Pynchon mention

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 15:48, Otto wrote:
> It's been mostly ignored that it's American literature (except the fact that
> there's slavery of course), seen as typical boys' adventure literature.
> I don't think that anybody has called it quintessentially American. And
> Twain hadn't been presented to me at school.
> 
> I've read "Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn" only once after I had finished
> Fenimore Cooper (short version of all five big novels in one book) when I
> was maybe ten or twelve years old, after seeing the tv-mini series. I guess
> that after finishing it I returned for another time to F.C. which I've read
> several times before I finally got the full novels much later (in 1986). For
> some reason in my mind Tom & Huck never became such American heroes
> as Nat Bumppo and Chingachgook.

Interesting. A matter of timing I believe. In my boyhood Tom and Huck
were known to everyone while I'd never even heard of Bumppo and the
other guy. This was despite the fact that a leather bound copy of The
Deerslayer had sat on the family coffee table probably from before my
birth. This must have been purely an oversight because I never once
observed anyone ever opening it up. Cooper I believe owes his
resurrection to TV's never satiated appetite for material. This isn't to
say he isn't good. I'm only addressing popularity through the ages.

P..