Illinoy. Jack Keefe is a right hander pitcher who has got some good stuf but he is offten his own worse enemy. He sees the baseball world round him threw child inocents seeing his skills as supeerier to every one. Think Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham. His qwik tempurr shows when he looses it is because he got no support from his team and so he blaims every one but him. And in these letters to his pal Al he shows how all too human he is even as he shows no skill with girls his team mates his manager or at writing. No atemped is made to kleen up miss-spelled words or fix up bad grammer. These letters show a glimpse into the great game of baseball threw the eyes of some one who played for Charles Comiskey, ohner of the White Sox and against Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson.
You dont have to be a fan of the game to like this book. In fact I never knowed what a fadeaway fast ball was until I red this book. It is a fast ball that when the hitter hits it it fades away over the fence. And it can be red in a lot of ways. As historik fikshun a baseball book or a caractor study that shows that athaletes even then lived in a difrent world then ours. You can't not like this book.
Hily reckomended.
'There ain't no extra charge for using the forks'
In the early days before ballplayers made a few billion dollars a year there was a young pitcher by the name of Jack Keefe who got called up from the minors to pitch for Comiskey's Chicago White Sox. He tells the story of this and his whole season in a series of letters to his friend ,Al. These letters are written in a special colloquial style and include the spelling and grammatical errors of the young pitcher, and also his quite surprising startling and humorous language. This is what this classic work of American humor is largely about. And while it is filled with sarcasm and a kind of mockery at the arrogance and naievete of its main character it also presents a picture of the baseball world of those days in the terms and language of that world.
A small American classic.
A small American classic.
This amusing look at baseball circa 1914 by sportswriter Ring Lardner (1885-1933) remains among the sport's top fiction. The story is told through a series of letters written by pitcher Jack Keefe of the Chicago White Sox to his buddy Al back home in Indiana. Keefe is a modestly talented pitcher finally getting his chance in the big leagues. Keefe is naive and immature, he has an excuse for every failure, and his childish emotions range greatly according to how his last game went. The author uses many real baseball figures in this story (Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, manager Nixie Callahan, etc.) and that lends an added layer of authenticity. This book also mixes readable prose with down home wit, and the result is a highly amusing novel in the style of Mark Twain.
Baseball a hundred years ago wasn't really much different than it is today. Only the names have changed. Talented pitcher Jack Keefe tells this story in the form of letters to his friend Al back in their hometown. Jack begins below the major leagues, but gets there with the White Sox. Jack shows his personality by his own descriptions of actions and events. Don't expect him to spell well or use the finest grammar, but frequently laugh at his choices and apparent delusion about who and what he really is. It may help if you know names like Cobb, Lajoie, Matthewson, and Comisky, and have some rudimentary knowledge of baseball, but this is an enjoyable book about Jack's life changing as his circumstances change. He faces baseball issues, management issues, women issues, and general life issues as a young man who shows himself to be na
The world has changed. Baseball... not as much.
Athletes are much more educated & sophisticated today. But especially in baseball there are are still the fun-loving, ignorant, quick to anger, characters. Like Jack, for example. He is just dumb, lacking self awareness but kind of loveable & fun to party with. You'd root for him. What could be better. Talking baseball, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, that cheap owner, Charles Comiskey etc. Listening to the audio version as I drove along, I was smiling. It jogged my own memories of baseball seasons past, even though it is almost 90 years old. This was all before World War I, the Black Sox Scandal & even Babe Ruth.
This is a classic. Every baseball fan with a sense of humor should take time to read this great book by Ring Lardner.
At one time early in the first part of the 20th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. That was a time that the name Ring Lardner was well known in sports writing and literary circles. The sports writing part was easy because that was his beat. The literary part is much harder to recognize but clearly the character of Jack Keefe has become an American classic. Does one need to be a baseball fan to appreciate this work? Hell, no. We all know, in sports or otherwise, this guy Keefe. Right? You know the guy with some talent who has no problem blaming the other guy for mistakes while he (or she) is pure as the driven snow. That is the concept that drives these stories told in the form of letters to Al, his buddy back home.
