Re: RARA-AVIS: Jean-Patrick Manchette

From: Etienne Borgers ( wbac1203@wanadoo.be)
Date: 12 Aug 2003


At 18:36 11-08-03 -0400, you wrote:
>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).

Mark,

I explained in RA, a few months back, about the Jazz reference included in the original French title of this novel : "Le petit bleu de la cote ouest", which literally could be: the small blue from the West Coast- obviously a reference to ' a small blues from the West Coast', in a kind of play of words across two languages. The new title: Trois homme abattre (3 to Kill) comes from the cinema adaptation based on Manchette's novel. Even if not bad, the film is not on par with the book.

>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.

Marty Feldamn is a good guess I think. Was already very popular in Europe
(and France) when Manchette's novel was published (1976), success mainly due to two of his best films released at the time. This British comedian was also well known for his TV shows.

>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?
>

Not really. Edgar Morin is a French sociologist, very in favor during the 70s. He was famous for his essays on culture and its means of spreading, and other books. On the other hand, Castoriadis does not ring a bell (at least to me).

>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."

Here I pass, because I didn't re-read Manchette's book recently... and my comics references are still buried in many unopen boxes.

Hope the above helps.

E.Borgers

--
# Plain ASCII text only, please.  Anything else won't show up.
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Aug 2003 EDT