Re: RARA-AVIS: Re:Stephen King's THE COLORADO KID - A solution to the mystery

From: Karin Montin ( kmontin@sympatico.ca)
Date: 14 Jan 2007


Brad,

I read The Colorado Kid in one sitting yesterday. I prefer a story with a real ending, but I don't mind an ambiguous one. In this case, I am happy that someone (you) provided an ending. I like your solution. When you say Cogan "found" the cigs at the airport, I assume you mean that he bought them. But we could say he actually found the Russian coin on the floor at the airport, possible because naturally there are travellers there from all over, and picked it up for good luck, couldn't we? Maybe it only works with real pennies.

Stacey pointed out that the cover has no relation to the content of the book. It's a nice painting, very pulpy, but the woman is way too old. Stephanie in the book is not interviewing the two guys telling the story with a little tape recorder, and with the cold onshore breeze mentioned several times, I doubt she was wearing that slip.

I know there's a pulp tradition of having sexy women on the cover, but is it also a tradition that book illustrators don't read the books too closely? I always have fun with my kids spotting the mistakes: people eating their picnic on rocks when the book says a beach, wearing long pants instead of shorts, that sort of thing.

Did it bother anyone else that the island is called alternatingly Moose-Lookit and Moose-Look (and once in a while Moosie, but that's more understandable)?

Karin

At 11:10 AM 21/11/2006 +0000, Brad Stevens wrote:

>--- 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.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 14 Jan 2007 EST