Donald Elder writes:

(Elder, Donald. Ring Lardner. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956.)

". . . a classic example of Ring's first-person dialect stories, and it shows all of his indignation at cruelty, stupidity, and callousness." (237)

"The practical joker, traditionally a beloved small-town figure, turns out to be miserable, brainless, and cruel; and the barber who admires him is just as bad. Ring was exposing the witlessness of a whole vein of the American comic tradition--the small-town wag who is a degenerate descendant of the frontier hell-raiser, and is degraded and perverse; but there are still innumerable jackasses to laugh at him. Not even what commonly passes as a 'sense of humor' has much saving grace in it, offers any release or any leavening of the soridness of the small, meager, impoverished world that Ring evokes so skillfully in the barber's monologue.

Practical jokes are the basis of much of the humor in Ring's baseball stories; Jack Keefe is almost always the dupe of them. But these are harmless, they are even sometimes funny, and in any case Jack Keefe is too thick-skinned to be hurt by them. This kind of humor is fairly shallow at best, as Ring knew; but in 'Haircut' it is not funny any more. Humor itself has become corrupt. It is a bitter and appalling story." (238)

Jonathan Yardley writes:

(Yardley, Jonathan. Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner. New York: Random House, 1977.)

"The use of the village idiot to take revenge on Jim Kendall is indeed a cliché, and the story as a whole is just a little bit too pat; it has been anthologized because of its quality and craftsmanship but also because, as is often the case with material that is anthologized, it is smooth enough to suit almost any taste. It may have seemed to readers of a popular magazine to have been a brutal portrait of small-town hypocrisy and callousness, but those readers probably were unfamiliar with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, published six years earlier and far superior." (288-289)

Walton Patrick writes:

(Patrick, Walton R. Ring Lardner. New York: Twayne, 1963.)

"The barber-narrator of 'Haircut,' for example, greatly admires Jim Kendall--'he certainly was a card!'--and remains totally unconscious of the fact that the story he tells throws an entirely opposite light on Kendall. " (114)

James DeMuth writes:

(DeMuth, James. Small Town Chicago: The Comic Perspective of Finley Peter Dunne, George Ade, and Ring Lardner. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1980.)

"'Haircut," generally considered Lardner's masterpiece, is a bitter indictment of the sleazy morality which small towners could accommodate. In the story, a vicious, jealous practical joker, Jim Kendall, is tolerated and envied by his more cautious confederates in the town's barber shop. The moral standards of decency and responsibility, which small towns had embodied in Lardner's earlier fiction are in 'Haircut' only enforced when the town half-wit murders Kendall for exposing the gentle and virtuous Julie Gregg to public ridicule." (85-86)

Maxwell Perkins of Scribner's writes in a letter to Ring:

(Caruthers, Clifford M. ed. Ring Around Max: The Correspondence of Ring Lardner & Max Perkins. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois U.P., 1973.)

March 16, 1925

"I read 'Hair Cut' on Friday and I can't shake it out of my mind;--in fact the impression it made has deepened with time. There's not a man alive who could have done better, that's certain.

Everyone will tell you this, or something like it I guess, so there's little use in my doing it.--But it is a most biting and revealing story and I'd like to say so." (57)

Lardner's reply of March 17th is added to Letters of Ring Lardner (Washington: Orchises, 1995, page 174). The response in total is as follows: "Thanks."

Maxwell Geismar writes:

(Geismar, Maxwell. Ring Lardner and the Portrait of Folly. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972.)

"And what Lardner is really saying is that the half-wit has more sense and more courage than the rest of the townspeople who applauded the cruel jokes of Jim Kendall." (78)

Hal Blythe (and Charlie Sweet):

(Blythe, Hal. "Lardner's 'Haircut.'" Explicator 44.3 (Spring 1986): 48-49.)

The article analyzes cinematic allusions, especially those to the movie Wages of Death found in the story "Haircut" and asserts that the plot of that movie is the hidden plot of this story. In this article, unlike the next, Blythe still supports the view that the narrator of "Haircut" is innocent and unaware of the real circumstances surrounding Jim's death.

