Saturday Rave: Money From Home by Damon Runyon.

When people (usually non-writers) try to tell other people how to write books they often say find your voice.

Oh, but how dull, how deeply dull. And, even worse, how limiting.

The idea that a writer, who can travel the universe and inhabit every creature which dwells there, should have just one voice.

Having said that, sometimes a voice emerges which, in the hands of a genius, does manage, magically, to illuminate the whole universe and every creature which dwells there.

Damon Runyon was the creator of such a voice.

His unnamed narrator, a down-at-heel observer of urban American low-life, sees everything, and tells everything, and every line fizzes with life and wit and danger.

She is such a doll as enjoys going round and about, being young, and full of vitality, as well as blonde, and if Philly the Weeper is too busy, or does not have enough dough to take her round and about, Miss Lola Ledare always seems able to find somebody else who has a little leisure time on their hands for that purpose, and if Philly the Weeper does not like it, he can lump it, for Miss Lola Ledare can be very, very firm when it comes to going around and about.

How will the story of Miss Lola Ledare and Philly the Weeper end? Well, I'm not telling.

But you want to know, don't you.

Genius.

Word To Use Today: blonde. This word is French, and before that probably German, and it's probably related to the late Latin word blundus, which means yellow, and to the Spanish blondo.