The language, the malapropisms and the schemes all evoke an early more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such a character based on today's sport's ethic. They would all have a spokesperson `spinning' their take on the matters of the day. The only one that might have come close is Nuke LaRouche in the movie Bull Durham but as that movie progressed Nuke was getting `wise'. Read these stories. More than once.
The language, the malapropisms and the schemes all evoke an early more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such a character based on today's sport's ethic. They would all have a spokesperson `spinning' their take on the matters of the day. The only one that might have come close is Nuke LaRouche in the movie Bull Durham but as that movie progressed Nuke was getting `wise'. Read these stories. More than once.
Keefe's "voice" captured perfectly on this version of the audiobook.
"You Know Me Al" consists of a series of rather detailed letters written by a bush-league ballplayer named Jack Keefe. Keefe has been called up from the Terre Haute team to join the Chicago White Sox. He is writing to one of his former bush-league teammates in Bedford, IN.
Keefe is truly a country bumpkin, a rube, a bumbling fool who does not understand the more sophisticated world of the major leagues, but who still succeeds based on the strength of his pitching arm. The reader gets a kick out of seeing the world through his eyes but really understanding the situations he is in, similar to 'Forrest Gump', except that Jack does not have a disability - he is just ignorant.
The audio version I heard (Book of the Road's version) is wonderfully performed by veteran Shakespearean actor Barry Kraft. Kraft captures his self-confidence, hoosier country-boy accent and innocence perfectly. To me, he will forever be the voice of Jack Keefe.
Overall grade: B+
Keefe is truly a country bumpkin, a rube, a bumbling fool who does not understand the more sophisticated world of the major leagues, but who still succeeds based on the strength of his pitching arm. The reader gets a kick out of seeing the world through his eyes but really understanding the situations he is in, similar to 'Forrest Gump', except that Jack does not have a disability - he is just ignorant.
The audio version I heard (Book of the Road's version) is wonderfully performed by veteran Shakespearean actor Barry Kraft. Kraft captures his self-confidence, hoosier country-boy accent and innocence perfectly. To me, he will forever be the voice of Jack Keefe.
Overall grade: B+
The book profiles a talented fictitious baseball pitcher whose primary limitations are his shallowness, arrogance and bone-headedness. Certainly the character is a composite of all the knuckleheads Lardner must have encountered in his beat as one of the premier sportswriters of his era. Elements of the main character can be seen in many of today's sports stars. The book is an easy and amusing read.
Ring Lardner's place as one of the United States' most underrated fiction writers may be from producing almost exclusively short fiction. There, his gift for colloquialism, narrative voice, and an ironic distance between creator and character shines brightest.
Even his one well-regarded novel, 1916's "You Know Me Al", speaks to Lardner's strengths as a short-distance writer. It's an engaging but thin first-person narrative about a headstrong rookie pitcher, Jack Keefe, who makes it to baseball's American League as a starter for the Chicago White Sox. Talented as he is, his selfish attitude puts him in several tight fixes which he wiggles out of with the blissful ignorance of Inspector Clouseau.
It helps the busher is too dense to pick up on the ridicule he draws when getting off to a bad start, like in this sly, characteristic exchange with his manager:
"I says Why don't you get a catcher? He says We don't need no catcher when you're pitching because you can't get nothing past their bats. Then he says You better leave your uniform in here when you go out next inning or Cobb will steal it off your back. I says My arm is sore. He says Use your other one and you'll do just as good."
Mention of Cobb, as in Tyrus Raymond, is important because it cues one of Lardner's most successful devices in "Al", as read at this remove in time. A number of real-life players, managers, coaches, and club owners put in appearances, sometimes in extended episodes. Keefe clashes with parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey over a couple hundred dollars and hangs his losses on teammates, including Buck Weaver, who ironically is blamed by Keefe for throwing a game for a friend. [The real Weaver would go down in history, three years after this was published, as the one "Black Sox" player who wouldn't do precisely that.]
One wonders how Weaver, Comiskey, and the others reacted to "Al". They must have read it; it was the most popular thing Lardner, a famous writer, produced in his lifetime, first in magazine serial installments and then as a novel. Did they enjoy reading of themselves and get the joke was on Keefe?
