In Pursuit of Spenser (3 page)

Literary critics, both professional and amateur, have devoted thousands of pages to examinations and analyses of Spenser, but no one could do that as well as the creator himself, so Parker’s profile of the greatest detective character of his era concludes this collection. It is told in first person of course, as all the novels were.

Naturally, and inevitably, Spenser has the last word.

| ACE ATKINS |

MY INTRODUCTION TO
Robert B. Parker came in the form of an aged paperback of
The Godwulf Manuscript
, its cover featuring a .45 automatic, a yellow rose, and bullet holes. “What a Find!” declared the
L.A. Times
. The name—as big as the title—read SPENSER. I got it for ninety-nine cents at a second-hand bookshop a few weeks after the unexpected death of my father. I was a sophomore at Auburn University, where I played football on scholarship, and I was, at the time, absolutely lost on all fronts.

Even before my dad had died, I wasn’t particularly having the time of my life in college. I had coaches who’d changed their mind about my talents and quickly used my father’s death to try to push me from the program and free up my scholarship. I spent a lot of time running laps and doing meaningless and
demeaning drills. I was caught in that time between teenager and man and was still in need of a mentor to help me find my way out. Coaches were useless. My father was gone.

Spenser appeared in typical Spenser fashion: right when you need him most.

When someone asks me what made Spenser the character matter to me, the answer is pretty complicated. As a writer, I learned everything about hero-driven detective fiction—and just fiction in general—from Spenser and Robert B. Parker. Through Parker, I was introduced to the Big Three—Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald, an exclusive group he’s now joined. Spenser would lead me to a career as a crime reporter in Florida, where I often used what Spenser taught me to get people to open up or to dig into internal affairs investigations, con men scams, or cold case murders.

I think about Spenser every time I need motivation to go for a jog or lift weights. I think about Spenser when I travel, pick up a menu, or decide on a restaurant. Or if I’m asked if I would like another drink.
The answer is always yes
.

But as a young man just discovering Robert B. Parker, Spenser first gave me the tools to be the sort of adult I wanted to be. Through Spenser’s smart-assed individualism, Parker let me know that all of those little things that made me different from my teammates and annoyed my coaches were actually okay. He taught me a great deal about tolerance and what was really good about life and how to live it well. He brought me to classic jazz and standards, taught me how to properly dress a salad and core an apple, and instructed me on what kind of beer one should order. You can stumble through life drinking Miller Lite, or you can reach for the Sam Adams Winter Lager. It’s up to you.

Spenser has mentored plenty of lost souls on the page, most notably Paul Giacomin, who’s introduced in
Early Autumn
. The novel is written much more in the style of Hemingway than Hammett and the other Spenser books, a coming-of-age story about a fifteen-year-old caught between warring parents, neither of whom could care less about him. After spending weeks protecting Paul and his mother, Spenser works out an agreement to take the boy and finish the job of raising him. He helps Paul become completely autonomous, not needing approval or direction. Spenser teaches him how to box, how to cook, and how to dress properly.

I was never as lost as Paul, a kid who couldn’t button his coat and was self-medicated on soap operas and sitcoms, completely uninvolved in life. My parents were loving, capable, and had done a fine job. I knew how to dress. I knew how to fight.

But after the early death of my father, I was left with a lot of questions about being a man.

In
Early Autumn
, Spenser provided me with one of those answers when he tells Paul: “The point is not to get hung up on being what you’re supposed to be. If you can, it’s good to do what pleases you.”

That may sound basic, but it was an absolute revelation for me, a young man who, up till that point, was always supposed to be something that other people said was important. I was not so sure. I felt some kinship with Paul, who admits halfway through the novel that he actually wanted to be a dancer. He tells Spenser this in almost embarrassment. For me, talking about wanting to be a writer was almost as tough.

Those of you who aren’t from the South may have a difficult time fully understanding the importance of football
there, especially in my native Alabama. Everyone—no,
everyone
—identifies themselves through their allegiance to either Auburn or the University of Alabama. Children don’t get much of a say in the matter, as they are born into Auburn or Alabama families, much in the same way someone is born Jewish or Catholic. As the son of Auburn’s 1957 national championship team’s MVP, I was expected to bleed orange and blue. Except that I didn’t.

I was expected to believe that playing Auburn football was the apex of my existence, the single greatest thing I would ever do, something I would look back on with misty tears one day while greeting friends with a heartfelt “War Eagle!” Notably, my father, although he worked for the NFL for thirty years, never got sentimental about football. But he did care about it deeply, enough to make it his life’s work, and enough that one of his biggest insults for someone he didn’t like was that they were a “non-athlete.”

Instead, I found I just didn’t care all that much. I liked challenging my body physically and working hard. I liked sacking a quarterback about as much as I loved talking about books, music, and classic movies. But all the pomp and circumstance, the team chants and cheerleading, felt stupid to me. I did not cry after a loss; I only thought of what could be fixed or done better.

You have to understand that my lack of enthusiasm for the football culture would be like an Orthodox Jew not caring about being kosher. It was heresy to some. Spenser let me know that not being a joiner or cheering on the team was more than fine. You could actually read books and enjoy them and still be a tough guy and a good athlete.

