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March 21, 2006
The lone car parked across the
street has a parking ticket on
it's windshield, which tells me Tomorrow is
that it's Tuesday morning. Dan Leone day. (But I have
a radio show
to do this
Less than a week out of the afternoon.)
commuting life, and I'm
already back to my old ways
of reckoning time.
There are various ways to think about
this dot-dash pattern of my existence...
One is that I work for someone else
for long enough to acquire some
capital, and then I begin "investing And working on
in myself", and go back to developing my own ideas. But for
new skills. Hustling for a me "big"
big score? is just
big enough
Another way of looking at it, though, that I don't
is that I'm "taking my retirement need to
in installments", rather than doing work for
it at the end of my life... someone
else again...
Which brings us to the "Travis McGee"
character, one of the more famous (Though
creations of John D. MacDonald. that's not
really true...
I seem to be the real trouble
re-reading the WASTES is that I'm
first of these after something
at the moment, more than money.)
not for the
first time, but
for the first
time in a long Whose name now seems
time: "The Deep embarassingly like
Blue Good-By". "The Long Goodbye"
(1964)
It's no
exaggeration
to say that
I was
enthralled by
these books
when I was IN_A_BLUE_HAZE
young teenager.
It's rare for me to re-read a
book that I loved and find it
fall flat, but this one gets
pretty close.
There are constant bids at
serious commentary throughout
that seem too shallow to take
seriously; it is, to use an
overused and abused term: Just to give you an idea,
"pretentious". Overwrought. a collection of quotes:
Says things too many times.
Goes on after he's put the DEEP_BLUE_Q
point across.
Style: there's that staccatto
rhythm, and excess of
cleverness that now seems like
a dated sixties affectation.
It reminds of Zelazny's "Lord of
Light"... not to mention magazine
ad copy.
But what I wanted to say, And also, I CYBER_ROOTS
was that in a lot of ways wanted to make
these books brought me the point that
back to humanity... MacDonald Note: he
himself was started
Travis McGee kills, but quite in
doesn't like to kill, influential: 1945
in fact he finds it in the
nauseating, and is We're allowed to cite pulps,
inclined to go on for only Hammet, Chandler, and wrote
paragraphs talking James M. Cain... but until
about the enormity of when you read any modern 1984...
the act. He manages adventure novel, and
to get across the you'll find John D.
*reality* of death. MacDonald's voice.
And myself, when I Possibly, MacDonald
was thirteen, I was ignored because
don't think I quite of his attempts at
got this before I sometimes being positive,
reading these think there because of his
books, and it might are a lot of *earnestness*...
have taken me people who
longer if I hadn't. still Note that:
haven't MacDonald has his
Previously I'd gotten the Travis McGee
been sold on a word. character express
kind of "tough a profound
guy" ideal, a Monsters distrust of
sneer at the value faking earnestness.
of human life -- humanity.
or the other guy's A point
life, at any rate. MacDonald was
sensitive about?
Or perhaps
Example: I had the there's
vague thought that something more
if I wanted to kill subtle there:
someone it would be MacDonald wants
a good idea to do us to see that
it while I was still C.S. Forrester he's not McGee.
legally a minor. calls this the
"callousness of Or maybe there's
Yet another youth". some joke here
example of the about the importance
need to feel Perhaps it's of not being
superior, a not unusual. earnest.
holding above.
And speaking
of "earnestness"
Now the introductions, I am afraid that
which I've saved for last: I must mention
Spider Robinson,
Travis McGee calls himself a with apologies:
"salvage consultant": he is a Robinson is one
last resort for those who of the few to
have been robbed. cite MacDonald
as an influence.
He goes after the thieves
and steals back what was It was perhaps
stolen-- his standard not a good
recovery fee is half the influence.
value of the recovered
property.
He works roughly 6 months
on 6 months off, which he Living
calls "taking my retirment by halves?
in installments", a
live-for-the-moment
philosophy he rationalizes
by professing to believe
that his work is too
dangerous to expect that
he'll reach old age.
BRONSON
He lives on a large houseboat
berthed in Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida, which he won in a This boat is apparently
poker game (a story repeated insanely large. In the
in nearly every story). first novel a dancer friend
of his is working on some
Maybe the idea is that he's choreography in his living
not the kind of person who room. Is that a joke?
would actually buy
something this excessive.
He has doomed relationships with sensitive,
serious women, and consoles himself with
flings with party girls who are just oh so
shallow, leaving him feeling guilty and
degraded about all this, because he is of
course not as shallow and trashy as the party
girls he manages to force himself to have sex You can tell they're
with. trashy by their
southern accents.
But that prefunctory
piece of schtick was
actually relatively Florida, to me at
unusual for it's time... least (and going just
by reputation) sounds
Not only does he feel like a pretty trashy
guilty about killing locale: retirees,
people, he feels sleazy college kids
degraded by casual sex. and obnoxious cops.
I'd guess that in the
There's a certain groping early 60s it still had the
here toward a philosophy of glow of "vacation
sex-as-an-expression-of-love, paradise" about it...
a notion that there's
supposed to be a spiritually
uplifiting component to the
"human sexual act", as opposed
to the merely "animal".
Does that sound obvious and/or trite?
But check the record: I think this idea
was being invented around then... and
one of the early popularizers, if not
inventors, was MacDonald.
Previously, the "why
just not fuck around?" EXCUSES
question had a
different answer.
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