Re: RARA-AVIS: Jean-Patrick Manchette

From: Mark Sullivan ( DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net)
Date: 11 Aug 2003


I'm almost done with 3 to Kill. Great, great book. However, I was wondering about a number of, assumedly, French cultural references (I got most of the jazz references). Can anyone help with any of the following?

Bea is a movie publicist. She refers to screenings of the "new Feldman." Somehow I doubt she's referring to either Corey or Marty, the only two filmic Feldmans I can think of.

She reads "Edgar Morin's latest book" while he reads an old JD MacDonald. Given her other taste, am I right to assume Morin is pretty literary and/or trendy? She later reads "a book by someone called Castoriadis." Also literary?

One of the hit men reads comic books (and sci-fi), first Strange, which features Daredevil, Captain Marvel (two Marvel characters on this side of the Atlantic, well, at least the later, non-Shazam, Captain Marvel) and "The Spider." He later reads a Spiderman comic, which he is careful to contrast with The Spider in Strange. However, he also gives the origin story intro of Spiderman, which has nothing to do with Peter Parker and a radioactive spider. Instead, it talks about a heavily armed righter of wrongs who is helped by two scientists. This sounds more like a pulp hero. Didn't The Spider start out that way (I haven't read him)? Has either Manchette or his translator mixed up The Spider and Spiderman (another Marvel character, who started out in Strange Tales)?

Mark

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