The news of author Robert Parker’s death Tuesday was not likely to send shock waves rippling through the media. His passing did not compete for our attention or incite intrigue or outrage like the stuff that, for better or worse, shapes our sense and sensibility in these times. It did not linger amidst headlines for days on end, thirsty for updates, like the sudden deaths of ‘greater’ luminaries in our midst, from Anna Nicole Smith to Heath Ledger to Michael Jackson; it posed no threat of perversely wresting cable news network airtime from the clutches of important issues like the election in Massachusetts, health care reform or the tragic situation in Haiti. In fact, by the time I posted this, the whole of the story’s energy - which so far as I saw was mentioned only on The Huffington Post - had flared up and flashed out of a world where even the most commercially successful writers enjoy a measured fame at best, usually dependent on some other medium to pick up the slack. But for fans of contemporary crime fiction, the unexpected death of Parker - author of the Spenser detective novels, amongst others - at the age of 77, surely packed a wallop as jarring as any right cross his famed P.I. protagonist could unleash.
And for me, it felt like a deeply personal loss.
The first Spenser novel, ‘The Godwulf Manuscript’ – was published in the early 1970s, around the time I was born. This began a literary franchise that would span more than three decades and three dozen books, right up until – it is said – the day…the moment, in fact…Parker died, sitting at his desk. He was nothing if not prolific, and though he wrote other novels, tried other heroes on for size, he never abandoned Spenser completely.
The series’ popularity reached its zenith in the 1980s, with the creation of a television show, ‘Spenser: For Hire’, starring Robert Urich, and it was during this period that I was introduced to Robert Parker’s world. I’ll never forget my father – hoping to assuage the anxieties of his fish-bellied 7th grade son, who had just begun to think, as most people do at that age, ‘what the fuck is wrong with me…??’ - handing me a copy of ‘Early Autumn’.
“I think you’ll like it,” he said, “I think you’ll relate to it. When you’re finished, we’ll discuss it.”
I possessed neither the presence of mind nor the self-awareness to understand what he meant at the time, and resisted the book at first, on principle. Nothing my dad had to offer was anything I needed then. Neither his stated belief that I’d ‘like it’ nor his desire to ‘discuss’ it afterwards (yikes…) struck me as a good sign, and his suggestion that I’d ‘relate’ to it…well, what the hell did that mean?! The book would prove to be embarrassingly irrelevant to anything even remotely connected to my world, I was certain, and I’d have to somehow smile and conceal this fact when he eventually came looking for my book report. Thus for several months, in an act of not only defiance but utter denial, ‘Early Autumn’ floated beneath my bed in a roiling sea of video game cartridges, Beatles records, Garfield collections, dirty magazines, dirty towels and dirty socks.
Eventually though, I picked it up. I don’t know why; perhaps I was worried about hurting his feelings, or spurred into action by his repeatedly asking about it. I only know that I read it straight through, in just about one sitting; and when I did, nothing was ever the same again.
That which made the character of Spenser popular with readers is not hard to understand, really. Parker was a superb story-teller…just a damn good writer. He had a way of blending his compelling attention to detail with characters and storylines that were of tremendous emotional import, and seasoning the concoction with satisfying amounts of requisite humor and action. Though it is no secret he borrowed heavily from crime fiction predecessors, notably Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Parker did it differently; at least, I’ve always thought so. There are some who say he didn’t do it differently enough; that, in fact, he borrowed too heavily. But if that be the case, I contend that if nothing else, he carried on a first-rate tradition in first-rate style.
Spenser was a sophisticated thug, a walking GQ article in many ways; he was a gourmet cook, an avid reader, a quoter of poetry, a connoisseur of everything from good clothes to good food to good beer. These enhanced sensibilities gave him a sharp wit that he wielded as readily as he did his fists or gun, with the intent of both perplexing his adversaries and pissing them off.
But Spenser also worked out. He was an ex-boxer, an ex-cop. He knew things, but he’d lay the smack down in a heartbeat, and do it well. Perhaps no other character in literature was so deceptively deserving of the phrase ‘open up a can of whup ass’ as Spenser.
At the same time, he was a hopeless romantic. The sole recipient of this abiding love, the singularity in his life, was Susan Silverman. Beyond Susan, he had a small coterie of people he could rely on as he plied his trade, from fellow cops to ex-lovers to Hawk, his sometimes mysterious side gun who, like Spenser, was not always what he seemed, although far less complex a character - in terms of what he would and would not do – than Spenser himself.
This world, conveyed through Parker’s carefully detailed prose, was fairly dazzling to the likes of me at twelve. So it was with countless readers, but there was something else about the Spenser mystique that resonated with me. In fact, it very much shaped the person I would grow up to be.
Spenser knew how to be alone.
For most of my young life, I had felt ill-at-ease with myself and not sure why. Overstating it cannot help but come across histrionic, so I will dispense with details and summate that I knew from an early age that I was different. I didn’t know in what way, or to what extent, only that I was alone a lot, and that at twelve, taking my first steps into adolescence (when everything is histrionic) I hated it. By 7th grade, loneliness was quickly becoming an untamed live wire that brought anger and anxiety to me in equal portions, and all the psychological clichés became present as a result: resentment of people around me I deemed as more fortunate, a burgeoning self loathing, a persistent restlessness and dissatisfaction with things, despair at the new social pressures that had befallen everyone my age, seemingly overnight. One day we were all playing together on the playground, or forced to anyway, the next a well-defined social strata had formed with no intervention from parents or teachers. To make matters worse, I was stuck in a netherworld, suffered a form of middle child syndrome amidst all the new cliques. I was not the LAST kid to get picked for dodge ball in gym class, but I was not the first either. I was not cool enough to sit with the well-dressed and well-coiffed kids at lunch (deftly weaving new concepts like dating, dances and attendant drama into their lives), but was simultaneously stricken with a deep disdain for the true nerds and geeks in the cafeteria (huddled at their table in the corner, picking their noses, sweating and being boring, weak and lame).
