Reviews for You Know Me Al

The average rating for You Know Me Al based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-04-23 00:00:00 James Boehlke Ring Lardner is from the same small town that I am from, albeit we were there in different centuries! Still, it is nice to have a sense of connection such as that, vague as it may be. This is a satirical, light-hearted read, consisting of letters written from Jack "the busher" to his friend Al in Bedford, IN. We do not see any of Al's return letters. jack is a baseball player for the 1910s Chicago White Sox, and he is constantly getting himself into trouble - usually due to his big mouth. His letters are rambling, at times disjointed, efforts that can be difficult to read in parts because he spells words out phonetically. There are also numerous other spelling errors, substituting the wrong words, and using the wrong version of words ("there" instead of "their", for example). While I did enjoy reading the letters, and I laughed here and there, after awhile they did get to be a bit repetitious. Jack would adamantly tell Al that he is not going to do something, only to turn around and do it in the next letter. Any games that he lost was someone else's fault, never his. Any argument with anyone was not his fault. While comical, it did get a bit stale by the end. Still, it is nice to read something from a little over 100 years ago and get a glimpse into how much different life was back in that era of train travel, telegrams, and day baseball. Grade: B

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-19 00:00:00 Rosanna Tejeda In the early 20th century baseball writing was becoming too overwrought and intellectual, so Ring Lardner wrote a baseball comedy - a series of letters from a minor league "busher" to his friend Al. This was originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1914, and it's very funny. Earlier this year I read the excellent When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning about how during World War 2 the government published classic and popular books for troops overseas as Armed Services Editions. They were pocket-sized editions of full-length books, and this book was on the list. I was able to find and read an actual ASE version of this book from 1945 that I found on eBay. There's a picture of one here - Here is the Wikipedia page about the ASEs - And here is a complete list - There are 1,322 books that were printed as ASEs, and I plan to read several this year.