A Treasury of Damon Runyon (Modern Library, No. 53)

The hilarious antics and shenanigans of Broadway guys and dolls, out-of-towners and folks back home, and many others - affectionately reported by one of America's favorite writers. Dust jacket notes: "This thoroughly enjoyable collection is almost a biography of Damon Runyon, the boy who grew up in the West, rode the rods, knew what the inside of jails was like, wrote sports, reported abroad, and became Mr. Broadway. Here are represented the wide range of his experiences and of his writing - early Westerns and sketches of 'folks back home' with vivid titles like The Wooing of Nosey Gillespie and At Dead Mule Crossing; or tales, like The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew, picked up in the hobo jungles. From his days as a newspaper reporter and syndicated columnist come accounts like The Main Event, sports verse like A Handy Guy Like Sande, and affectionate sketches of 'ordinary'people like those of Joe and Ethel Turp or My Old Man. And, finally, from Runyon's great days as a Broadway chronicler, we have Hot Horse Herbie, Nicely Nicely, Gentleman George and their fantasic cronies, speaking again in these pages the peculiar vernacular now immortalized as Runyonese."