Travis and the Women

John D. Macdonald is one of those writers whose prolificacy is underlined by an intimidating quality. No earth-shaking moral breakthroughs or historical impacts, mind you, he just effortlessly writes books that are really damn readable, which happens to be the hardest thing to do as a fiction writer. The serial character, Travis McGee, is put into a "noir" classification by sexless critics, a genre Travis jumps from whenever he gets a few paragraphs of monologue. He's a happy gumshoe- with demons, sure, and a bit cynical about the tackiness of Florida- but still a guy who loves the act of living, unlike the oversexed sadsacks that pass for noir these days. He's not naturally prone to violence, statutory rape, or any of the dark crimes that usually set apart noir protagonists. No, his integrity is what sets him apart from the "real" world. Travis would counter that it's the "real" world that's useless, with its unreal mortgages and its massive, mysterious salaries. Considering I'm about to disapper from the civilized world for six months, it's not too difficult to figure out who I sympathize with.

If there's one thing that Travis does noir it's his women. When our hero runs into that mysterious gender, they're what we would call "maidens". A pretty broad stroke I'll grant, considering he runs into some that double-cross him, but still maidens. As maidens, they have never brushed paths with home and hearth, or, if they have, their families were taken from them with such brutality that they revert to voiceless children. Travis is with them for a time and then they move on either as whore or as crone. The mother and her panacea for all violence is left behind, not really because Travis avoids mothers but because violence makes for a much more exciting story.

The great thing about Macdonald is that he knows it too. His character knows it, and as Travis grows older this void in his life gets too big to scab over. Life can very quickly get too exciting. Pushing forty, Travis eventually does find his issue, the consequences of a life spent avoiding mothers, and makes good with her. It's too bad he missed a tender period, but as he was stuck in a mystery serial it's not something you could reasonably expect him to go back and correct. You can almost see Travis smirking at both the noir and the "real" world. He's avoided both on a shortcut to what really matters.