‘What the fuck is wrong with me…??’ indeed.
Robert Parker’s novels put all of that into perspective, because Spenser was different too. He had the same kind of duality in his personality, which is why he could kick someone’s ass and do it quoting lines from literature that would otherwise lie in darkness were it not for English grad students, and why he was alone a lot of the time. For everything else he was that contributed to a suitably dynamic leading man, Spenser was nothing if not comfortable spending time with himself - not so much because he had to as he wanted to...or preferred it, or saw no other way and was thus okay with it. It was Parker’s version of the ‘loner’ mystique that Chandler had lent Marlowe in the 40s and 50s. I was not familiar with Raymond Chandler or Philip Marlowe when I was twelve, knew nothing of the parallels. I only knew, by the time I had finished ‘Early Autumn’, that I wanted to read more. My dad never got his book report; we never ‘discussed’ anything. But he did get my enthusiastic request for more Spenser novels. I was happy to learn that there were a lot of them, and I began to devour them with a sense of both hunger and greed. I wanted to be Spenser, not only for his more dashing attributes, but for what I felt was a kindred spirit.
When Spenser was alone, when the storyline took him away from Susan, or Susan away from him, he would sit and consider the street light at the end of the block, the way it illuminated certain objects or twinkled through the high wind-tossed branches of trees. He would watch a young couple making their way down the sidewalk in the gathering dusk and contemplate their lives, as they related to his own. He watched shadows bend and stretch in the sunlight, watched traffic cruise past, listened to sounds, absorbed the world bustling past him with a prescribed focus. Parker repeatedly made a point of the fact that Spenser thought; he considered, he pondered.
That’s it! Spenser pondered everything. And if pondering produced no answers, then he made up his own answers, he philosophized…or at the very least, joked. And these thoughts, however they played out and wherever they led, were reliable distractions, time and time again, from loneliness. And that’s what I could do, I realized; that’s what I was good at. When you’re alone, whether by choice or circumstances beyond your control, you have two options: you can fear, or you can ponder. Spenser pondered, and I loved, absolutely loved, that about him.
In one novel, I cannot now remember which, someone asks Spenser why he learned to cook. He answers (and I’m paraphrasing), ‘At some point I realized I’d spend a lot of my life by myself, and to me there’s nothing more depressing than the thought of some guy sitting alone in his apartment eating Chinese out of a carton. I learned to cook for myself.’
What a fantastic concept, I thought! To ready oneself to be alone! To treat oneself as company – company worthy of cooking a great meal for, or engaging in discussion. This philosophy became the yardstick by which I measured myself as I navigated the white water of high school and early adulthood. Self reliance and autonomy, which is the theme of the novel ‘Early Autumn’, became watchwords. It was a lifestyle unto itself, a method by which I could achieve the Catskill eagle in my soul that Melville writes of in ‘Moby Dick’, which soars high and then swoops down, but does so in the mountains, so it never flies too low. Not surprisingly, this is the title of another Spenser novel - ‘A Catskill Eagle’ - one of Parker’s best.
I don’t consider myself the loner I used to; at least, I don’t brandish the mystique as my calling card. I don’t like the thought of being an island; I like people, for the most part, cherish the friends and family I have. But the duality of my personality has only strengthened over time, taken on adult versions of cliques people still scramble to gain access to and identify themselves by. What were once the cool kids at one table and the geeks at another in the cafeteria, have become the liberals and conservatives, red state and blue state, the Louis Vuitton and Wal-Mart, the listeners of NPR and watchers of football, the arts and croissant crowd and the monster truck rally folk, the fierce patriot and the expatriate. I love and hate them both; I want to be each, and am thankful I’m not the other on a day-to-day basis.
For a variety of reasons, all of which are subtle and psychological, this is a recipe for solitude. And solitude all-too-often precipitates loneliness. And when it comes, I still practice the Spenser method. It still brings me great comfort to ponder. It keeps me grounded, upbeat, virtually invulnerable to loneliness, or at least able to open up a can of whup ass on it (nearly) every time it comes skulking around. Pondering still makes silence a time for contemplation, rather than fear. Through my life, it has helped make loss - of friends, of women, of jobs, of time, of whatever - bearable to be able to sit and stare and absorb the world. Maybe everyone feels this; but I learned it from Spenser. Though I have not read a Parker novel for a while, and have, to a certain extent, outgrown them as a reader, they have left as indelible a mark on my psyche as anything I've read, or any other form of entertainment I’ve come across.
That this resonant voice has fallen silent, pains me greatly.
Calling my dad to inform him of Parker’s sudden death was strangely emotional. They are almost exactly the same age, and the significance of this fact – if only superstitious until the moment something happens – was lost on neither of us.
“Those books were a big part of my life growing up,” I reminisced, “they shaped me.”
He shocked (and relieved) me by replying, “And made you a better person, no doubt.”
That was all we said about it, but I was satisfied, and I like to think he was too. It took a quarter century, but we’d finally had our discussion.
