I now see that someone is angling for a discussion of the picaresque, a genre of Spanish literature which was studied in Spanish literature class but which is best forgotten in these modern times when we don't really have street beggars anymore. Didn't we all read that classic book, Lazarillo del Torme, in which a beggar boy ascends in life, by hook or by crook matters not, to a state of comparative prosperity? Later in life he looks back at his amazing ascent from beggar boy starving on the streets to middle class prosperity and is amazed at his good luck and/or the credulity and naivete of persons who failed to block him along the way when all along he well knew that he was just scraping by and didn't really know what he was doing or where he was going. The various adventures and exploits of his life are described in humorous detail in the picaresque genre, of which Charles Dickens contributes some examples in English, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Thus the rise of the muy picaro is celebrated in Spanish literature in various books.
Yes, I do remember Pammie Puke bringing up this subject over lunch at Vida Publishers. So?
A girl can't do that, needless to say. A girl who tried to behave in that way would be stigmatized by society so obviously the picaresque applies only to boys. But I don't need to explain this obvious point.
