I've been looking back at the roots of the hardboiled genre
in America, Ring Lardner, Twain, Bret Harte, and London. It
was only a matter of time before I made it to Cooper's The
Last of the Mohicans. There might be earlier American works
that foreshadow the hardboiled genre, but I haven't found it
yet.
He was the first major American author. He wrote thirty
novels, his lasting fame with the five-book series about
woodsman Natty Bumppo. Written in 1826, the most enduring of
the series is Last of the Mohicans. Bumppo is protective of
the weak and innocent, and more than willing to kill those
who threaten them, a classic combination of traits that
presages the hardboiled genre. Bumppo is independent, stoic,
tough, and yet still capable of sentiment. Cooper uses Bumppo
to accent the difference and provide a bridge between the
laws of society and the law of the jungle. Last of the
Mohicans contains a buttload of violence. It is not just the
sanitary shoot-em-fall-down-dead type of violence, either. It
includes bashing a baby against rocks and burying a hatchet
in the mom's head. It is not just death-dealing, but well
into brutal, another feature commonly found in
hardboiled.
D.H. Lawrence made a famous comment about the American soul
being a stoic killer. The quote was inspired by Cooper's
writing. Cooper's style was overwrought and his technical
expertise questionable, but he established a model for a
tough American character that still survives today.
miker
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