Gullible’s Travels

The title nods to Swift, but Ring Lardner’s target here sits closer to home: the social-climbing American couple who cannot quite afford the life they long to lead. Published in 1917, this collection follows a plainspoken narrator and his status-hungry wife as they chase fashionable pastimes, from box seats at the opera to winter holidays among people richer than themselves. Lardner narrates in the flat, funny, ungrammatical voice that became his trademark, letting the characters expose their own vanity without ever seeming to notice. The comedy is broad, but the observation is exact, and the stories still ring true about money, envy, and the wish to be thought better than we are. This free PDF and EPUB edition gathers the collection for modern readers.