On 25 January 2006, Doug Bassett wrote:
> As is often the case with writers, the genre
restrictions that the McGee
> series imposed actually helped JDM out tremendously.
JDM had a lot of
> oddball notions about sex, for instance, especially
in the late fifties
> and through the sixties. (They come off as sort of a
Puritanically
> Playboy thing, if that makes any sense.)
A good description!
> When they come out of McGee's mouth, they're
interesting, because
> they're embodied in a character that has a specific
life history,
> setting, point of view, etc. These notions make him
seem more real, more
> individual. Detached from the reality of McGee,
though, they just seem
> pretty goofy, especially when you meet up with them
again and again in
> the most improbable places.
I think of JDM's work as one body, with the same concerns and
themes and ideas and certainly style running through all his
books. McGee's one of the most memorable characters around,
and I think of him as you do, but I still see the McGee books
fitted in with all the others--literally, in my case, because
they're all lined up on a shelf--with the same person clearly
behind them all, saying what he wants to say, but in
different places and ways. A McGee book is a JDM book
first.
> I'm writing this on the sly at work, and as such
don't have my books
> around me, but I'd certainly toss THE DAMNED,
CONTRARY PLEASURE, CANCEL
> ALL OUR VOWS, CLEMMIE and THE BEACH GIRLS in that
hopper, off the top of
> my head.
I think I've read half of those but I can't remember the
stories from the titles! I do remember CLEMMIE was awful. As
you say, many of the good ones are of a type, with a business
background, and then there are the soapier multiple
character/multiple viewpoint ones, like the artists' colony
in Mexico or the movie star murder at a cabin in the hills.
I've sent brief reviews here of most of the ones I've read,
and I'd have to check them to see what I thought. I just
don't remember them well enough. He wrote a lot, and they
blur together in my mind, and the Earnest Everyman doesn't
help.. What sticks in my head is a picture of JDM each day
crafting stories that are very hard to put down. He arrived
at art through hard work.
I'm reading the third-to-last McGee right now, FREE FALL IN
CRIMSON, and I'll send a note when I'm done.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : www.miskatonic.org : www.frbr.org
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