[PREV - ON_EDGE] [TOP]
DEEP_BLUE
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
first of these want someting
at the moment, besides 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"
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:
"pretentious". Overwrought. Style: there's that staccatto
Says things too many times. rhythm, and excess of
Goes on after he's put the cleverness that now seems like
point across. a dated sixties affectation.
It reminds of Zelazny's "Lord of
Light"... not to mention magazine
ad copy.
But what I wanted to say,
was that in a lot of ways And also, I
these books brought me wanted to make
back to humanity... the point that
MacDonald Note: he
McGee kills, but himself was started
doesn't like to kill, quite in
in fact he finds it influential: 1945
nauseating, and is in the
inclined to go on for We're allowed to cite pulps,
paragraphs talking only Hammet, Chandler, and wrote
about the enormity of McCain... but many an until
the act. He manages adventure novel seems 1984...
to get across the written in MacDonald's
*reality* of death. 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 MacDonald has his
haven't Travis McGee
Previously I'd gotten the character express
been sold on a word. a profound distrust
kind of "tough of earnestness.
guy" ideal, a Monsters
sneer at the value faking (A point
of human life -- humanity. MacDonald was
or the other guy's sensitive about?
life, at any rate. Or perhaps
there's
Example: I had the something more
vague thought that subtle there:
if I wanted to kill MacDonald wants
someone it would be us to see that
a good idea to do he's not McGee.)
it while I was still C.S. Forrester
legally a minor. calls this the On the subject
"callousness of of "earnestness"
Yet another youth". I am afraid that
example of the I must mention
need to feel Perhaps it's Spider Robinson,
superior, a not unusual. with apologies.
holding above.
Robinson is one
of the few to
site MacDonald
as an influence.
It was perhaps
not a good
influence.
Now the introductions,
which I've saved for last:
Travis McGee calls himself a
"salvage consultant": he is a
last resort for those who
have been robbed.
He goes after the
thieves, steals back
what was stolen, and
returns half the
recovered property to
the original owner.
Living
He works roughly 6 months by halves?
on 6 months off, which he
calls "taking my retirment
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.
He lives on a large houseboat BRONSON
berthed in Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida, which he won in a
poker game (a story repeated This boat is apparently
in nearly every story). insanely large.
In the first novel a
dancer friend of his
is working on some
choreography in his
living room. Is that
a joke?
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 couse not as
shallow and trashy as the party You can tell they're
girls he manages to force himself trashy by their
to have sex with. southern accents.
But that prefunctory
piece of schtick was
actually relatively
unusual for it's time...
Florida, to me at
Not only does he feel least (and going just
guilty about killing by reputation) sounds
people, he feels like a pretty trashy
degraded by sex with locale: retirees,
random women. sleazy college kids
and obnoxious cops.
There's a certain groping I'd guess that in
here toward a philosophy of the early 60s it
sex-as-an-expression-of-love, still had the glow
a notion that there's of "vacation
supposed to be a spiritually paradise" about it...
uplifiting component to the
"human sexual act", as opposed
to the merely "animal".
Does that sound obvious?
But check the record:
I have a feeling it was
being invented around
then...
Previously, the "why
not fuck around?" EXCUSES
question had a
different answer.
--------
[NEXT - WASTES]