We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Chapter Three compares the representation of vulnerable transient youth in the work of Leon Ray Livingston, whose road name was ‘A-No.1’, and the author Jack London. The chapter argues that both writers engage with the frequent abuse and exploitation of young boys, known as ‘punks’ or ‘gay-cats’, on the road. A-No.1’s semi-autobiographical writings are more explicit, obsessively reproducing the same narrative in which the author (or his fictional stand-in) saves a punk from the clutches of an older hobo, or ‘jocker’. For London, who was at the very least what today would be called bi-curious, the questions of transient sexuality and abuse were more fraught. He acknowledges the existence of sexually-vulnerable youths in early stories, written before he became a successful author. However, in his well-known work The Road (1907) he goes to great lengths to persuade his audience that he was never a gay-cat. The text positions London as a young man well ahead of his time, a claim that many critics have taken at face value. Yet paradoxically the text’s narrator seeks out the approval and protection of older men, including one who seems to expect sexual favours in return.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.