Escaping the glitter’s routines

Here’s one of my favorite quotes, pretty much my mantra when I flee to the beach to avoid my worldly concerns:

“I am weary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering, top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.”

That’s from Travis McGee, a fictional character penned into life by the late John D. MacDonald. To a dedicated fan of that novel series, Travis’ cynical, insightful, and irreverent wit made him seem more real than most real people are. Well, at least more real than the workaday drones you leave behind when you flee the Big City for Saipan.

McGee lived aboard a houseboat at slip F-18 at Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The marina does, in fact, exist, and I once made a pilgrimage to it. Slip F-18 was marked with a small plaque, and, in my case, nothing else, since I neglected to take my camera.

I tried to build a mental image of McGee there, but all I could envision was McGee on Saipan. Saipan is far more exotic that Ft. Lauderdale, so we do justice to McGee’s romantic, devil-may-care lifestyle.

McGee was a professional adventurer, of sorts, who would enjoy a beach bum life when he had no projects boiling, and who would have all manner of adventures when various capers came his way. He was the ultimate freelancer, a beach and maritime version of a private eye or operative-for-hire.

He had a taste for beautiful, if sometimes troubled, women. He had a distaste for cheesy real estate developers, greedy vulgarity, corruption, and much of the mundane nit-wittery of modern life; but he wasn’t a carping whiner about it. His best friend and sidekick, Meyer, was an economist who, like McGee, was an independent thinker. Meyer’s erudition added some polish to McGee’s sometimes rough-hewn street smarts.

I’m not generally a fan of fiction. In fact, with the exception of the Travis McGee series (21 books), I doubt I’ve got more than 30 novels on my shelves. I hide the McGee collection so people don’t try to borrow them (don’t even ask), but I’m sure the Commonwealth has some Travis McGee fans. McGee adds some Jimmy Buffet seaside zest to the old hard-bitten detective genre.

As for author John D. McDonald, he held an M.B.A. from Harvard, and was also an Army officer in WWII, discharged as a lieutenant colonel.

Though he had the skids greased for success in business life, he instead pursued his interest in writing. He started out by churning out pulp fiction, some of which I’ve managed to buy from used bookstores and, yeah, it was pretty pulpy pulp. As near as I can figure, it was 19 years from his first published piece (1945) to the publication of his first Travis McGee book (1964). He wrote a lot of other books, too, but the Travis McGee series is certainly what he’s famous for. MacDonald passed away in 1986.

McGee’s philosophical soliloquies are famous. Google will point you to various compilations of pithy quotes. I always assumed these were the reason for the success of the series. But just to make sure, I called an old friend who is also a McGee fan.

“Actually, the appeal of the McGee books is the escapism,” said my friend, who pointed out that McGee didn’t have a boss, or a job, or dependents, or any other encumbrances in life. McGee had won his houseboat in a poker match, and he owned his car free and clear, so he only had to work for slip-rental and beer (actually, gin for McGee) money. He was a man who lived by his gumption and reputation, had a cadre of loyal and interesting friends, and, what’s more, lived in a place he found intrinsically enjoyable.

I don’t know about winning a boat, but, aside from that, I’ve known folks on Saipan who have come pretty close to living that ideal.

The books are still easily available in paperback. The list price is often around $8.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written of McGee, but it’s been a few years so I decided to mention the series again. I’m mostly rehashing some earlier observations.

There’s no shame in that, though, since some things, such as the wisdom of Travis McGee, actually wear better as time goes by. After all, the glitter and the routines of modern life are not getting any lighter.