Rogues’ Gallery

DiscussieThe Rabble Discuss Cabell: James Branch Cabell &c

Sluit je aan bij LibraryThing om te posten.

Rogues’ Gallery

Dit onderwerp is gemarkeerd als "slapend"—het laatste bericht is van meer dan 90 dagen geleden. Je kan het activeren door een een bericht toe te voegen.

1wirkman
feb 23, 2019, 6:20 am

On page 75 of the Storisende Straws and Prayer-Books, Cabell speculates on why American literature had produced “no really memorable rogue, with the possible exception of Uncle Remus’s Br’er Rabbit.”

I confess to finding this a bit odd. Tom Sawyer? Huck Finn? Are these not the nation’s premiere rogues?

Or are they too tame? Too Penrod-ish?

Cabell himself tried his hand at a few rogues. His best, I think, is Florian in The High Place. Manuel the Redeemer, of course, can hardly be ignored, and his comrades-in-arms constitute a veritable rogues’ gallery, meeting their allotted dooms neatly in The Silver Stallion. Add to this the nasty pieces of work heading the cast of characters in The White Robe and Hamlet Had an Uncle and Cabell surely could be said to have made a decent effort.

But those are all Old World rogues. His American rogues are somewhat less memorable. The narrator of The Cords of Vanity, of course, has an almost Humbert Humbertiana about him.

Which leads to later American literary rogues. Nabokov’s great creation is classic — though also European, in two distinct ways.

I can think of Jack Vance’s Cugel, off the top of my head. But who else? Myra Breckinridge/Myron? Elmer Gantry?

I must be missing someone obvious.

There are a number of Old World rogues, of course, by J. P. Donleavy and Iris Murdoch and Kingsley Amis, to name three. But.... After the 1924 and 1930 dates of Straws and Prayer-Books, who wrote which great American rogue?

Br’er Rabbit suggests the obvious mid-century example, but from Hollywood: Bugs Bunny.

2Crypto-Willobie
Bewerkt: feb 23, 2019, 10:01 am

Rabbit Angstrom?

Donald Westlake's Parker?

3paradoxosalpha
feb 23, 2019, 10:28 am

In the fantasy field, Cugel is preceded by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

4absurdeist
feb 23, 2019, 11:56 am

Patrick Bateman by Bret Ellis is a great American rogue.

5wirkman
feb 24, 2019, 10:21 pm

I think PBateman is way beyond rogue. No?

6elenchus
feb 25, 2019, 9:46 am

Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang featured one archetype of modern American rogue, and Hunter S. Thompson served up another in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, along with his entire output of gonzo New Journalism.

Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald provide scintillating rogues slumming as private detectives. Similarly, any great con man has to be in the running for rogue: Abagnale's Catch Me If You Can is a good example, though maybe not so much "created" as reported upon.

There must be plenty of examples in the Western and Gangster genres, though here I'm more familiar with the cinematic examples than the literary.

7paradoxosalpha
feb 25, 2019, 10:12 am

Pynchon's Doc Sportello in Inherent Vice is a hippie gumshoe rogue.

8elenchus
feb 25, 2019, 10:43 am

>5 wirkman:

I've not read the book (or seen the movie), but from what I understand of the character I'd agree that a sociopath is beyond rogue.

9wirkman
feb 28, 2019, 12:23 am

I barely remember them now, but the Duke and the Dauphin in Huckleberry Finn are rogues, and of enough character that Twain lifted them from the pages of George Meredith’s Adventures of Harry Richmond. An act of homage/theft.