AustLit

'Critics such as Marian Galik have stressed the importance of drawing literary parallels between literatures either of the same or different epochs, and sometimes traditionally and spatially very distant from each other. According to Galik, such study is necessary and productive because it not only provides us with new knowledge and allows for "deeper understanding in various areas of literature, its history, theory, and criticism," but it also enables a more comprehensive insight into the study of related literary facts across cultural boundaries (Galik 99). In light of this view, my essay offers a comparative analysis of John Steinbeck's accounts of "paisanos"—as the American 1962 Nobel Prize winner refers to the mixed-blood inhabitants of California in the novel Tortilla Flat (1935)—and a collection of anecdotes about the Australian "battler," The Great Australian Lover and Other Stories (1967) by the Australian novelist and story-teller, Frank Hardy. By focusing on the similarities between the writers' characterization in these works, which differs significantly from the positive portrayals in their central novels in that both of them stress the protagonists' laziness, stupidity, parasitism and even promiscuity, I attempt to ascertain the grounds for reconciliation of these two different sides of Steinbeck and Hardy. In this sense, this discussion aims to provide additional evidence that reading literature comparatively leads to new insights and recognitions.