RARA-AVIS: Re: quests, romances, knights, etc.

Kevin Smith (kvnsmith@colba.net)
Sat, 13 Jun 1998 09:33:25 -0500 Regarding Huck Finn. Another (and perhaps closer) example of a classic
American novel which contributed to the hardboiled (or is it hard-boiled?)
detective mythology is James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales.
Ponderous brain-clogging prose, now, but in The Last of the Mohicans, The
Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairies, Natty "Hawkeye"
Bumpo, a "man without a cross", daring to "speak the truth consarnin' you
or any man that lived," does all sorts of P.I. things, like being an
outsider working mostly alone in a corrupt and violent world, trying to
hold on to a personal code of honour, carrying a gun, and working on a
wandering daughter job or two (or quest, if you like).

I'm not a professor or anything, just a guy that reads, but it strikes me
that Hawkeye is the link between Arthur's knights and the private eye.

(and here's a little trivia: in a French graphic novel quite a few years
back, the lead hero, a Hollywood private detective was named
Hippolytus...Finn... H. Finn? Given that the myth of America is a popular
one in France, it's probably not a coincidence.)

And I'm wrapping up the Streeter novel. Sorry, guys, for helping to inflict
it on you. The first one, The Low End of Nowhere, was much better, really.
The Long Reach is a bit of a downer.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/

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