Damon Runyon
Personal Information
Description
Runyon was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted. He spun humorous tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit," "Benny Southstreet," "Big Jule," "Harry the Horse," "Good Time Charley," "Dave the Dude," or "The Seldom Seen Kid." Runyon wrote these stories in a distinctive vernacular style: a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. The musical Guys and Dolls was based on two Runyon stories, "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure".The musical also takes characters and story elements from a few other Runyon stories, most notably "Pick The Winner." The film Little Miss Marker (and its remake, Sorrowful Jones) grew from his short story of the same name. Runyon was also a newspaperman. He wrote the lead article for UP on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Presidential inauguration in 1933. [Wikipedia]
Books
Fireside Al's Treasury of Classic Stories
The necklace / Guy de Maupassant -- Butch minds the baby / Damon Runyon -- A tradition of eighteen hundred and four / Thomas Hardy -- Rip Van Winkle / Washington Irving -- Michael / William Wordsworth -- To build a fire / Jack London -- The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County / Mark Twain -- The signalman / Charles Dickens -- Come again in the spring / Richard Kennedy -- In my indolence / Italo Svevo -- Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Lochinvar / Sir Walter Scott -- The Griffin and the Minor Canon / Frank Stockton -- The elixir of Father Gaucher / Alphonse Daudet -- [Taste]( [Masque of the Red Death]( / Edgar Allan Poe -- The lady with the dog / Anton Chekhov -- The Schartz-Metterklume method / Saki (H.H. Munro) -- A lodging for the night / Robert Louis Stevenson -- The Canterville Ghost / Oscar Wilde.
Happy Endings
Two women--beautiful, successful Raven, still suffering from an ugly childhood, and romance writer Holly, struggling to build a new identity--cross paths as they search for love, happiness, and happy endings in Hollywood.
Seven American Short Stories
Virga Vay and Allan Cedar / Sinclair Lewis -- Should Wizard Hit Mommy? / John Updike -- Hop-Frog / Edgar Allan Poe -- Sense of Humor / Damon Runyon -- Johny Dio and the Sugar Plum Burglars / Harry D. Miller -- [A Rose for Emily]( / William Faulkner The Boarded Window / Ambrose Bierce.
The Bloodhounds of Broadway and Other Stories
In these famous "Broadway" stories, Damon Runyon glamorized the spirit of a very special time and place. Populated by guys and dolls, show girls and gangsters, Runyon's world captured the imagination of a vast public "more than somewhat," as he would have put it. It is a world of sentiment and surprise, and above all, humor.
Great American Short Stories [34 stories]
Contains: Winter Dreams What Stumped the Bluejays To Build a Fire A Jury of Her Peers The Storm The Pioneer Hep-Cat The Furnished Room I Can’t Breathe The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber A New England Nun The Chrysanthemums [Tell-tale Heart]( The Man Who Saw the Flood [Barn Burning]( The Yellow Wall Paper Hook The Key The Shore Line at Sunset The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown Coroner’s Inquest Roman Fever The Outcasts of Poker Flat The Last Gas Station The Fifty-First Dragon Sir Edmund Orme The Daemon Lover The Blue Hotel You’ll Never Know, Eear, How Much I Love You The Beauty The Devil and Daniel Webster Winter Night [Bartleby the Scrivener]( Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor The Boarded Window Jug of silver / Truman Capote -- Night club / Katharine Brush -- The lost Phoebe / Theodore Dreiser -- [The most dangerous game]( / Richard Connell -- The magic barrel / Bernard Malamud -- If Grant had been drinking at Appomattox / James Thurber -- The legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving -- The music of Erich Zann / H.P. Lovecraft -- Enoch and the gorilla / Flannery O'Connor -- The untold lie / Sherwood Anderson -- Horse thief / Erskine Caldwell -- The haunted boy / Carson McCullers -- The valiant woman / J.F. Powers -- The minister's wife / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The rockpile / James Baldwin -- The enchanted bluff / Willa Cather -- O how she laughed / Conrad Aiken.