"Al's" format, as series of letters written by Keefe to a hometown buddy, allows for a good deal of hilarity in its deliberate unconsciousness, much of which holds together today. But as a story and a character study, it's quite thin. It boils down to this: Jack is a jerk, he's vain, and he's cheap. This last point gets pushed many times, especially during the book's creaky second half, where the now-established pitcher must share the wealth with a wife and son.
Lardner's validity as a short-story writer includes the way he holds true to the voice of his central character, no matter how limited or blinkered. Here, it's a liability as the longer investment in Keefe doesn't pay off. I found myself tiring of this guy's company before long, and wishing that Lardner had traded him for Alibi Ike, not my favorite Lardner character either but a more interesting one, more amusing and sympathetic.
Even reading this as a collection of short stories is unsatisfying, as the sections don't so much end as trail off. When we leave Keefe, he is getting ready to sail "a round the world and back" on a baseball tour. He is the same guy we met at the beginning, perhaps a realistic treatment of his fellow man by Lardner but not an arresting one.
Even his one well-regarded novel, 1916's "You Know Me Al", speaks to Lardner's strengths as a short-distance writer. It's an engaging but thin first-person narrative about a headstrong rookie pitcher, Jack Keefe, who makes it to baseball's American League as a starter for the Chicago White Sox. Talented as he is, his selfish attitude puts him in several tight fixes which he wiggles out of with the blissful ignorance of Inspector Clouseau.
It helps the busher is too dense to pick up on the ridicule he draws when getting off to a bad start, like in this sly, characteristic exchange with his manager:
"I says Why don't you get a catcher? He says We don't need no catcher when you're pitching because you can't get nothing past their bats. Then he says You better leave your uniform in here when you go out next inning or Cobb will steal it off your back. I says My arm is sore. He says Use your other one and you'll do just as good."
Mention of Cobb, as in Tyrus Raymond, is important because it cues one of Lardner's most successful devices in "Al", as read at this remove in time. A number of real-life players, managers, coaches, and club owners put in appearances, sometimes in extended episodes. Keefe clashes with parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey over a couple hundred dollars and hangs his losses on teammates, including Buck Weaver, who ironically is blamed by Keefe for throwing a game for a friend. [The real Weaver would go down in history, three years after this was published, as the one "Black Sox" player who wouldn't do precisely that.]
One wonders how Weaver, Comiskey, and the others reacted to "Al". They must have read it; it was the most popular thing Lardner, a famous writer, produced in his lifetime, first in magazine serial installments and then as a novel. Did they enjoy reading of themselves and get the joke was on Keefe?
"Al's" format, as series of letters written by Keefe to a hometown buddy, allows for a good deal of hilarity in its deliberate unconsciousness, much of which holds together today. But as a story and a character study, it's quite thin. It boils down to this: Jack is a jerk, he's vain, and he's cheap. This last point gets pushed many times, especially during the book's creaky second half, where the now-established pitcher must share the wealth with a wife and son.
Lardner's validity as a short-story writer includes the way he holds true to the voice of his central character, no matter how limited or blinkered. Here, it's a liability as the longer investment in Keefe doesn't pay off. I found myself tiring of this guy's company before long, and wishing that Lardner had traded him for Alibi Ike, not my favorite Lardner character either but a more interesting one, more amusing and sympathetic.
Even reading this as a collection of short stories is unsatisfying, as the sections don't so much end as trail off. When we leave Keefe, he is getting ready to sail "a round the world and back" on a baseball tour. He is the same guy we met at the beginning, perhaps a realistic treatment of his fellow man by Lardner but not an arresting one.
Share your thoughts with other customers
Create your own review
Create your own review
Lardner does more than get laughs at the expense of his dense protagonist, though. He gives an intimate picture of baseball in its first classic era -- the busher comes face to face with Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker and Walter Johnson with interesting results. But it's not a sentimental depiction of the age: Among those with whom the busher crosses paths is the famously parsimonious and autocratic White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey. The book gives a hint of the resentments that led his players to agree to throw a World Series (as they did a few years after Lardner wrote "You Know Me Al") and illustrates the indentured servitude that all but the best players endured before free agency arrived in the mid-'70s.