What does するがり and がんこ mean?

Question

I'm reading a book and the following sentence showed up:

ふたむかし前の漫画に登場するがり勉少年や下町のがんこ親父がかけていそうな代物なのだ。

I didn't find anything about "するがり" or "〜がり". I didn't study the 〜がる grammar yet, but I checked it out on the internet and it seems to be used with adjectives.

The only word I found for がんこ was 頑固 but I'm not sure if it's the correct word in this sentence.

Also, what does "勉" mean in "勉少年"? I didn't find any suffix like that.

A longer sentence to grasp the context better:

なぜなら波希（なぎ）が愛用しているその眼鏡といえば、太い黒縁の四角いセルフレーム。たとえるなら、ふたむかし前の漫画に登場するがり勉少年や下町のがんこ親父がかけていそうな代物なのだ。

Thanks in advance for those who answer my question.

Answer 1

What does するがり mean?

It appears that you've mis-parsed the sentence. It's not:

ふたむかし前の漫画に登場するがり勉少年や...

... but rather:

ふたむかし前の漫画に登場するがり勉少年や...

The term がり[勉]{べん} comes from:

• The root がり of the adverb がりがり, usually referring to chewing something hard, but also used in a way similar to the English expression "to get one's teeth into something": in other words, "ignoring other things and focusing solely on one activity".
• The first half 勉【べん】 of the term 勉強【べんきょう】 ("studying").

Put together, がり[勉]{べん} refers to someone who has their nose firmly in their books, someone studying very hard to the point of neglecting other things.

What does がんこ mean?

がんこ is also spelled 頑固, and means "stubborn", as you guessed. Additional senses include "persistent, obstinate, mulish, tenacious", etc. Both kanji are part of the 常用【じょうよう】 (Jōyō) list, so I surmise that the author spelled this term in hiragana here simply to break up the text, so it wasn't just a long string of kanji.

Answer 2

First of all, there are no punctuation marks in the original Japanese, which makes it difficult to follow the meaning of the text as it is, and makes it difficult for beginners to read. In addition, words that can be taken to have multiple meanings in hiragana should be written in kanji.

何故なら、波希（なぎ）が愛用しているその眼鏡といえば、太い黒縁の四角いセルフレーム。例えるなら、ふた昔前の漫画に登場する、ガリ勉少年や下町の頑固親父がかけていそうな代物である。

The following are some of the more difficult words to find here.

Nagi(literally: wave for hope)...a character in the story. Cellframe...plastic-made frames.(etymology is celluloid-made frame) Twenty years time ago...a long time ago. In other words, it was about 20 years ago. Studying head...person who studies diligently or abnormally hard, regardless of the test (etymology is "to study so hard that you write scratching your pencil"). Stubbornness...hard and be obstinate personality and nature. Stubborn father...A father or middle-aged man with a personality who stubbornly refuses to change his attitude or thoughts (a father from the Showa(literally: clearly peace) era or an old-fashioned craftsman may be addressed).

Because the glasses that Nagi loves to wear are square cellframes with thick black rims. To put it another way, they look like the kind of glasses that a studying hard boy or a stubborn father in the downtown area would wear in a manga from twenty years time ago.