The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 102

rage Eight rage Nhw Famous Humorists Are Really Serious Thinkers Ring Lardner Feels Heavy Responsibility In Self-Imposed Task of Spearing the False Gods on His Pen and Exposing Deceits Of "So-Called Human Race1' Cobb Expresses His Idea of Cobb as Short Story Writer Discusses Essentials of Best Type of Humor Tells Where He Found the Best Humorists lit A. i "Genius is the ability of taking pains, as some philosopher has put it," Mr. Cobb said. "What to us may appear a spontaneous flame in a genius is really a spark that has been nurtured and nursed for years by the creator. Wben we, see awork of genius, we don't glimpse the bours of toil and despair behind it." I queried Mr.

Cobb concerning various humors. 'What do you think of Chinese, English, American and other humors?" I asked. "If we were able to think with a Chinese mind," "ie answered, "we should be in a position to appreciate their kind of humor. Personally, I find a good deal of satire and philosophy behind their humor. Doubtless the reason we can't appreciate alien humor is ttet the genuine humor is lost in the translation.

Besides, there is always the matter of taste. A Chinese wouldn't dare to laugh at a joke aimed at his ancestors. He worships them. Here in America it is not uncommon for one to laugh at a gibe against an ancestor. There is, as you say, a sort cf snitishness beneath that "I think that the English have the most developed sense cf humor.

Surely theirs is much more delicate than ours. Ferhaps that is because they are an older people. We are yet in an unsettlvd stage. We are more volatile, more impetuous, than the English. The latter are more established, and we lack that delightful quality that can be found in their bumor." The preceding paragraph established Irvin S.

Cobb as a profound iconoclast As the reader is doubtless aware, it is a common American illusion that an Englishman never sees the point of a joke. Of course Mr. Cobb scouts that falsity. "Tbe most humor I have ever encountered," went on the eminent humorist, "was in the trenches. The London Cockneys were wonders at creating humorous bits that, though they may have been vulgar, were nevertheless appreciable." "What determines a sense of humor?" I asked.

"God knows," replied Mr. Cobb, employing a favorite phrase of his. "I have found that the ones who go about informing others that they have a sense of bumor are the same ones who likely have no sense of bumor at alL It isn't necessary to tell any one that you have a sense of humor. It is self-evident" Mr. Cofcb bas no apparent dislike of vaudeville bumor.

He considers it "broad and emphatic," and regrets tbat it seems to be a current theory that vaudeville wit is something to be ignored and despised. He believes that vaudeville audiences are as intelligent as any other, and regards the movie comedy producers as men devoid of any respectable intelligence. Irvin S. Cobb became a newspaper reporter at sixteen. His was the enviable distinction of becoming the editor of the Paducah Daily News at the tender age of nineteen.

He is the author of one mur.ica! comedy which took him five days to write, and which Listed five weeks on the boards. He has collaborated on the writing of one or two plays which failed, "deservedly so," thinks Mr. Cobb. He is the author of about forty L-ooks and when asked how many additional volumes intends to write, he replied, "God knows!" adding that he has at present sufficient material in mind to keep him busy for the next twenty years. Despite the fact that Mr.

Cobb works only fifteen hours a week (three hours a day and five days a week it can readily be seen that he is by no means a loafer, though there are many who think so. And will you believe Irvin S. Cobb doesn't like to By Charles Samuels IF THE STORY of Ring Lardner's rise from cub reporter on an obscure Middle Western daily to his present assured position as America's foremost humorist was all there was to tell about him it would still be worth the writing. It so happens, however, that Mr. Lardner is considerably more than a writer of funny stories.

A magnificent and almost unlimited gift for humor he certainly has, but the other qualities he possesses are so numerous that one, on meeting him, wonders that the serious stories he has been turning out in the last few years weren't written earlier in tis career. Cynicism has no part in this man's nature. Ring Lardner hates no one he pities. His knowledge of our weaknesses and follies, of our vices and shortcomings has never soured the milk of human kindness in him. Before condemning he considers our backgrounds, our physical, mental and moral inheritances and then merely smiles a little and wonders that we're not worse than we are.

