WHO IS TRAVIS McGEE? Taking his retirement in chunks from monies earned doing "salvage consultation," Travis McGee is the Robin Hood of the Florida peninsula. Tanned, toned, and virile, McGee makes his living by retrieving ill-gotten gains and splitting them with the rightful owners when going through legal channels isn't an option. McGee's credo for his work: "half is better than none."These daring quests provide the plotlines for the McGee books. However, the real pleasure of McGee's colorful world comes from his inner monologue. Over the span of his adventures, McGee observes and comments on nearly every aspect of an ever-changing America. He also provides insight on the wonderfully fleshed-out characters he meets. More than simply finding the key to a mystery, McGee takes readers on a journey of human emotion and interaction. And, more than McGee's ability to bed down women, or beat down foes, the pleasure in reading a McGee tale stems from his pilgrimage of self-awareness.
McGee's faithful companion on this sojourn is his neighbor at the Bahia Mar, Meyer. A swarthy, larger-than-life economist, Meyer acts as McGee's counsel, sounding board, confidant, and dearest friend. Most often, the appearance of Meyer framed McGee's crusades though several times Meyer accompanied McGee and would put himself in harm's way.
As with all long-running characters, McGee comes with an assortment of accoutrements. Like better recurring characters, McGee amounted to more than his trappings. As it takes more than a cigar, raincoat, bloodhound, and Pugot to be Columbo, it takes more than a houseboat (The Busted Flush), converted Rolls Royce (Miss Agnes), Meyer, and glass of Plymouth gin over ice to be McGee. When trying to bring McGee to Hollywood, screenwriters have yet to capture, or notice, the complexity of McGee as the modern day white knight.
I wish I was feeling more up to it to keyboard down (as opposed to pen down) just how important Travis McGee is to a feeling of "You are not alone" for me. The wiki page on Travis would do only so much in describing him, passing over the bare superficiality of the beach bum,
His business card reads Salvage Consultant, and most business comes by word-of-mouth. His clients are usually people who've been deprived of something important and/or valuable (typically by unscrupulous [and sometimes also legal] means) and have no way to regain it lawfully. McGee's usual fee is half the value of the item (if recovered) plus expenses, and those who object to such a seemingly high fee are reminded that getting back half of something is better than nothing at all. Although the missing items are often tangible (e.g., rare stamps, jewels, etc.), in several books McGee is asked to locate a missing person; in one, the stolen property is a client's reputation. In several instances, he shows a marked propensity to exact revenge, usually for the ill-treatment or death of one of his few real friends.
While outwardly a playboy who goes through a long string of female companions over the years, McGee is honest & cynical enough to understand what this says about himself. This is a part of his introspective nature that frequently appears throughout the series, with observations about society around him, with particular notice paid to the changing Florida environment.
Yes, I know that Playboy bit caught your eye. It does initially, to most. Another homage by a fan.
I re-read a couple McGee mysteries just recently and McDonald’s writing has held up. McGee’s relationship with women won’t pass any political correctness tests today, but I love how the women he encounters can speak in complete, compound, even complex sentences that add up to whole paragraphs:
She wrenched around to face me, her mouth stretched into ugliness. "And what the hell do you know about relationships? Symbiotic! Limited contact with reality! How could you even pretend to recognize the intellectual position? Oh, you have your lousy little vanity, Mr. McGee. You have a shrewd, quick mind, and little tag ends of wry attitudes, and a short of deliberate irony, served up as if you were holding it on a tray. And you have the nerve to patronize me! You have all your snappy little answers to everything, but when they ask the wrong questions, you always have fists or kicking or fake superior laughter. You are a physical man, but in the best sense of being a man, you are not one-tenth the man my brother was. " Her eyes went wild and dazed. "Was," she repeated softly/ She had sunk the barb herself, and chunked it deep, and she writhed on it. A Purple Place for Dying, p. 71McGee’s life was one I’ve always envied. Life onboard the houseboat The Busted Flush. Working only enough to take his retirement a small piece at a time. Beautiful women going in and out of his life. A true friend and Watson in next door neighbor Meyers. The life, I suppose, we all dream about but would probably detest were we actually in it. No children or grandchildren in McGee’s world as I remember.
Salvage consultant. Recoverer of misplaced goods. Ladies' man. Cynical knight errant. Colourful TRAVIS MCGEE docks his yacht, The Busted Flush, a 52-foot barge type houseboat with twin diesels, at the Fort Lauderdale marina, and takes his retirement on the installment plan. It's all financed by his job as a "salvage consultant." What he actually does is recover missing or stolen goods for half their value. Along the way, he invariably fixes a broken heart or two. He's big on therapeutic sex, is our boy, Trav.
