George Pelecanos wrote:
> Commercially speaking, there has never been a
smarter creation than Travis
> McGee. He is the embodiment of male
wish-fulfillment. No nine-to-five job,
> lives by his own set of rules, resides on a
houseboat, drinks but is not a
> drunk, tall, handsome, good with his fists but not a
bully, etc. All of the
> women McGee sleeps with are built like centerfolds,
and, more importantly,
> most of them conveniently kick before that
bothersome issue of commitment
> comes to the forefront (one mystery store in New
York actually has an
> annual Travis McGee Always the Bridesmaid Never the
Bride Award in honor of
> the latest murdered female companion to a male
series character). So McGee
> is the man we--okay, most of us--would like to see
when we look in the
> mirror. And, yeah, I love the books. I even named my
old dog, Travis,
> after McGee. And that dog was a bitch.
True enough about him being a male wish-fulfillment creation,
but....well, it's been a while since I've reread them, but I
remember a definite feeling of loss and depression at the end
of a number of the novels. McGee has all the attributes of
male wish-fulfillment, but I think MacDonald was a cannier
writer than that. There's a definite feeling, when the good
women go away, that McGee is alone again, and that that's not
something that is a good thing. And the Lonely Silver Rain
has an elegiac feel to it, as if both MacDonald and McGee
knew that their time was over.
jess--JMO, of course
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Apr 2001 EDT