Michael George\'s Horses, Lemons, and Pretty Girls belongs to the road novel genre.
A cold spring bubbled out of a hillside, coming alive as a stream, only to meet a sudden death in the vast open sea." Though working class, the protagonist i.
Scattered among the trees, not yet ripe berries grew in thick dark patches.
The ground was covered with lush green grass, studded with spring\'s wildflowers.
It was surrounded by hills and vine-covered trees.
Yet the novel includes moments of lyricism: "Then we left the beach for the hills behind it and found a small meadow near the back of a cove.
In contrast to the working-class ethos, he studies the field of computer programming and is split between his identity as a carpenter and programmer.
Though on its face this task sounds routine, it becomes a labor of love and high adventure.
The most striking example is a sequence in which Sanders and his brother build an addition to a house.
A typical description of the owner class is this: "men in business suits, screaming orders." These roots are evident in the precise description of manual labor, whether tearing down drilling rigs near Fargo or removing bricks from box cars in Florida.
Disdainful of owners and foremen, he remains true to his working-class roots.
Drifting through life, the protagonist seeks work and lodging wherever he can find it.
The young protagonist, Dave Sanders, travels with his friend, Ben, from the Midwest to the Southeast, "for the hell of it." Sanders later travels on his own back in the Midwest and, near the novel\'s end, all the way to San Francisco.
If exploration and adventure place the novel in the Kerouac lineage, the proletarian focus moves it into the Grapes of Wrath genealogy.
Also like Kerouac\'s novel, George\'s story has the ring of autobiography.
Like Kerouac\'s iconic On the Road, it is the story of young men traveling across the United States in search of adventure and epiphany.
To be more precise, it is an exemplar of the proletarian road novel.
Michael George\'s Horses, Lemons, and Pretty Girls belongs to the road novel genre
