Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon and the Making of New York City Culture

by Daniel R. Schwarz

While analyzing Damon Runyon's high spirited work in terms of historical contexts, popular culture, and of the changing function of the media, Schwarz argues that in his columns and stories Runyon was an indispensable figure in creating our public images of New York City culture, including our interest in the demi-monde and underworld that explains in part the success of The Godfather films and The Sopranos . In his lively and exuberant chapters that include a panoramic view of New York City between the World Wars - with a focus on its colourful nightlife - Schwarz examines virtually every facet of Runyon's career from sports writer, daily columnist, trial reporter, and Hollywood figure to the author of the still widely-read short stories that were the source of the Broadway hit Guys and Dolls . As part of his discussion of Runyon's art and the artistry of Runyon's fiction, Schwarz skilfully examines the special language of the Broadway stories known as 'Runyonese', and explains how 'Runyonese' has become an adjective for describing flamboyant behaviour.

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2003

About the author

Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968.

He is the author of the just released Crises and Turmoil at the New York Times, 1999-2009. His books include In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century (2008, )Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930 (2004), Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon and the Making of New York City Culture (2003), Imagining the Holocaust (1999), Rereading Conrad (2001), Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (1997), Narrative and Representation in Wallace Stevens (1993)--a Choice selection for best academic book of 1993; The Case for a Humanistic Poetics (1991), The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890-1930 (1989; revised 1995), Reading Joyce's "Ulysses" (2004; orig. ed 1987); The Humanistic Heritage: Critical Theories of the English Novel from James to Hillis Miller (1986); Conrad: The Later Fiction (1982); Conrad: "Almayer's Folly" through "Under Western Eyes" (1980); and Disraeli's Fiction (1979).

He has edited Joyce's The Dead (1994) and Conrad's The Secret Sharer (1997) in the Bedford Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism Series, and co-editor of Narrative and Culture (1994). He has also edited the Penguin Damon Runyon (2008). He is General Editor of the multi-volume critical series Reading the Novel for which he wrote Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930 (2004) and is now writing Reading the European Novel.

Schwarz also has published about 20 travel articles, about 90 poems, and a little fiction, all of which are available on his web page http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/drs6/. Soon to appear is a festschrift in his honor entitled Reading Texts, Reading Lives: Essays in the Tradition of Humanistic Cultural Criticism in Honor of Daniel R. Schwarz.