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Tale is as applicable now as it was 50 years ago
Book Review
By Derryll White
MacDonald, John D. (1964). Nightmare In Pink.
It has been a long time since I have read a Travis McGee novel, 50 years or so. The remarkable thing is that John D. MacDonald’s writing still rings true. All this time later we can still see Armageddon approaching, the world faltering and failing. We also still see the luscious babes, the sun bunnies frolicking on the beaches and the predators stalking them. He makes me ponder the usury of age, how men having accumulated power and wealth, prey on the young.
Travis McGee, the shambling salvage artist and beach bum reject of a structured society, brings it all into focus. As always MacDonald pits good against evil, decency against corruption. It is a story that never grows old.
MacDonald is very careful and clear with man and woman relationships. He is always respectful of women. I always learn something from him and think “Oh, I wish I had said that.” And these years later I do say some of those things.
‘Nightmare In Pink’ explores the upper strata of wealth in America – its perils and its power. MacDonald is not particularly kind in his descriptions of abuse of power. It all seems terribly real, as applicable now as it was 50 years ago. That strikes me as sad, thinking that we should have learned more in the elapsed years. Oh well, definitely worth reading. John D. MacDonald does love so well!
****
Excerpts from the novel:
ARMAGEDDON – New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We’re nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won’t snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each other’s throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down.
SEA – Captain McGee. Private cruises. Personalized therapy. And a little twinge of pain when the plane took off, pain for McGee, because she was too close to what-might-have-been. If there’s no pain and no loss, it’s only recreational, and we can leave it to the minks. People have to be valued.
WOMEN – “Mike said you have a strange thing about women.”
“I happen to think they are people. Not cute objects. I think that people hurting people is the original sin. To score for the sake of scoring diminishes a man. I can’t value a woman who won’t value herself. McGee’s credo. That’s why they won’t give me a playboy card. I won’t romp with the bunnies.”
PROGRESS – After those offices, my hotel looked like something designed to be thrown away after use. The old city was being filled with these tall, tasteless rectangles, bright boxes which diminished the people who had to live and work in them. People kennels. Disposable cubicles for disposable people.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
