The Champion
1902
In the clattering world of a turn-of-the-century newspaper office, a young printer's devil named Edward Macdonald dreams of becoming a champion compositor. The printing house pulses with the energy of ink, metal type, and deadline pressure, and Edward is caught between his grinding daily labor and his hunger for something more. When his friend Peter persuades him to sneak into Gorham's Theatre through a back window, Edward steps from the safe world of the newsroom into the dangerous allure of the city after dark. What begins as a lark quickly spirals into unforeseen danger, forcing this naive apprentice to confront the moral wilderness beyond his routine. Craddock captures the electric tension of a young man standing at the threshold between innocence and experience, between the orderly rows of type and the chaotic temptations waiting outside the printing house door.
Editions
X-Ray
“Men don’t have a reason any more. No one wants us. Why should they? What can we do? We have no job, no home to go to. It’s been taken away. Small wonder then that all that is left for us is to turn in upon ourselves, to clutch at the few things that give us meaning, hope. Money is one thing. Football is another. Football with money does it big time. But football is made up by men like us now, not like men of my father’s years. They have no idea who they are, where they are meant to go either. Call it sport. There was sport to it once, where sport was the point. The point now? What is the point, exactly, of this beautiful game? See them on the pitch, biting each other, pulling at each other’s shirts, kicking and scratching, flying tackles, jabs in the elbow, feigning injuries, bellowing obscenities at the ref: see them later, off the pitch, urinating in hotel plant pots, wrecking Indian takeaways, abusing shop owners, brawling in night clubs, gang-banging under-age groupies, punching unwilling women in the face; see them beating their wives, breaking their girlfriends’ arms, standing outside their ghastly houses with their Doric columns and Lamborghinis, driving to each other’s hideous celebrity-strewn weddings. Be worthless now, that’s all you can be. The age of the bully is upon us.””
— Charles Egbert Craddock
