Word: algers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
SILAS SNOBDEN'S OFFICE BOY by HORATIO ALGER JR. 240 pages. Doubleday...
Holy Horatio Alger! Of all the embarrassing national memories to bring up in 1973. This little prince of prissiness, this walking morality play on behalf of hanging tight and doing somebody else's thing. "Duty required me to do as I did." The cry, pure as the adolescent uttering it, sounds across the years-from 1889, to be exact-measuring by sheer alienation the distance of America present from America past...
...thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul," etc.) embarrass. Still, hardly anybody can live on irony and neostoicism for long. Even against what seems to be common sense, it is essential to believe in the possibilities of individual endeavor. There, suddenly, stands Jonathan Livingston Seagull, an Horatio Alger in feathers...
...ears with copybook maxims about the devil finding work for idle hands and God helping those who help themselves. Successive waves of immigrants took those lessons to heart, and they aimed for what they thought was the ultimate success open to them -middle-class status. They almost deified Horatio Alger's fictional heroes, like Ragged Dick, who struggled up to the middle class by dint of hard work...
...much remains of that proud heritage. Today, in a time of the decline of organized churches, work has lost most of its religious significance. Horatio Alger is camp. Only a minority of workers remember the Depression. Welfare and unemployment benefits have reduced the absolute necessity of working, or at least made idleness less unpleasant...