Word: charleyism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Charley Is My Darling, by Joyce Cary. An early (1940) Cary about an adolescent slum runner evacuated to the English countryside during the blitz, sympathetically written to show that "every ordinary child is by nature a delinquent...
...Charley Is My Darling, by Joyce Gary. An early (1940) Gary novel about an adolescent slum runner evacuated to the English countryside during the blitz, wryly and sympathetically written to show that "every ordinary child is by nature a delinquent...
...Charley Brown is an undersized slum runner who is evacuated from London during World War II and sent with other refugees to a west-country village. At 13 or so, he has a good mind but a lousy head, and when his poll is shaved to free him from vermin, he acquires a cruel nickname. Gary was too sensible to suggest that all the boy's troubles begin when jeering ruffians call him "Lousy." But Charley tries harder than he might have done to win followers-by passing out candy and soda pop, then by stealing...
...police let him off with a tongue-lashing, and the kindly village woman at whose house he is quartered tries hard to help Charley. The boy is good hearted and values her friendship, but it never occurs to him to stay out of trouble. He is not amoral, except from an adult viewpoint. He follows the rules of juvenile society as if they had been relayed to him by Moses, but the only forces he recognizes are the intense pressures of youthful adulation and contempt...
...Charley organizes a gang of underaged cat burglars and the children blunder from success to pointless success, stealing trinkets for the excitement of it and giving them away. It is only after Charley is caught that Gary's book makes a descent into sentiment, coming closer to Dickens than to Evelyn Waugh, who also told (in his hilarious Put Out More Flags) of brattish evacuees on the loose in the English countryside. But the sentimental flaw is minor, and the book makes its point well: adolescence is a chrysalis whose occupant can be hurt, but not helped much...