Not that the first citizen of Great Neck, Long Island, Is a sweet, kind ger.tleman whose chief business in life is distributing good cheer and optimism. Lardner has his hates and in them he is uncompromising and inflexible, But his pen never stabs individual members of what that' satirical columnist, F. P. A. labels the "so-called human race." It is against the false gods that Ring Lardner's thrusts re directed.

To him the most amazing and distressing fhenomenon of our national life is our absurj hero-worship of champion professional athletes. These gods, he knows, have feet of clay, and exceptionally cpmmon clay, at that. That a man should be called great and be wined, dined and acclaimed merely because of his ability to toss a ball over the Washington Monument or because he can outfight all rival pugilists is just a little too ridiculous for Lardner to overlook. In his creation of Jack Keefe, he stripped naked the cheap, vulgar soul of big-league ballplayer. In his short-story "Champion" he did the same to a member of the cauliflower ear brigade.

These are honest, real pictures of typical professional athletes as he had known them through years of association as a sports writer. He has torn down the false gods he has ripped away the tinsel and the dross. There they stand real men with all their meanness and vulgarity on display so all who pass may know them for what they are. hen Ring Lardner was a boy his father set his heart on having him, the youngest of his five children, become a mechanical engineer. After graduating from the local high school in Miles, Michigan, Ring was packed off to Armour Institute in Chicago, where he promptly distinguished himself by flunking everythir.g but rhetoric After this short and disastrous excursion into the realms of higher education Ring returned to Niles and ecurtd a job as freight agent at the local railroad station at the handsome salary of a dollar a day.

His work consisted of loading and unlotding freight. He might have attained the eminence of a conductor's position if the Tales had been unkind to him and allowed him to succeed as a railroad man. Absent mindedly one day he loaded a consignment of cream cheese on a car routed to Jackson instead of on one going to Battle Creek. Kindly but firmly the station agent advised him that the railroad game had no place for a lad whose thoughts were not on his work. The next week the humorist of the future found himself perched on a bookkeeper's stool in.

a gas office. "I was paid six dollars a week and thought I was getting away with murder," Mr. Lardner told us. "The work was so much easier than my former job. After working there for a few months I met a representative of the South Bend (Ind.) Times, who had come to Niles to sign up my brother, Rex.

I knew that he was tied up on a contract with another paper and stole the job. I got $12 a week and worked there for Two years. "My first assignment was to cover the golden wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Clement Studebaker, of the automobile family, which formed the backbone of South Bend's social existence.

I amazed my editor By "coming back to the office with exactly five lines of news. He didn't fire me but assigned me to cover a musical show that opened that evening. Instead of giving the entertainment the boost customary and expected of all small-town theatrical critics I roasted the piece to death. "This brought an avalanche of criticism down on my head from the owner of the theater, Joseph E. Howard, who owned and wrote the show and others.

I survived the storm, however, and my boss put me to work covering the state league games. "Altogether I had a lovely time tin that paper. In the morning I covered the police stations and court, then dropped over to the circuit court to get the divorce news. In the afternoons I went to the ball The reporters' desk was out on the field there and I had a grand time ducking foul balls. When fouls were few the players would come up and abuse me for not praising them enough in my stories.

In the evenings I covered shows, then went to the office to write the day's events. "The second year I took my vacation in the fall so I could attend the World Series between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers. While in Chicago I thought I ought to get a job on a big paper. I ran into Hughey Fullerton and he recommended me to the Interocean, a Windy City daily which has since passed away. "There 1 got a job at $17.50 a week and wrote football.

One of my first assignments was to cover the training of the crack Carlisle Indian team at Lake Forest. I was standing on the field with Glenn Warner, their coach one day, when we heard some girls in back of us talking. One said, 'He must have some white blood in him. Who do you think they were talking about? Me! "After a while I was offered $25 a week by the Chicago Examiner to go south with the White Sox. That was in the spring of 1908.

I sent back some comical sketches of the ball players, which the sporting editor threw away. I don't blame him they were terrible I admit it. After that I went with the Chicago Tribune I got married and found a job with a weekly in St. Louis called the News, so I wouldn't have to work nights or go out of town. "Following that I went with the Boston American and went south with one of the teams and finally drifted back to Chicago to work on the American the Hearst paper there.

