When I wrote about this Child of the Storm paragraph sometime ago I could sense somehow that there was something more about this characterization. Today I literally stumbled upon this: Child of Storm by Henry Rider Haggard . I must admit of not knowing much about the guy so I searched a bit only to find that he was a Victorian novelist that wrote adventure novels most of them located in exotic places (i.e. Africa) the most famous of which was Kings Solomon’s Mines.
Apparently Mr Rider Haggard (apart from having a name which would nicely fit into any Pynchon book) influenced Joseph Conrad quite a bit. Conrad author of Heart of Darkness also wrote The Secret Agent, (wikpedia quote): a 1907 novel by Joseph Conrad, a bleak and darkly comic story of spies, terrorists, anarchists and agents provocateurs of an unnamed foreign power plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th century. It is considered one of the first modern novels dealing with terrorism and espionage. Hmmmm…….
The Secret Agent was a book which influenced the Unabomber. (double hmmmmmmmm….)
Rider Haggard’s main hero was Allan Quatermain (I must admit I jumped as I read Quaternion in the first page I skimmed) who apparently influenced the shape and character of Hollywood heros like Indiana Jones. In wikipedia Rider Haggard is described as dealing with “the themes of power, life, death, reincarnation, sexuality, and fate.” Rings a bell eh?
Is this whole thing a coincidence?
