"During those years, when most men of promise achieve an adult
education, if only in the school of war, Ring moved in the company of
a few dozen...playing a boy's game.  A boy's game, with no more
possibility in it than a boy could master, a game bounded by walls
which kept out novelty or danger, change or adventure ... It was
never that he was completely sold on athletic virtuosity as the
be-all and end-all of problems; the trouble was that he could find
nothing finer.  Imagine life conceived as a business of beautiful
muscular organization--an arising, an effort, a good break, a sweat,
a bath, a meal, a love, a sleep--imagine it achieved; then imagine
trying to apply this standard to the horribly complicated mess of
living, where nothing, even the greatest conceptions and workings and
achievements, is else but messy, spotty, tortuous--and then one can
imagine the confusion that Ring faced on coming out of the park."

Fitzgerald on Ring Lardner

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