In 1916 Lardner published his first book of short stories, “You Know Me, Al,” which was written in the form of letters written by a bush league baseball player to a friend back home. Like most of Lardner’s stories, it employed satire to show the stupidity and cupidity of a certain type of athlete. Lardner went on to write such well-known stories as “Haircut”, “Some Like Them Cold”, “The Golden Honeymoon”, “Alibi Ike”, and “A Day in the Life of Conrad Green”.
Lardner also had a lifelong fascination with the theatre, though his only success was June Moon, a comedy co-written with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman. He did write a series of brief nonsense plays which poked fun at the conventions of the theatre using zany, offbeat humor and outrageous, impossible stage directions.
Lardner was a close friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald and other writers of the Jazz Age, and he was published by Fitzgerald’s editor, Maxwell Perkins. Lardner never wrote a novel, but is considered by many to be one of America’s best writers of the short story.