The other news from Massachusetts tonight: novelist Robert B. Parker passed away. He was the writer who brought me as a reader to the private eye genre. The first Spenser novel I ever read was also the first novel I ever read in one sitting. I quickly devoured a dozen more over the next few weeks. These were the first novels I'd discovered that were successfully witty and fast paced.
Now, years later, crime novels are my favorite genre, though I must admit it's been a while since I read one of Parker's.
When a man dies, it is fitting to remember both the good and the bad that man did. And Parker, for all the entertainment he brought to millions, had at least two major shortcomings: racism and ageism.
Parker insisted on putting black characters in his novels, yet he gave the impression that everything he knew about blacks came from movies. I saw Parker at a reading once and someone asked him about the slang terms used by black gang-members in one of his novels. Parker admitted he just made up the slang.
Parker gave his hero Spenser a black sidekick, Hawk, who was supposedly tough but who always served the interests of his white master friend, though we never saw evidence that white friend would do much for him, and Hawk seemed to have no life away from serving Spenser.
Parker's ageism was more severe. Parker's hero, always held up as a model of morality, physically assaulted defenseless teenagers for withholding information, while refusing to harm child-molesters except in self-defense. In Early Autumn, Spenser feels sorry for a teenager who he feels is neglected, so Spenser kidnaps the kid, holds him prisoner in a secluded cabin, and in one scene, strips the child naked -- all of this, Parker assures us, is for the child's own good, beating him into submission so he'll be "raised right."
With sexism, Parker had a more mixed record. In the 70s, I imagine it was rather gender-bending to have a macho private eye who is also a cook (each early novel included a recipe) and Parker avoided much of the misogyny that Mickey Spillaine relished.
Yet Parker also had this strange hatred for feminists. In Promised Land, Parker's Edgar-winner, the villains are a gang of feminist terrorists (!) hell-bent on getting illegal guns to counter "phallic power" (Parker again making up terms to put in others' mouths). In another novel (Catskill Eagle, I think it was) Parker depicts a woman getting pissy when someone addresses her as "Ms." and ranting about how feminism has sentenced her to a life of having to work. (The is a pure example of the "blame feminism" nonsense Faludi unmasked in Backlash.)
Robert B. Parker entertained millions. His fans included even such progressives as Michael Moore and Tom Tomorrow. He gave us mysteries that recognized the moral complexity of the world and cherished the struggle to be honorable.
I have not read Parker in years. I'm sure someone will tell me if his politics improved recently.
But I find myself believing the most tragic thing about his death is that he has lost forever the opportunity to reform.