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Title: Guys & Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyon by Damon Runyon ISBN: 0-14-017659-4 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: MORE RUNYON PLEASE !
Comment: Damon Runyans writing is very amusing. He is sort of the American P.G. Woodhouse without all the spondulucks. His shorts also remind me of Roald Dahls in their twisted endings.
I wish someone would hunt up and publish all his newspaper columns and war correspondence.
Read his stories and you will be amazed at how often you recognize his plots in film. He was one of the great American writers and belongs in the same sentence as Twain Hemmingway Steinbeck and London.
Rating: 3
Summary: Pleasant, leisure reading
Comment: This is an excellent night-stand book. A collection of short stories,typical Damon Runyan. Most of its short stories can be read in twenty minutes or less. Some I found uninteresting, others delightful. My favorites are the "Lemon Drop Kid" and the baby sitting bank robber. A fun book for teen-agers also.W. Dannenmaier
Rating: 4
Summary: O. Henry, gangster-style
Comment: I enjoyed most of this collection. I was reading it to help prepare for my role in an upcoming community theater production of "Guys and Dolls". I thought it might be helpful to see where the characters came from. So, I immediately skipped to "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", as they were the basis for the musical. Both stories were good, the latter better, but still neither was the best.
Those expecting the lightheartedness of the musical may be in for a bit of a surprise. There are certainly comical characters (Nicely-Nicely Jones, for example), moments, and even entire stories. But many are gritty with tough-as-nails characters who are desperate, down on their luck and apt to kill you for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
The thing about Runyon is that he writes entirely in first person *present*. And while it is interesting at first, after a while it does become "more than somewhat" tiring, to use a phrase of his. In fact, I ripped through the first 200 pages loving the slang and weird colloquial nuances, only to grow a little sick of it until, by the last few stories, I just wanted to read something else. Not that the stories at the end are any less good. Maybe it's best not to try to read the whole thing all at once...
Don't get me wrong, though. I really liked it, but I can only take so many short stories in a row. Most short stories in general seem so hackneyed to me, anyway. Like there has to be some big twist ending that is right out of the "O. Henry manual on short story writing". These are no different except that maybe they are a little more clever than average.
A fun read (especially for anyone who's ever been in the show), but best taken in small doses. Oh yeah, and Adelaide is nowhere to be found...even though the back of the book mentions her name!
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Title: The Making of Guys and Dolls by Keith Garebian ISBN: 0889627649 Publisher: Mosaic Press (NY) Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon and the Making of New York City Culture by Daniel R. Schwarz ISBN: 0312239483 Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: A Treasury of Damon Runyon by Damon Runyon ISBN: 039460444X Publisher: Random House (T) Pub. Date: 01 December, 1977 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title:Guys and Dolls ASIN: 0792844823 Publisher: Mgm/Ua Studios Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $12.26 |
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Title:Guys & Dolls (1950 Original Broadway Cast) ASIN: B00004U0QI Publisher: Decca U.S. Pub. Date: 27 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $14.99 |
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