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I never knew you connected so much to Jim Rockford. It's uncanny, because I also have intense feelings about The Rockford Files, in my early 20s, but perhaps it was identification with the actor more than the character. I remember my routine of classes in the morning, afternoon tv with the likes of the Rockford Files and junk food, then off to a shift for an evening retail job. I don't think Garner ever strays far from channeling a figure like Rockford when he's doing Maverick or his role in Support Your Local Sheriff, for example. In my own journey through masculinity awareness and oblivion, I was looking for male models of resilience and autonomy at that age. Another pole was Ian Curtis and Ernest Hemingway. Garner also happens to look a little too much like my father did in the 1970s. I intimately understood how it was possible David Bell (the protagonist of Don DeLillo's Americana) had mirrored his own imago on Burt Lancaster. Jim Rockford as imago at 40, versus 20?

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