I worked as a copy-reader and never had more fun in my life. My copy-reading days ended when I printed a report that Tom Shevlin had died It later developed that it was Shevlin's father who had passed on. "My next haven was with the Chicago Herald-Examiner. Then the Tribune of the same city offered me a job as a columnist to fill the place of Hugh E. Keogh tried to do the same sort of thing as Keogh until a flood of letters telling me how bad I was convinced me that I ought to do something along a different line.

"The flood diminished somewhat after that. I was on the Tribune when I met the ball player who served as a model for Jack Keefe. He couldn't read or write and brought the letters from his wife for me to read and answer. The fellow was a great alibi artist. He always had an excuse for not sending her the money she continually pleaded for and most likely needed.

"We had a lot of fun kidding him on the dining cars rf trains on the out-of-town trips. He was a terrific Mfcr, but never knew what to order, as he couldn't read the menus. He'd wait for us to order and they say Til Prof. Albert Gray Shaw of New York University some time ago that laughter will eventually die out Mr. Cobb dissents.

"Laughter is as natural as the crying of a baby," declared the humorist. "Even under prohibition there is laughter. There alone is a sure sign that laughter can never die. But it appears that every college produces one professor who will make the most ridiculous assertions no doubt for the sake of publicity." "Professor Shaw maintained that Iaug'iter will die out when the race has become completely civilized," I said. "When the causes of laughter will be removed, when all of us will be so cultured as not to laugh at what may be annoying to some one else then laughter will cease, so he says." "Think of a race so cultured that it cannot laugh," commented Mr.

Cobb. "Cod forbid!" From laughter I turned the subject to the most appealing medium of literature. "I believe that a poem makes the most esthetic medium and impression," replied the Paducah wit. "But the most permanent impression is made by the noveL To be sure, novels get old-fashioned quicker than verse and short stories. Nevertheless, it is still true that we go back to the old masters for novel reading." Incidentally, Dickens is Mr.

Cobb's favorite novelist, making Irvin S. a man after my own heart. Booth Tarkington is Mr. Cobb's idol among the living novelists. One can readily see the dominant qualities in both Dickens and Tarkington that so appeal to Mr.

Cobb. They are the bumanness and humor that grip our premier dealer in anecdotes. I queried Mr. Cobb on the kind of humor that he regards the best. "The humor that has behind it.

a profound philosophy," he answered, "is the best That is w-hy Mark Twain was our greatest humorist. He certainly as our greatest satirical philosopher." Had Irvin S. Cobb anything to say on the humorous essay? Irvin S. Cobb had. "Humorous essays don't seem to be popular today," he observed.

"HumoT has its fashions, you know, as far as expression is concerned. While one manner of expression may be the violent rage at present, it may pass out with such ease that one would never notice it. But humor is eternal. Modes simply change. In the old days the misspelled vernacular seemed to be the vogue.

Today there isn't so much of that kind of bumor. Personally, I like both kinds the graceful, charming style, and the rough and ready kfnd. As for the possibilities of bumor in America, they are as limitless as human perception and expression." Mr. Cobb had much to say about a group of well-known American newspaper humorists. "One man who seems to be a comer in the field," remarked the author, "is Frank Sullivan of the World.

TJ'hat do I think of Don Marquis? Marquis is one of the best we have, one of the best we've ever had. I don't think he's appreciated as much as he should be. But be will be. After bis death? I hope not." I sprung a puzzler then on Mr. Cobb.

"Who is your favorite shoiV story writer?" 1 asked. "Well," he deliberated, "it's hard to say. There are so many good short story writers. But I can tell you who is not my favorite Cobb. I ought to know because I've read everything he's ever written.

I'm constantly reading shorty stories that I should like to have written myself. That's why I'm not my favorite story writer." I brought the subject back to Dickens again, and Mr. Cobb replied to a query: "Dickers characters were mainly grotesque, or burlesques, if you will. He had that subtle trick cf making them real and convincing. As a matter of fact, all written expression is merely a stretching of the truth, in order to make it effective and convincing.

