YOU KNOW ME AL

Ring Lardner was an American original. He had countless imitators -- journalists who tried to reproduce his uncanny virtuosity with the American idiom; writers who tried to evoke his brilliant blend of drama and irony. Yet he remains without rival. You Know Me AI is Ring Lardner at his best. It is a classic of baseball, the game, and the community. Through a series of letters from a bush-league pitcher to his not quite anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a superb balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious. And Jack Keefe, the correspondent of these letters, is one of his most brilliant achievements. In a revealing and comprehensive introduction, John Lardner, the author's son and a well-known writer himself, demonstrates, with the testimony of such disparate voices as Virginia Woolf and H. L. Mencken, the awesomely complex reputation of You Know Me Al.