--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, BookBitch
<BookBitch@...> wrote:
>
> Okay, I gotta ask - what did you come up with?
My
> book group discussed this book and we could not
reach
> a concensus.
>
Hi Stacy - Always a pleasure to hear from anyone who writes
for Book Bitch, one of my favorite websites.
The back cover of THE COLORADO KID claims that the book has
"echoes of Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON". Well,
there's only one part of THE MALTESE FALCON that has anything
to do with THE COLORADO KID, and that's the story of
Flitcraft, which you will find in the 'G in the Air' chapter
of Hammett's novel. Flitcraft sudenly decided to walk away
from his life when a falling beam which came close to killing
him showed him how fragile his well-ordered existence was. It
seems pretty clear to me that something similar must have
happened to Cogan in THE COLORADO KID. After he leaves his
office, something happens to make him want to run away from
his former life. Vince and Dave make a big thing about how
carefully Cogan must have planned everything in order to get
to Moose-Look island in the time he did. But it all makes
perfect sense if we assume that Cogan had no intention of
ending up in Moose-Look - he simply wanted to run as far as
he could in any direction in as short a period of time as
possible, and simple happened to end up in Moose-Look. So he
jumps in a taxi in Colorado, drives to the airport, somehow
talks himself onboard the next plane that's taking off
(perhaps charming the pilot with the sheer arbitrariness of
his behavior), ends up in Maine, wanders to a nearby highway,
sticks out his thumb, catches a ride, and finds himself
headed for Moose-Look.
The cigarettes he probably finds at the airport in Colorado.
He's never smoked before, but since he's decided to change
all his old patterns of behavior, he picks them up. He smokes
his first cigarette when he arrives on the island, but since
he's a non-smoker, he begins coughing, and is still coughing
soon after when he tries eating a steak, which is why he
chokes on it.
The Rusian coin I can't quite fit in - maybe it's
meaningless.
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