If an auihr were to put the identical and exact thing on paper, it would lose its savor. Making it slightly exaggerated doesn't make it unreal, however, as you say. It is necessary in order to get the foint across." Following this, I asked Mr. Cobb an unusual question: "What have you to say about genius?" The popular humorist was prompt in replying. Ring Lardner have the When we knew he was starving we'd wait till he was seated and then decide not to order anything.

"From 1913 to 1PI9 I conducted the 'In the Wake of the News' column on the Chicago Trib, meanwhile writing stories for the Saturday Evening Post. I sent my first slang stuff to them on the suggestion of Charles Van Loan. "I never failed to sell anything 1 wrote except one article I sent to the A.nerican Magazine. Jthn Siddail, since dead, was editor then and he asked me to write a success story. 1 hadn't had any success, so instead I wrote 'My Success As a Song In that I computed at ten cents an hour how much my attempts to write songs cost me and it amounted to $4,300.

Siddail didn't get my meaning at all, and back came my success story." "Do- you still like baseball?" we asked. "No, because I can't seem to get excited over who is going to win. 1 do like football Fights don't appeal to me except spectacles like the Dempsey-Firpo thing. "I hate to write. I'm just as lazy as any one could be, I guess.

1 wish I could take myself and my work as seriously as my friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, does." "Were you surprised when the high-brow critics acclaimed your 'How to Write Short Stories'?" "Well, I haven't thought much about it one way or the other. So few of them know what they're talking about. It's good to have some one to write up to though. For instance, I would like to write something would appeal to Henry L.

Mencken, a critic whose opinion I value." Ring Lardner is a six-footer. He is broad-shouldered and athletic-appearing. He has black hair and black eyes. He lacks the melancholy air supposed to be characteristic of all who write humor. He rather resents the fact, though, that he doesn't write more painstakingly.

But the outstanding thing the writer found in Ring Lardner was a splendid tolerance of others. He loves people and understands them. He hates only lies, fugacious beliefs. His pen is a destroying sword. Ring is a good knight making a very effective fight against the vile twin Gods, deceit and bluff.

A month before the writer asked Irvin S. Cobb what he thought of Lardner. Cobb said: "That young man has something more than talent he has Irvin S. Cobb By Henry Harrison NEXT TIME I'll know better. Hereafter when this interviewer interviews Irvin S.

Cobb he'll take along a stenographer to jot down every one of Mr. Cobb's assertions, and in case of an emergency, a dictaphone to do the work. For Irvin S. Cobb is indeed one of the shrewdest men your correspondent has encountered; and if one may quote Ring Lardner, Mr. Cobb is a splendid host, best among his own books, of which he has an entire set.

A description of Irvin S. Cobb, familiar as his photograph may be to you, is surely hardly out of place. To begin with, Mr. Cobb wears one of those colossal chapeaux that consume a lot of atmosphere. However, one must bear in mind that the noted wit is a Kentuckian.

Though he is by no means a Collegiate, Mr. Cobb sports no garters. He smokes a pipe, and that frequently, it seems. He talks in earnest, and rarely smiles or laughs, even at this interviewer's witticisms. As Mr.

Cobb bim-sHi declared "When a man's grave, he's grave," leading me to suggest that when a man's grave he's a professional humorist. "There is nothing very cultured or esthetic about a sense of humor," began the prominent author. "To- me it seems a philosophic sense of vulgarity. There have been more definitions of humor than probably anything else, and none of them have been completely satisfactory. However, all humor is based on tragedy.

Humor is really a contradiction of verities. It's actually a sober fact standing on its head and performing tricks for the benefit of the spectators. Few people agree on what is humor and a sense of humor. To paraphrase an old saw: hat is one man's humor is another man's poison. But analyzing humor is inadvisable.

It spoils the effect of the humor. Real humor is like a flower when you pick it to pieces, it loses all its fragrance and zest. By taking it apart, you may discovef what it amounts to sofentifically, but from an angle of humanness, it's lost completely." Doubtless the reader recalls the comention made by xWt.