Survey addendum
I've now added two items to the end of the Runyon survey, for people who'd never heard of him; I meant to include those items last night, just forgot. If you skipped the survey 'cause you hadn't heard of him, you can go back and note that now. If you already took the survey, though, please don't take it again. Sorry for the confusion.
Also, I apologize if the entry came across as sounding like I was saying "You should have heard of him, and you're dumb if you haven't." It definitely wasn't intended that way; as a pop-culture semi-illiterate, I would never intentionally make people feel dumb for not having heard of something. I'm just honestly bewildered that so many intelligent and well-read people haven't heard of him.
I was beginning to think, even before irilyth mentioned it, that perhaps my Swarthmore friends had all been exposed to Runyon's work via Swarthmore; but I was surprised even by that, because I can't remember how long ago I first encountered his work, but it was probably high school or possibly even elementary school. I had certainly read stories of his well before college, and though I don't think I'd seen Guys and Dolls, I knew that it was based on his work.
(Another example of why I thought he was well-known: one of the later books in Robert Asprin's extremely popular (I thought) Myth Adventures series was called Little Myth Marker; I didn't read it, but I gather the plot derived from one of Runyon's best-known stories, "Little Miss Marker." Though in retrospect I recall that I hadn't heard of that particular story until after the Asprin book came out, and didn't read the story until a week or two back.)
So if you were put off by my tone, please forgive me. To understand where my surprise came from, imagine that you woke up one day and discovered that half the people you knew had never heard of Star Trek, and the other half had a vague notion that it might've been a TV show and maybe had something to do with space.
Also, those of you who haven't encountered Runyon: if you like short fiction, especially if you like distinctive prose style, I strongly recommend that you go look for his work. At least one of his collections should be available in most suburban-or-larger libraries; if it's not available in your library, order one (you might start with Guys and Dolls) via interlibrary loan. Or you could pick up a used copy for $5 (or a new copy for $11) via Amazon by following that link. (It occurs to me that the fact that this 1992 edition is still in print, and has an Amazon sales rank of about 40,000, suggests that his work isn't entirely unknown to the public at large these days.)
One of the reviewers at Amazon notes that you may not want to read through the whole book in one sitting, as the style may become tiresome when read at length. I can certainly imagine people feeling that way, though I don't. The language is, predictably, my favorite thing about the stories. (Btw, Runyon was the one who first popularized many slang terms and phrases, including (according to the info I have, though I can't vouch for its veracity) "croak" (in the sense of dying), "dukes" for fists, "shoo-in," "drop dead," and "monkey business.") But the characters and plots are also very enjoyable, and it adds a certain frisson to know that a large percentage of the characters are closely based on real members of the New York scene at the time, including several well-known gangsters and newspaper people.
I got lost somewhere in that paragraph. I meant to note that the Amazon reviewer in question doesn't like short stories ("Most short stories in general seem so hackneyed to me, anyway"), which makes me a little dubious about their review. However, the review does bring up the good point in passing that almost all Runyon stories have a twist at the end; I normally don't like twist-ending stories, and I can sometimes spot Runyon's twists ahead of time, but Runyon does it so well that I don't mind. Think of it as a genre convention.
Speaking of conventions, I nominate Runyon as Dead Guest of Honor for some upcoming MonkeyCon or other. He didn't write speculative fiction, but he had one of the most distinctive prose styles ever.
