A few comments in defense of JDM:
I agree with the observations that Travis McGee has not aged
well. But perhaps that's a significant part of what makes the
series so fascinating for a reader my age. I grew up on the
East Coast in the 60s with a WASP father who was a McGee
contemporary, who worked in the intelligence community, and
who had friends who reminded me of Meyer. Getting inside
McGee's head lets me know the mindset of that era in the same
way that Simenon (and Nicholas Freeling) give the reader
insight into the French middle class. The simplistic attitude
toward women? Well, that was the way most men thought in the
60s. I can't fault MacDonald for not guessing that would
change. Same with MacDonald's preachy pronouncements
like:
"Florida can never really come to grips with saving the
environment because a very large percentage of the population
at any given time just got there. So why should they fight to
turn the clock back? It looks great to them the way it is.
Two years later, as they are beginning to feel uneasy, a few
thousand more people are just discovering it all for the
first time and wouldn't change a thing. And meanwhile the
people who knew what it was like twenty years ago are an
ever-dwindling minority, a voice too faint to be heard." (THE
EMPTY COPPER SEA)
Very heavy-handed. Very John Wayne. But, again, very much of
the times. You see that same wordy style characteristic of
the late 1960s and 70s in the work of Norman Mailer, and even
the early Tom Wolfe. Those were technicolor times.
Speaking of which, If setting means a lot to you, reading a
pile of Travis McGees while in Southern Florida is a
widescreen experience. Perhaps that's why the only McGees to
have disappointed me were the ones in which McGee leaves
Florida (one of the later ones is a try at a James Bond-type
plot, set in New York, and it's downright painful).
Karen
------ Karen G. Anderson
karenand@mac.com
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