Donna, welcome to the zoo, forum.
You observe that:
<<How he has all the energy for all that fighting and
sex I don't know. Anyone else would be in hospital on a
glucose drip after about 5 pages.>>
I don't think Prather ever looked at the Kinsey report -- the
Average American Male is or was (charitably) a two-minuter,
hardly enough time for the Average American Female to even
notice him or it --, or if he did know about it, he decided
to keep up the fantasy. So Scott is always ready, always
willing, and so are the tomatoes. It's a Wodehousian
paradise...
In our own time, Robert Parker perpetuates the ludicrous
myths about the potency of the AAM. But women have always
known. Susan Silverman has to know and I'm sure Hawk
knows.
You are right in taking Prather as comedy. His exageration is
at the core of his charm. My impression is that Shell Scott
doesn't take himself all that seriously, and that in his
authorial voice, Prather imagines that he is sitting at a bar
with a bunch of AAMs, telling him about his exploits.
His fiction is exagerated without being exploitive. Because
of his underlying irony, his fantasies are harmless. Whether
they were harmless in their day, I cannot say. I doubt that
Spillane's brutal exercises were harmless, for example.
Best,
MrT
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