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.
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