Frederick Zackel wrote:
> I think I mentioned this before: that I suspect the
Lone Wolf mythology
> seems to have exhausted itself. That we have seen
too many Lone Wolves over
> the past 35 years (since the assassination of JFK by
a Lone Zealot.) Too
> often the heroic figure of the Lone Wolf has been
swamped by the Lone
> Zealot, all those sociopaths / psychopaths with a
gun and three names (Lee
> Harvey Oswald, John Wayne Gacy(?), etc.)
Perhaps this is so in the mystery genre, at least as the
publishers define it, but as far as I can tell the popularity
of the Lone Wolf hasn't significantly declined in thrillers,
suspense, and especially science fiction.
I think there are a lot more women adopting the Lone Wolf
stance, both as writers and as characters, but I've never
thought that the Lone Wolf figure had to be either written or
portrayed by a male.
I don't think hardboiled is dead. I think it's just changing
to adapt to the times.
jess
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 21 May 2000 EDT