Word: jencic
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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When he sees Louis and Teena approach, Jencic hides in a dark doorway. Sharp-eyed Louie yanks him out by the collar. At last Jencic awakes. He grabs Louie by the throat, smashes his face. Down goes Louie, then up with a knife. Mighty Jencic just advances slowly, arms out seeking to crush, face murderous. Louie retreats. Baker Krusack commends Jencic: "You've been a worm, but now you've turned over, and you'll stay turned over. . . . Well, there must be rewards for all good work. . . . I will show you another part of the trade...
Teena, however, offers no congratulations. "Get Louie back," she mutters to Jencic. "Ask me anything you want to and I'll give it to ye, but you got to promise to get him and see that he comes here...
...Jencic refuses until she weeps. Then Louie cannot be found. Then the truth comes out. Louie has got her pregnant. This time Jencic proceeds against Baker Krusack's advice. He is his own man now. He says : "I know all about Teena, more'n you do. It is true she done something she shouldn't do, but after we get married it will be all right. Everybody makes mistakes. What if people didn't forget such mistakes, then everybody would be mad at everybody else, and nobody would have even one friend...
Churchbound, hulking Jencic shakes with love. "Don't shake," says Teena, "what's there to shake about...
...Significance. Novelist Williamson always makes his plots go by putting them on the roller-skates of a social theme. The evolution of Jencic from peasant and Hunky (short for "Hungarian" - colloquial for Slav) to U. S. citizen and worker, is obvious and anything but original. But it is done so cheerfully, so sincerely, with such brave and decent effort at realism, that it far transcends what might be banality. It is a warm, vigorous, if somewhat naïve book by a writer who has known and taken seriously all kinds and conditions of his fellow men. The Book...