The Greatest Cat Stories Ever Told
LILLIAN CATS' PARADISE TOM QUARTZ MING'S BIGGEST PREY THE CHESHIRE CAT THE GARDEN OF STUBBORN CATS THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF RHUBARB THE CYPRIAN CAT A CAT, A MAN, AND TWO WOMEN PUSS-IN-BOOTS MEHITABEL AND HER KITTENS CALVIN: A STUDY OF CHARACTER THE IMMORTAL CAT TOBERMORY GEORGE ELIOT: A MEDICAL STUDY [Black Cat]( THE BLACK AND WHITE DYNASTIES PIAZZA VITTORIO AN INCIDENT A BLACK AFFAIR SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT 1 AM A CAT THE CAT THAT WENT TO TRINITY THE AFFLICTIONS OF AN ENGLISH CAT QUIXOTE AND THE CATS MIDSHIPMAN, THE CAT TOTAL LOSS THE CAT THE STORY OF WEBSTER
Great Short Stories of the World
The leader of the people / John Steinbeck Mr. Know-all / W. Somerset Maugham Vanka / Anton Chekhov The happy prince / Oscar Wilde The old demon / Pearl S. Buck The sailor-boy's tale / Isak Dinesen Young Archimedes / Aldous Huxley Butch minds the baby / Damon Runyon Suspicion / Dorothy L. Sayers Hautot and his son / Guy de Maupassat The open boat / Stephen Crane My Oedipus complex / Frank O'Connor The snows of Kilimanjaro / Ernest Hemingway A letter to God / Gregorio López y Fuentes The little Bouilloux girl / Colette The ruby / Corrado Alvaro Six feet of the country / Nadine Gordimer [The boarding house]( / James Joyce The brute / Joseph Conrad A double game / Alberto Moravia Maternity / Lilika Nakos Lead her like a pigeon / Jessamyn West God sees the truth, but waits / Leo Tolstoy The walker-through-walls / Marcel Ayme [The lottery]( / Shirley Jackson The McWilliamses and the burglar alarm / Mark Twain The Augsburg chalk circle / Bertolt Brecht The overcoat / Sally Benson Blind MacNair / Thomas H. Raddall The procurator of Judaea / Anatole France The open window / Saki (H.H. Munro) María Concepción / Katherine A. Porter My Lord, the baby / Rabindranath Tagore The end of the party / Graham Greene Modern children / Sholom Aleichem Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald Carrion spring / Wallace Stegner Just lather, that's all / Hernando Téllez The secret life of Walter Mitty / James Thurber The rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence The Sunday menace / Robert Benchley The Mezzotint /Montague R. James The alligators / John Updike Pelageya / Mikhail Zoshchenko Haircut / Ring Lardner The burning city / Hjalmar Söderberg Fireworks for Elspeth / Rumer Godden The old chief Mshlanga / Doris Lessing Who cares? / Santha Rama Rau Over the river and though the wood / John O'Hara Dental or mental, I say it's spinach / S.J. Perelman The drover's wife / Henry Lawson The huntsmen / Paul Horgan The guest / Albert Camus Patience / Nigel Balchin Among the paths to Eden / Truman Capote Admiral's night / Machado de Assis The bet / Anton Chekhov The man who could work miracles / H.G. Wells A country love story / Jean Stafford A worn path / Eudora Welty The outstation / W. Somerset Maugham A priest in the family / Leo Kennedy The cop and the anthem / O. Henry Marriage á la mode / Katherine Mansfield The nightingale / Maxim Gorky The launch / Max Aub The wreath / Luigi Pirandello The eighty-yard run / Irwin Shaw You were perfectly fine / Dorothy Parker Luzina takes a holiday / Gabrielle Roy
Great humorous stories
RONNIE CORBETT: Introduction P.G. WODEHOUSE: 'The Voice from the Past' RING LARDNER: Mr and Mrs Fix-It H.F. ELLIS: Lent Term 1939 The Man Faggott (from The Papers of A.J. Wentworth, BA) FREDERIC RAPHAEL: Chinatown MARK TWAIN: A Restless Night KEITH WATERHOUSE: A Family Breakfast (from Billy Liar) BARRY PAIN: The Insult ANONYMOUS: The Simple Story of G. Washington PAUL THEROUX: Algebra NATHANIEL GUBBINS: Gubbins Goes to War JAMES HERRIOT: Tristan's Romance (from Vet in a Spin) BRET HARTE: A Jersey Centenarian A.C. GAMES: Russell's Fantasy ROBERT J. BURDETTE: First-class Snake Stories BOB LARBEY: New Jobs for Old (from A Fine Romance) OSCAR WILDE: The Canterville Ghost RING LARDNER: A Day with Conrad Green SEAN O'FAOLAIN: The Woman Who Married Clark Gable JEROME K. JEROME: I Become an Actor DAVID NOBBS: Chlistmas (from The Better World of Reginald