The Genres of Runyon’s Fiction

Abstract

Runyon’s success took place in a world where intellectuals and critics despised and patronized popular culture. I grew up in a world where serious people didn’t read the comics, go to musicals, or read popular fiction. Our teachers and professors taught the cult of intellectual elitism. I began reading the Peanuts comic strip on rare occasion in our local Ithaca newspaper only after Charles Schulz died. Yet the paperback editions of The Best of Damon Runyon and Damon Runyon Favorites sold over a million copies each! His stories boosted the circulation of the magazines in which they appeared. Runyon’s own attitudes flew in the face of the credo of the suffering artist in the service of art: “My measure of success is money. I have no interest in artistic triumphs that are financial losers. I would like to have an artistic success that also made money, of course, but if I had to make a choice between the two I would take the dough… . Maybe what the experts say is perfection is not perfection at all, except in expert theory. Maybe it is the approval of the public that is actually the mark of real perfection. Anyway that is what counts with me …”(ST 58–59). If we think of Mark Twain, Bret Harte,O. Henry, and Ring Lardner, we realize Runyon was not the first newspaperman without sustained formal education to achieve literary fame.