Guys and Dolls

Damon Runyon

2 ideas

1. Deadpan present tense normalizes the outrageous

   Runyon's narrator tells everything in the present tense, in formal, contraction-free vernacular and the same even tone, whether he is describing a shooting or a cheesecake at Mindy's. Treating violence and breakfast with equal flatness makes the underworld read as an ordinary neighborhood with its own manners, and the comedy comes from that mismatch of tone.

2. The narrator who insists he is uninvolved

   The unnamed narrator keeps telling the reader that he is a guy who minds his own business and wants no part of trouble, yet he is always present, knows everyone, and is regularly pulled into the action. This declared innocence alongside obvious complicity is how an insider survives among dangerous men, by performing neutrality so that nobody treats him as a threat or a witness.

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