Is American Fiction Killing the Tough Guy? By David Granger

Is American Fiction Killing the Tough Guy? By David Granger

Lee Child's Jack Reacher is literature's latest Chandler-esque protagonist. Can he live up this legacy?

Esquire, May 7, 2010

I finished Lee Child's new novel the morning that I read Robert B. Parker's obituary. Parker wanted to be the heir to Raymond Chandler, who was the direct descendant of Dashiell Hammett, who, with the Continental Op, created the only genre of fiction original to America: the tough-guy novel. The American tough-guy novel is distinct from thrillers or procedurals or mysteries because it features an honorable and tragic protagonist — a man driven to do the right thing even though doing the right thing will exact a fearsome personal price. This archetypal character has had legs — the Op, Sam Spade, Chandler's Philip Marlowe on up through Robert Towne's J. J. Gittes, Stephen J. Cannell's Jim Rockford, James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, and Parker's Spenser, to name only a few.

I say that Parker wanted to be the heir to Chandler because while his desire was fierce, his ability proved lacking. His early Spenser novels came close to capturing the despair at the heart of the tough-guy hero, but Parker could not sustain it. Each new Spenser novel was slighter than the last, cheerier, too, and less tortured. For tough guys to be tough guys they must be out of sync with the world in which they find themselves, valuable only because they are more able, more competent, than other mortals. Over time, Spenser lost that.

Lee Child's protagonist, Jack Reacher, is much more like the heir to the Op and Marlowe than Spenser ever was (even if his creator is a Brit). Reacher is a loner, allergic to any lasting human relationship but more than willing to right whatever wrong he wanders into. For some reason, I wasn't aware of Child's existence until about a year ago, and I devoured the 13 Reacher novels in a gulp. A reading obsession is like nothing else, and I raced through them until I ran out. When 61 Hours (Delacorte Press, $28) appeared on my desk, though, I approached it slowly. It was the only unread Reacher in the world. I dragged it out. And I enjoyed it. But it worried me. It was missing something.

As always, Child lovingly obsesses over how things work, whether it's how extreme cold (the story is set in South Dakota in winter) affects the human body or how jet fuel is best conveyed to the bottom of a Pentagon-like structure. And, yes, in this book Reacher is as appealingly misanthropic as ever.

The thing that's missing — one of the things — is physical violence. Reacher is a brawler, and one of the constant joys of these books is the relish with which Child conveys the intensity of hand-to-hand combat. In this book, there is a brief skirmish early and in the last ten pages a violent struggle (with a midget!), but in between, not so much. Reacher simply is not the man he once was — he doesn't fight anymore, he also doesn't fuck, and the central "mystery" of this book's plot was far easier to untangle than ever before.

The evidence of this book suggests that Child had a moment of doubt about his protagonist — it's as though he wasn't entirely sure whether he wanted to write more Reacher novels or move on. If in writing 61 Hours, Child overcame that doubt, if he is indeed well into his 15th novel starring Jack Reacher, let's take that as a sign that Reacher will be spared the decline Parker forced on Spenser.

 

Two Men Who Changed America: 

Hellhound on His Trail (Doubleday, $29), by Hampton Sides

He was prisoner number 416J, an obsessive-compulsive who escaped prison by wedging himself into a bread bin. He then became Eric Galt, a photographer in Mexico, a regular at the brothels. And finally, at 6:01 on April 4, 1968, standing in a musty motel bathtub, Remington raised to his shoulder, he became something else: James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King's assassin.

The Great Oom (Viking, $28), by Robert Love

At the turn of the century, Pierre Bernard introduced yoga to the U. S. He also trained boxers and titillated Manhattan heiresses who couldn't get enough of his stretches and stretching. Then came the kidnapping charges (later dropped) and allegations that he was brainwashing women (not dropped). A hundred years later, your girlfriend still insists that yoga helps "ground her."

http://www.esquire.com/fiction/books/jack-reacher-series-0510