From Blythe, Hal and Charlie Sweet. "The Barber of Civility: The Chief Conspirator of 'Haircut.'" Studies in Short Fiction 23.4 (Fall 1986): 450-453.

Blythe and Sweet posit that Whitey, the narrator, is not only aware of what is going on in the story and that he condones the killing of Jim, but that he is "the chief instigator of the town's deadly conspiracy" (451). They methodically prove their thesis, using many examples from the story to establish motive, means, opportunity, and indirect admissions of guilt. Such a reading requires that one considers the barber's comments about Jim (like his being a "card") ironic. The "motive to kill" may also be overstated. Whitey has a motive for revenge or a motive to dislike Jim, but the motive to kill is difficult to prove.

From Blythe, Hal and Charlie Sweet.  "Lardner's Haircut."  The Explicator  55 (Summer 1997):  219-221.

Continuing their earlier argument that the barber/narrator is the chief conspirator of Jim's death, Blythe and Sweet now explore the barber's motivation in telling his self-incriminating story.  Their earlier suggestion that "hubris" is the motive is dismissed; "guilt" causes the barber to "confess" his story.  

After reiterating their reasons for believing that Whitey, the barber/narrator, is "the chief instigator of the town's deadly conspiracy," Blythe and Sweet admit their earlier explanation for the barber telling his story is inadequate.  They posit that Whitey tells his story out of guilt.  Central to their argument is their interpretation of a scene in which the barber explains how things used to be in the barbershop.  When Jim was still living, he sat at his reserved chair like a priest, and thus, they argue, the barbershop was a secular church.  "Haircut" is a "confession."  Only two are in the "church," and the barber is confessing his sin. 

Nathan Cervo:

(Cervo, Nathan. "Lardner's 'Haircut.'" Explicator 47.2 (Winter 1989): 47-48.)

Cervo posits that Lardner uses proper nouns as thematic puns "to reflect important themes in the narrative" of "Haircut;" and that by studying these, the reader can determine that Jim was a conspirator in his own murder (suicide). This theory is interesting but is not proven in this article.

Margaret Kasten:

(Kasten, Margaret C. "The Satire of Ring Lardner." English Journal XXXVI (April 1947): 194-95.)

She argues against Fadiman's "Triangle of Hate" theory and the opinion that Lardner is "just a comic" and compares Lardner favorably to Sinclair Lewis, giving examples of college Freshmen's opinions of "Haircut." It is interesting to see that as early as1947 people had already begun to miss the satire in Lardner's stories.

Charles May:

(May, Charles. "Lardner's HAIRCUT." Explicator 31.9 (May 1973). )

Suggests that the object of the satire in "Haircut" is not just Jim or the small town in which he lives, but it is the reader who so quickly condones such extreme punishment.

Brooks and Warren:

(Brooks, Cleanth and Robert P. Warren. The Scope of Fiction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1960.)

Advances a moralist interpretation of "Haircut" wherein Jim is a joker who finally gets his due; takes narrator at face value, saying that he really does admire Jim; says purpose of narrator is to create irony, a device used to invoke

reader participation.

James Phelan:

(Phelan, James. "Narrative Discourse, Literary Character, and Ideology." Reading Narrative: Form, Ethics, Ideology. Ed. James Phelan. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1989. 132-146.)

Gordon Bordewyk:

(Bordewyk, Gordon. "Comic Alienation: Ring Lardner's Style." Markham Review 11 (Spring 1982): 51-57. )

"Behind the apparent simplicity of the narrative, however, is a resounding indictment of the moral turpitude of the small town.  "   . . Endorsing Jim Kendall's mischief when he is alive, the villagers pragmatically regard his death as accidental, despite evidence that Paul's action is premeditated.  Refusing to acknowledge the implicit guilt of Paul (or the doctor) for Kendall's death, the townsfolk become accessories after the fact.  But they still miss Kendall and his misdirected talent for cruel comedy."  56  (56-57) agrees with Charles May that the reader, by thinking Jim's murder is justified is also indicted.  (57).   I do wonder about the estrangement of Jim Kendall.  at least it is hard to determine if through speech, "The most significant cause and the most obvious symptom of their estrangement is their inability to communicate effectively through language.