But it is not just about McGee's little black book either.
Salvage consultant, beach bum, tarnished knight errant...and slut! It's no secret that John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee got around. But someone actually took the time to sit down and compile a list.
According to Jay Pearsall, in his delightful book, Mystery & Crime: The New York Public Library Book of Answers, in the twenty-one McGee books "there is reference (or strong evidence of) ol' dawg Travis sleeping with around fifty-three women -- plus a few 'ladies.'"
In the words of far better writers than me, from the Washington Post (must read)"In a man's home you live by his code. It does not have to be typed out and glued to the guest suite door. He did not want me to to kick his dogs, overwork his horses, bribe his servants, read his diary, filch his silverware, borrow his toothbrush, or lay his wife." Travis in A TAN AND SANDY SILENCE, p.31.
"A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else... Only a woman of pride, complexity, and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave. I love you can be said only two ways." Travis in THE DEEP BLUE GOODBYE, p.24.
"One good way [to detect poisonous females] is to watch how the other women react... Just the way, honey, a woman should be damned wary of a man other men have no use for." Travis in BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD, p.27
[Re assuming an identity] "People take you at the value you put upon yourself. That makes it easy for them. All you do is blend in. Accept the customs of every new tribe. And you try not to say too much because then you sound as if you were selling something... Sweetie, everybody in this wide world is so constantly, continuously concerned with the impact he's making, he just doesn't have the time to wonder too much about the next guy." Travis in BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD, p.85.
"I have caught about every kind of body louse a bountiful nature provides. And I have yet to contract a case that did not respond immediately to plain old vinegar... It kills the crabs and kills the eggs, and the itching stops almost immediately." Meyer in A TAN AND SANDY SILENCE, p.230.
[To disguise your handwriting] "Merely hold the pencil as straight up and down as possible, use all capitals, and base them all on a square format, so that the O for example, becomes a square, and an A is a square with the base line missing and a line bisecting it horizontally. No handwriting expert can ever make a positive identification of printing done in that manner, because it bears no relation to your narmal handwriting." Travis in A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD, p.64.
For my money, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee is one of the great characters in contemporary American fiction -- not crime fiction; fiction, period -- and millions of readers surely agree. There are, as is announced across the top of each Fawcett Crest paperback volume in the series, "32 Million Travis McGee Books in Print!" Most of the other crime novels that MacDonald wrote over his long and astonishingly prolific career have been consigned to out-of-print oblivion -- in many cases most undeservedly so -- but Travis rolls along, keeping MacDonald's memory alive and reminding us that he was a far more accomplished and important novelist than is generally recognized.
But honestly, there is so much more to Travis McGee because he appeals to the bum inside all of us. The WHY McGEE question can only be answered one way. Pick up one of those coloured fawcetts. And then try to understand where does Travis fit in you. Trust me. There is just no one like him.
I love it when I encounter real treasures in trash culture. A country station playing Conway Twitty's wrenchingly wistful "Crazy in Love". A motel restaurant in Crescent City, decked-out in plastic and gilt decor, serving the tastiest prime rib in memory. Tuning in to The Simpsons and finding the best social satire on the tube coming out of those cartoon mouths.
About a year ago a friend gave me a truly tacky-looking 1960's paperback and suggested I not judge the book by its cover. Once I got into it, I discovered amazingly excellent writing, with little gems of wisdom, humor, and compassion casually slipped-in among the preposterous and inevitable sex, murder and mayhem. Classy trash! A beach book for intelligent readers! John D. MacDonald's insights on issues like environmental degradation, overpopulation, irresponsible development, and mindless materialism are as urgently relevant today as they were thirty years ago.
The basic framework of a Travis McGee story is this: Travis, a brawny combat veteran, is a self-described beachbum and salvage expert. By "salvage" he means he will retrieve something of value that was taken from its rightful owner, something the victim can't get back by himself, and keep half as his fee. He lives in a houseboat at Fort Lauderdale, drives an old Rolls-Royce which someone had converted into a pickup truck, and works only when he feels like it or when he can't refuse doing a favor.
His best friend and next-berth neighbor is Meyer, a renowned economist and goldmine of knowledge and insight. With these two characters, the author manages to find a way to say whatever he wants about humankind and the state of the world. (Click on "Selected Quotes" for some examples.)
For me the best thing about Travis is that he embodies the ideal of independence and is the very opposite of a Company Man. If MacDonald were around to write the series today, he would likely expand on that theme, comment on current and passing management fads, and make sad and ironic observations on the ways organizations are dealing with their people.
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2 comments:
I have read (and re-read) the series. Always a joy. Thank you for posting and reminding me of this.
You're welcome Don. Always a pleasure to welcome aboard old friends over the Busted Flush
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