Perrin) BARRY PAIN: The Unsuccessful Sinner GIOVANNI GUARESCHI: Crime and Punishment (from The Little World of Don Camillo) JAMES HERRIOT: The Butcher (from Vets Might Fly) DOROTHY PARKER: You Were Perfectly Fine ARNOLD BENNETT: Raising a Wigwam (from The Card) W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM: The Facts Of Life STEPHEN LEACOCK: Mr Plumter, BA, Revisits the Old Shop (from Happy Stories) ROB BUCKMAN: Jogging from Memory (from Jogging from Memory) ALASDAIR GREY: The Problem (from Unlikely Stories, Mostly) JOYCE GRENFELL: Canteen in Wartime (from Turn Back the Clock) ART BUCHWALD: Coward in the Congo (from I Chose Caviar) SAKI: The Story-teller JOHN VERNEY: Tea at the Embassy (from Verney Abroad) HARRY SECOMBE: Goon Away — Try Next Door (from Goon for Lunch) JOHN WYNDHAM: Pawley's Peepholes (from The Seeds of Time) JEAN DAVIS: Trees and Tribulations GROUCHO MARX: A Blind Date Can Be a Pig in a Poke Bonnet (from Memoirs of a Mangy Lover) DOUGLAS SUTHERLAND: The Gentleman at Home (from The English Gentleman) P.G. WODEHOUSE: 'The Great Sermon Handicap' (from The Inimitable Jeeves) GEORGE & WEEDON GROSSMITH: Diary of a Nobody (from Diary of a Nobody) ART BUCHWALD: My Favourite Tourists (from I Chose Caviar) IRIS MURDOCH: The sale of the Artemis (from The Flight from the Enchanter) ARTHUR MARSHALL: Take A Pew (from I'll Let You Know) JAMES THURBER: The Day the Dam Broke (from My Life and Hard Times) C. NORTHCOTE PARKINSON: Nonorigination (from In-laws and Outlaws) DOUGLAS ADAMS: April Showers (from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish) JAMES THURBER: A Sequence of Servants (from My Life and Hard Times) JOHN MOLE: The Monogamist RUDYARD KIPLING: A Friend's Friend FRAN LEBOWITZ: Writing: A Life Sentence (from Metropolitan Life) PETER USTINOV: Schooldays (from Dear Me) PATRICK CAMPBELL: East is West PHYLLIS BENTLEY: At the Crossing (from More Tales of the West Riding) O. HENRY: Memoirs of a Yellow Dog BASIL BOOTHROYD: Coming to Grips (from Let's Move House) A.C. GAMES: The Concerns of Angus Daines ROBERT ROBINSON: The Middle-aged Philistine Abroad (from The Dog Chairman) SUE TOWNSEND: A New School Year (from The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole) GROUCHO MARX: Speed the Parting Guest (from Memoirs of a Mangy Lover) SAKI: The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope NEIL BOYD: One Sinner Who Will Not Repent (from A Father Before Christmas) DOUGLAS SUTHERLAND: The Gentleman and the Opposite Sex (from The English Gentleman) DAMON RUNYON: The Big Umbrella ROBERT ROBINSON: Our Betters (from The Dog Chairman) JOYCE GRENFELL: Antique Shop (from Turn Back the Clock) W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM: The Escape GEORGE S. KAUFMAN: School for Waiters ARTHUR MARSHALL: Cold Comfort Cottage (from I'll Let You Know) MAX APPLE: Carbo-loading (from Free Agents) ROB BUCKMAN: Gray's Anatomy in a Country Churchyard (from Jogging from Memory) BARRY PAIN: The Recitation ART BUCHWALD: Alone in No Man's Lapland (from I Chose Caviar) GERALD DURRELL: The Human Animal (from Encounters with Animals) E.F. BENSON: The Party (from Lucia's Progress) AUBERON WAUGH: Inflammable Nighties (from Consider the Lilies) DAVID NIVEN: 'The Emperor' (from Bring on the Empty Horses) G.K. CHESTERTON: The Singular Speculation of the House Agent (from The Club of Queer Trades) NANCY MITFORD: Castle Life (from Love in a Cold Climate) GEOFFREY WILLANS and RONALD SEARLE: How to Succeed as a New Bug (from How to be Topp) GERALD DURRELL: A Porcupine in the Parish (from Menagerie Manor) E.M. DELAFIELD: Foreign Climes (from The Provincial Lady Goes Further) JOHN VERNEY: Top of the Morning (from Verney Abroad)
Guys, dolls, and curveballs
A collection of ballpark dispatches from the legendary Hearst reporter and the creator of such mythic gangster icons as Nathan Detroit and the Lemon Drop Kid.
Food Stories
An old-fashioned thanksgiving / by Louisa May Alcott -- The little pies / by Alphonse Daudet -- A piece of steak / by Jack London -- Like water for chocolate : January / by Laura Esquivel -- A piece of pie / by Damon Runyon.