Abstract

"The Battler" and "The Light of the World" can be viewed as contributions to hobo-tramp literature. Evoking the work in this vein of Jack London, W. H. Davies, Josiah Flynt, and Glenn H. Mullin, these hard-edged stories delineate late adolescent encounters—out-in-the-real-world experiences—that stand in stark contrast to those invented by Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise, a defining work of what Updike calls "collegiate romanticism," as well as those presented in Owen Johnson's high-jinks romps—The Prodigious Hickey (1908), The Varmint (1910), and The Tennessee Shad (1911)—the Lawrenceville prep-school stories so avidly read at the time.

pdf