The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue
| Year of Publication |
1960
|
|---|---|
| Publication Type |
Novel
|
| Number of Pages or Episodes |
246 p.
|
| Language |
English
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| Contributors |
Author:
Lester Goran |
| Publisher |
Houghton Mifflin Company
|
| City |
Boston
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| Genre | |
| Keywords |
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| Abstract |
Ike-o Hartwell—born into the fictionalized Hill District slum of Sobaski’s Stairway (named for a Prohibition-Era bootlegger)—learns to survive in 1940s Pittsburgh amid the neon glow of pawnshops and pool halls peopled by racketeers, pimps, gangs, and ward heelers. After a dishonorable discharge from the army, Hartwell dresses as a paratrooper and returns to Mechanic Avenue expecting a hero’s welcome. “Paratrooper is a testament to Goran’s memorializing the lives of the 'ugly hostile people' in the slums,” says the literary critic Matthew Asprey Gear.
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| Notes |
Allegheny County Industrial and Training School for Boys is referred to as Thorn Hill Reformatory, as it was commonly known.
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| Author Biography |
Lester Goran (1928-2014), born and raised in a housing project in Pittsburgh's Hill District, was a novelist and professor of English at the University of Miami. He attended Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue High School and Schenley High School and he earned a BA and MA in English at the University of Pittsburgh. For more than 50 years he wrote fiction set in Pittsburgh. He lived in Miami, Florida.
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| Time |
1930s-50s
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| Places | |
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