Line #1 Literature/TallTaleAmerica

Context Literature / TallTaleAmerica

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1	''Tall Tale America: A Legendary History of Our Humorous Heroes'' is a collection of American {{Tall Tale}}s written by Walter Blair in 1944. Includes exaggerated accounts of RealLife historical figures like UsefulNotes/DavyCrockett, Jim Bridger, and UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus as well as completely fictional heroes like Myth/PaulBunyan, Pecos Bill, and Alfred Bulltop Stormalong.
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3	Unlike most Tall Tale collections, there are subtle strands weaving the tales together so that they form a single SharedUniverse history of the United States. Aside from a shooting match between Mike Fink and Davy Crockett, there aren't any real crossovers, just mentions along the lines of: "Along about the time Paul Bunyan was developing lumbering to a high point up north, down in Texas Pecos Bill was doing likewise for the cowboy business."
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5	!!These stories provide examples of:
6	%%* BadassBoast: Mike Fink is fond of these.
7	%%* CoolBoat: Stormalong's ''Albatross''.
8	%%* DidYouDie: Inverted with Jim Bridger. See UnreliableNarrator below.
9	%%* ItRunsOnNonsensoleum: Just about everything Febold Feboldson and Jim Bridger do, as well as Myth/PaulBunyan during his scientific industrialist phase.
10	* MiseryBuildsCharacter: The main theme of the book. The very first paragraph says, "When it comes to raising up heroes, there's nothing under the sun that's as helpful as hardships. This is because the way a man gets to be a hero is by overcoming hardships."
11	%%* TheMunchausen: Jim Bridger.
12	%%* TheSavageIndian: Mike Fink, UsefulNotes/DavyCrockett, and Jim Bridger spend some time killing these. The animals they fight tend to get treated with more respect.
13	%%* SerialEscalation: It's a collection of {{Tall Tale}}s; this trope is sort of the whole point.
14	%%* TallTale: The genre.
15	* UnreliableNarrator:
16	** In the bibliography (titled "Proof") the author claims that, [[DirectLineToTheAuthor in preparing the book]], he's "fixed up fact after fact to make it truer than it ever was before."
17	** Jim Bridger (a.k.a. Old Gabe) is one of these in-story. His string of anecdotes about the amazing things he's seen and done ends with him describing a fight he had with a nine foot tall Indian.
18	--->''"Good heavens!" says the tenderfoot, standing up in his excitement. "I do not see how you survived!"''
19	--->''Old Gabe looked at him, even sadder than before. "I didn't," he said. "That dratted Indian killed me. Time to turn in."''
20	* WouldntHitAGirl: Mike Fink wins his shooting contest with UsefulNotes/DavyCrockett when he shoots a comb out of his wife's hair. Davy could have matched him by shooting the other comb, but he refuses to point his gun anywhere near a woman.
21	%%* WeirdWest: Pecos Bill is the most obvious example, but many of the Paul Bunyan stories as well.

Context Literature / TallTaleAmerica