--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King <abrasax93@...> wrote:
>
> It's the self-pity in JDM's books that bothers me much more than his social commentary. When he gets into that "poor, old McGee" business, as he does in every book, my eyes turn upward. It was as if he wanted the readers to be sure to know that Travis McGee was not an all-powerful James Bond with his feelings completely under control. Consequently, McGee is not in any respect much like James Bond at all... much to the author's discredit financial and otherwise.
--Or not. I suspect MacDonald might well've outsold Fleming, at least up through the '70s and without the benefit of a durable film series to goose sales...and certainly even McGee, Rotarian hippy though he might be, is still a much better-realized character than either Fleming's or Broccoli's Bond. Leaving aside the non-series characters in JDM's other books.
> I still love Heinlein, but, it's true, after STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, his work became ponderously philosophical. Both of these writers, JDM & RAH had a curiously sentimental side to their work which seems to have increased with each new volume.
--Actually, with STRANGER, if not STARSHIP TROOPERS, and the lecturesome tendency was notable as early as "The Green Hills of Earth." And while the McGees might've become somewhat pre-occupied with an older man's concerns with mortality and legacy as well as increasingly preachy, the worse Heinleins became increasingly sentimental about Heinlein himself and his alter-egos. Again, to his disadvantage in this comparison.
Todd Mason
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