The Eternal Boy: Being the Story of the Prodigious Hickey

Owen McMahon JohnsonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
329K words
Chapters
33

Tags

English Originals Young Adult Fiction Campus LifeComing of AgeGrowing UpYouthful VibeHumor Relief

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Eternal Boy: Being the Story of the Prodigious Hickey by Owen JohnsonAuthor: Johnson, Owen, 1878-1952,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 18, 2014

Editor's review

This is Owen Johnson's boarding-school novel about a boy nicknamed "the Prodigious Hickey," a light, comic branch of the American coming-of-age tradition. Its readability comes chiefly from close observation of boyhood group dynamics: pranks, rivalry, friendship, and the urge for self-proof intertwine, and the characters, though exaggerated, remain believable. A public-domain eBook, it is short and brisk in language, a good window into early twentieth-century American juvenile fiction. Watch how dialogue and scene reveal character, and how the "prodigy" figure gently teases the relation between cleverness and maturity. If you want tight adventure plotting, the pace is more everyday; if you like school settings and ensemble casts, there is much to enjoy.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to get used to the nicknames and school rules, then continue straight through.
  2. Treat each chapter as a fairly standalone school anecdote rather than rushing after a main plot.
  3. When you meet period slang, guess from context first and look it up after finishing a passage.
  4. After reading, review what follows each display of the prodigy's cleverness to trace his growth.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33

FAQ

Is this book suitable for learning English? It suits learners with some foundation. The language is generally brisk, mostly school dialogue and daily scenes, but it contains early twentieth-century slang and school usage; a intermediate reading level is advisable. Guess unfamiliar words first, then check them, rather than stopping at every word.
Can I read this without having read a previous book? Yes. The book centers on the school stories of "the Prodigious Hickey," and relationships emerge as the text proceeds; it does not depend on a prior work. Knowing the basic boarding-school setup will make reading smoother.
What is the reading pace like? It is mostly everyday anecdote, brisk but not driven by strong suspense. It suits chapter-by-chapter reading, one or two at a time, enjoyed as slices of school life rather than for continuous twists.

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About the author

Owen McMahon Johnson Author · American · 1878–1952

Owen Johnson (1878–1952) was an American novelist and short-story writer, born in New York, the son of the poet Robert Underwood Johnson. A Yale graduate, he became known for the "Dink Stover" series set at the Lawrenceville School and Yale, including The Varmint, Skippy Bedelle, and Stover at Yale, as well as works such as The Salamander and Making Money. His fiction often draws on school and campus life and youthful coming-of-age, written in a light, humorous vein with an eye for social reality; some works also touch on historical and mystery themes, such as In the Name of Liberty and Murder in Any Degree. He served as a war correspondent during World War I and died in Massachusetts in 1952.