At the Box Factory for the Arts, where I have a writing studio and am the director of the writing programs for the artist guild, we are launching a gallery show and programming to honor Ring Lardner.
He was born in a city near here and, even though he was working nearly 100 years ago, he's still probably the most famous writer from our area.
The most famous writer hardly anyone really knows. Including me!
I first ran into his name when I was reading about Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of whom he was a contemporary. Lardner was a sports reporter (he covered the Chicago White Sox during their shameful 1919 throwing of the World Series) but he was also the most widely read humorist of his time.
We will honor him with an exhibit, a writing workshop and writing competition and a showing of a movie that he wrote called "Alibi Ike."
When it's all over, it will have been a lot of work, and I wonder if it will be worth it. Certainly it won't matter one way or the other to Ring Lardner. But will other people get something out of it?
It's one of the difficult things about doing programing of any kind, but especially the writing programing I work on. Writing is important to me and the enjoyment of my life - I guess I just assume that other people would be as eager to participate. But, I learned long ago that it's a matter of putting it out there and see who takes advantage of it.
And in the meantime, it doesn't hurt to recognize the writers who paved the way.
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