Ring Lardner — the Times years

1885–1933 · FIRST NEWSPAPER JOB: THE SOUTH BEND TIMES, 1905

The tie. Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan, on 6 March 1885, twenty miles from this city, and South Bend gave him his start: in the fall of 1905 — on the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame's account, drawn from Jonathan Yardley's biography — he was hired by the South Bend Times, into a job meant for his brother Rex, which he took by fibbing about his qualifications. Some modern publisher biographies date the start to 1907; the fuller record gives the fall of 1905, and this section prints 1905, noting the conflict rather than averaging it.

What the job made. He served the Times as society reporter, courthouse man, dramatic critic and sporting editor — the full small-city apprenticeship — and held the job until the middle of 1907, when he left for Chicago and the sports desks that made his name. The books came out of the baseball years: the Saturday Evening Post carried You Know Me Al as serial letters from a bush-league pitcher in 1914, and the book followed from Scribner's in 1916 under the editorship of Maxwell Perkins; Treat 'Em Rough (1918), The Big Town (1921), How to Write Short Stories (1924) and What of It? (1925) made the shelf of the decade, and Round Up (1929) gathered the stories. With George S. Kaufman he wrote the play June Moon (1929). He died at East Hampton, New York, in 1933; the Tender Is the Night in which he stands as Abe North belongs to Fitzgerald's shelf, not this one. The South Bend years are two of the apprenticeship; the city's claim is exactly that — the first desk, the first byline territory, and the training ground of the voice.

Sources:

1. Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame — the Lardner biography: hired by the South Bend Times in the fall of 1905, the job taken in his brother Rex's place, the beats worked (society, courthouse, drama, sport), and the departure in mid-1907.
2. American National Biography (Oxford University Press) — the South Bend employment given as 1905–1907 among the pre-Chicago posts.
3. Powell's Books, author record — the You Know Me Al serialization in the Saturday Evening Post from 1914, the Scribner's book of 1916 under Maxwell Perkins, and the later titles through Round Up (1929) and June Moon with Kaufman.