Almanac of Story Tellers: Damon Runyan

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Oct. 4th

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    It is the 277th day of the year, leaving 88 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1880, the journalist and writer Damon Runyan was born in Manhattan, Kan.

   

    He told his stories with an array of characters embellished from real life or of his own making. He wrote in a descriptive style that used a vernacular slang of gangsters, gamblers, and denizens of Brooklyn. He wrote in the literary style known as the historic present, evoking constant action.     

    He aroused melancholy and wonder. He was a master of wit and sarcasm. He rarely pulled his punches. He wrote of a boxer who needed to forget the purses he could win and do some fighting.

    His baseball stories invented terms like slapping the horsehide and belting a homer. He created his own slang, using words such as shiv for a knife, the old equalizer for a gun, and noggin for head. Spouses were ever-loving wives. 

    Runyan was mostly a journalist, writing for Hearst newspapers. He covered sports and life in New York City for decades, starting in 1911 and continuing into the 1940s. His baseball and boxing stories often went beyond the play-by-play that was then the norm. In his stories, players were characters and the action was a continuous stream. 

    His fictional short stories were similar, told as an ongoing tale by a nameless narrator. They have been collected in dozens of volumes. He wrote the comic play, A Slight Case of Murder. Two of his short stories, along with several characters from other tales, inspired the musical Guys and Dolls. 

    Runyan died in 1946 in New York.