Lipsyte’s novels for young adults have gained considerable critical acclaim for their absence of sentimentality as well as for the excellence of his writing. Lipsyte’s characters do not necessarily win an ultimate prize at the end of the novel. They are more likely to go through an admirable change due to effort and personal growth.
Lipsyte has written two sequels to The Contender. In The Brave (1991), protagonist Sonny Bear is a seventeen-year-old half-Indian runaway who meets Alfred Brooks, now a forty-year-old policeman, in New York. Alfred rescues Sonny from a drug war and teaches him to box. In The Chief (1993), Sonny tries to become a heavyweight champion and must deal with problems similar to those that Lipsyte learned about as a sports journalist.
Some of the most successful of Lipsyte’s works, other than The Contender (1967), are those in the trilogy featuring Bobby Marks: One Fat Summer (1977), Summer Rules (1981), and The Summerboy (1982). All take place in Rumson Lake, an upstate New York resort town. Bobby deals with problems like those that other young adults might face between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. In the first novel, he is known as the “Crisco Kid” because of his obesity. He must deal with a local bully named Willie Rumson who enjoys humiliating Bobby. In addition to losing weight, Bobby learns to stand up for himself. In the second novel, Bobby is sixteen and faces a more complicated dilemma. His old enemy, Willie Rumson, is falsely accused of arson. Bobby knows that his girlfriend’s troubled younger cousin set the fire, and he must decide whether to tell the truth. Bobby is eighteen in the third book and dealing with unsafe working conditions at a laundry where he is employed. Speaking up will likely lose him his job.
