Sat 24 Jan 2015
Reviewed by Mark D. Nevins: JOHN D. MacDONALD – The Empty Copper Sea.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
JOHN D. MacDONALD – The Empty Copper Sea. Lippincott, hardcover, 1978. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback, 1979. Reprinted many times. TV movie: as Travis McGee, 1983 (with Sam Elliott & Gene Evans).
Some years back an old friend of mine, now sadly passed on, advised me: “The Travis McGee novels are all pretty much interchangeable — until you get to The Empty Copper Sea, when things really begin to shift.” As I’ve been reading this series in order, slowly savoring each one, I admit I was looking forward to seeing what mysteries Copper would hold.
On a narrative level, the differences are not significant, and in fact, in many ways, the plot of Copper mirrors that of its predecessor, The Dreadful Lemon Sky [reviewed here ]: Trav and Meyer work themselves into the social fabric of a small Florida town (one of JDM’s favorite themes) in order to clear the name and salvage the reputation of a friend who can’t do so for him/herself.
However, in the case of Copper, Meyer takes more of a lead on the investigation, which gives McGee time to … reflect. And mull. And think about his life, and what it all means, and opportunities missed, and what might have been. We’ve seen philosophizing before (readers have written the series off due to a dislike of it), but for the first time the interior monologues seem to be more McGee’s than MacDonald’s — it’s as if McGee is starting to come off the page as a three-dimensional character.
The novel is not slow, but the mood is melancholy, and there is a very different sort of ending [SPOILER ALERT] — the lead female character doesn’t die in the end. So, will she be back in the next episode? And is that one of the real markers of the change in the series’s direction?
Some Travis McGee novels are Superb, and some are merely Good. I’d rate this one Very Good, and am restraining myself from ripping right into Green (hah): I promised I’d only read Travis in warm climates, so it will be late January in Key West.
And, as always, some examples of JDM’s wonderful prose style:
and
If I were King of the World I would roam my kingdom in rags, incognito, dropping fortunes onto the people who are nice with no special reasons to be nice, and having my troops lop off the heads of the mean, small, embittered little bastards who try to inflate their self-esteem by stomping on yours. I would start the lopping among post-office employees, bank tellers, bus drivers, and pharmacists. I would go on to checkout clerks, bellboys, prowl-car cops, telephone operations, and U.S. Embassy clerks. By God, there would be so many heads rolling here and there, the world would look like a berserk bowling alley. Meyer says this shows a tad of hostility.
January 24th, 2015 at 4:37 am
COPPER SEA marks a maturing of McGee and Meyer. I was struck reading it the first time, that it seemed appropriate in hard cover because it was something a bit more than the series had been in paper.
I think in COPPER McGee and JDM deal for the first time with mortality, at least their own, and MacDonald finally stops pretending those observations and monologues aren’t at least as important as the plot.
Not in plot, but in that indefinable feeling it reminds me a bit of Chandler’s THE LONG GOODBYE. That was the book where Marlowe grew up. THE GALTON CASE was the one where Lew Archer and Macdonald grew up, and this is the one where McGee grew up, or at least caught up with his creator. He stopped being a voice and an attitude and became a person.
January 24th, 2015 at 11:16 am
A insightful assessment of all three books, David. Nicely done. Thanks!
I just remembered to add to the top of the review the TV movie based on this one. In my mind’s eye, I think I remember watching it, but the more I think about it, the vaguer the details become. Right now I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t believe I saw it at all. Has any one?
I do recall seeing it offered for sale on DVD at one time on the collector-to-collector market. I’m going to go looking for it again.
January 24th, 2015 at 3:40 pm
I became curious as to when the McGee books started to appear in hardcover, so I looked it up. Some of the paperback originals were followed by hardcover editions, a feat that very few authors accomplished, but the first one to appear in hardcover before the paperback edition was The Turquoise Lament, two books before this one.
January 24th, 2015 at 4:36 pm
COPPER SEA is a breakthrough book in terms of the bestseller list. Like the GOODBYE LOOK for Ross Macdonald it’s the one when everyone else discovered McGee and the critics outside the genre took notice. It was the first to feel as if it had to be a hardback for me. LAMENT and THE LONG BLUE GOODBYE (I think that is the other prior to COPPER SEA) sold almost as well, and JDM always got some critical attention or he would not have made hardcover in the first place, but COPPER SEA was the game changer. After that his books were guaranteed a place on the bestseller list, and they took on a different quality as did McGee.
I couldn’t really get comfortable with Sam Elliot as McGee though he isn’t bad. I don’t know why, but I had a hard time buying him as McGee — maybe it was the mustache. I hated they turned the Busted Flush into a sail boat, not quite sure Gene Evans fit my idea of Meyer, though he wasn’t bad, and overall it felt more like a chance to team Elliot with wife Katherine Ross than a McGee film though it was faithful thanks to Stirling Silliphant.
Mostly it felt like a pilot for a weekly series which I don’t think was a good idea for McGee, turning it into SURF SIDE SIX. I don’t think that format or the tendency of television drama (especially then) to dumb things down and reduce them to the lowest common denominator would have worked for McGee without seriously demeaning and undermining the character. They did that to Nero Wolfe in the Conrad series, and Stout’s books were ideal for television in structure.
I didn’t hate it, but only a couple of scenes linger, including one true McGee moment when he goads a bigger guy into a fight because he knows skill will trump strength. Too many lingering shots of Elliot at the wheel of the sail boat for my taste.
February 28th, 2015 at 9:34 pm
In studying the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald I’ve tried to identify certain characteristics, themes, motifs, images – call them what you like – that crop up frequently throughout the various books. I don’t claim that the following are particularly important or have any special significance or meaning; nor do I say this is a comprehensive list. They are simply some things I’ve noticed in more than one of the novels. Some of these appear in quite a few of the Archers. In time I hope to post the results of reading through each of the books individually while searching for these ‘repeaters’.
http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2014/12/ross-macdonald-characteristics-of.html#.VPJ31tKUc7V