I had coaches who thought I wasn’t serious enough about football because I read novels while getting my ankle taped for practice. They’d scoff at me for carrying around a
paperback, as if reading for pleasure was some kind of novelty. Often, that paperback was Parker’s, or Hemingway’s, or Elmore Leonard’s. I learned through Spenser that a man could equally enjoy plays and film and good jazz and kicking someone’s ass now and then. A man was not just one thing. A man could take pleasures in all things, athletic and cultural.

As a teenager, I already had a love of classic film, most notably
noirs
and Westerns. After discovering Parker, I decided to take classes at Auburn on film and screenplay writing. I learned even more about the structure and technique of writing from a professor who I’d later find out had been a star football player at the University of Mississippi.

I began to do more than just watch movies and read books, I dissected them and learned from the masters: Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Peckinpah, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang, and John Ford. (Someday, I’d correspond with Bob Parker about our shared obsession with
Shane
and
The Magnificent Seven
.)

I did the same with music, often digging through the CD bins for music that Spenser liked: Monk and Coltrane, Miles Davis and Chet Baker. Most college students I knew were into disposable Top 40 or those too-earnest college bands. Through Spenser, I found myself drawn to all things good and classic. Spenser tells us that the quality of everyday things makes life worth living. You should also shine your dress shoes, shave carefully, and handle your liquor.

About a year into meeting Spenser, my mom stood in line for more than an hour at a bookstore in Atlanta to get me a signed copy of
Double Deuce
. Through that meeting, I found
out that Bob Parker’s nickname was also Ace, after a Hall of Fame football player who’d been a friend of my dad’s. I could not have been more proud. The first edition Bob signed is one of my prized possessions to this day.

Yeah, I collected rare books, too.

I recently had a discussion about being an athlete who wanted to be more with a friend who’d had a similar situation. We talked about being stranded between two worlds that each wanted us to be one thing. We’d both had professors who were just as bigoted as my coaches, believing the dumb jock stereotypes. They’d either grade me harder or discount me entirely because I was a football player. They could not imagine that a guy who could bench press more than four hundred pounds might actually really dig William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.

It kind of upsets the rules.

Or, as Spenser says in
Early Autumn
: “Because they don’t know any better. . . . Because they don’t know what they are, or how to find out, or what a good person is, or how to find out. So they rely on categories.”

About this same time, I’d tried to gain admittance into an undergraduate creative writing program only to be told the class was too full. I still feel—although I may be wrong—that it had something to do with me being a football player. I was pretty much ostracized on both fronts. Damned if you do . . .

Thank God for Spenser. He basically told me, “Who gives a shit.” And as far as respecting authority, he taught me that you’re a fool if you don’t question it at every turn.

Spenser tells Paul why his father can’t contemplate a more truthful way of defining oneself in
Early Autumn
:

“But he doesn’t really know how to be a good man, so he goes for the simple rules that someone else told him. It’s
easier than thinking, and safe. The other way you have to decide for yourself. You have to come to some conclusions about your own behavior and then you might find that you couldn’t live up to it.”

As Parker tells us, Spenser had played football on scholarship at Holy Cross but wasn’t much on being told what to do or much of a “rah-rah” kind of guy. He left early to join the Army and later work for the Middlesex DA’s Office, or as Bob later put it, “be a cop.” Spenser didn’t last long working in a hierarchy and reporting to others. He wanted to handle situations himself. He liked being his own person—he thrived on it. I understood.

Being a novelist is a lot like being a private investigator. You spend a lot of time studying others. You always keep a bottle in your desk drawer. I don’t think I could do anything else to make a living. Operating under someone else’s rule system never appealed to me.

At Auburn, I was surrounded by a lot of zealous self-proclaimed Christian coaches. Several of them were hypocrites, unrepentant adulterers and alcoholics every day but Sunday. In situations that should have bred contempt and disenchantment, Spenser taught me to only expect more of the same and rise above it. Just because they were adults doesn’t mean they were to be respected and followed blindly.

It’s better to just recognize who you are dealing with and act accordingly. Spenser can share space with a vicious thug or a pompous professor without it changing him. He even finds some enjoyment in watching them work.

I had always had a distrust of authority, but Spenser really
taught me how to laugh at those who try to control others, those who try to rattle and upset whomever they challenge. Nothing pisses off controlling personalities more than laughing at them.

Sometimes this would get me into trouble. Burning through all the existing Spenser books—at the time from
Godwulf
to
Paper Doll
—finely honed my natural smartass talents and increased my confidence to use them in interactions with coaches. These were grown men telling kids they’d never amount to anything and had better just quit now. They wanted to run you down as far as you could go to show who was in control. By using humor (with new confidence, thanks to Spenser), I was able to battle back and gain admiration from my teammates.

My junior year I had a run-in with my strength and conditioning coach, a portly guy who barely stood above five feet and was known for his always-present tobacco spit cup and his sanctimonious prayer meetings before weights. One day, I caught him in a long repose on a bench press, holding his head up with the flat of his hand, inadvertently posing like a centerfold model. Before I thought about it, I said, “Looking sexy today, coach.”