-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Robison <
miker_zspider@yahoo.com>
>
>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.
>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.
I think Twain said it well: "'Deerslayer' is just simply a
literary delirium tremens."
Cooper's counterpart, and another influence on the American
hardboiled tradition, is Robert Montgomery Bird's "Nick of
the Woods" (1837). "Nick," which has never gone out of print,
was very popular for many years in the 19th century--at least
the equal of "Last of the Mohicans." Bird wrote it as a
response to what he saw as the radically pro- native message
of Cooper's fiction. The main character is Nathan Slaughter,
who after the death of his family during a Shawnee attack
becomes the Indian Killer "Nick of the Woods."
If Hawkeye was the proto-Marlowe, Nick is the proto-Mike
Hammer: just as hard, just as unbalanced, just as merciless.
They were both influential as opposing character types in the
magazine fiction of the 19th century, which is another major
influence on hardboiled fiction of the 20th.
jess
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