The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 1)

Robert B. Parker: An Interview

This is the first of a series of features to be presented in NBMQ on contemporary masters of mystery and suspense fiction. Robert B. Parker has been chosen as our first subject because he is the preeminent hard-boiled detective writer to emerge since the 1970s.

Parker has overcome the limitations of genre fiction. He has achieved recognition among book reviewers and literary critics as a significant voice in American fiction whose characters deal sensitively and realistically with complex moral issues. After earning a Ph.D. in literature Robert Parker worked as a university professor for fifteen years, writing in his spare time. The Godwolf Manuscript, the first novel featuring his series detective, Spenser, was published in 1973; six years and six novels later, Parker gave up teaching to write full time. The publication in 1985 of The Catskill Eagle will be Parker’s twelfth Spenser novel.

The following interview was conducted by phone on January 7, 1985. Parker was preparing for a reception held that evening by the Governor of Massachusetts to welcome the television crew who will be shooting a made-for-TV movie adapted from Promised Land.

NBMQ: You have been called the modern voice of the hard-boiled detective novel. Do you resent, as Hammett and Chandler did, being classified that way?

Parker: No. To say no is a little misleading. I don’t pay much attention to categories, one way or another. I think they are useful — and I mean this in no pejorative way — for everybody but writers. They are useful for critics, librarians, booksellers, and people who have to file and catalogue and organize. When I go to a bookstore to look for a novel by Stephen King, I want to look under fantasy or science fiction or whatever rather than have to go through the whole bookstore alphabetically. But when I write, I’m doing the same process that, say, William Faulkner did. The difference between us is not that I’m writing a hard-boiled novel; the difference is that Faulkner wrote better than I do, and wrote better than I ever will, probably. Because categories are of no real consequence to me, I don’t think in those terms. I neither resent nor not resent them.

NBMQ: One critic has suggested that you are better able to handle serious themes by incorporating them into a mystery novel.

Parker: I think he’s probably right. Whether that would be true of other writers I don’t know, but in my case the mystery form gives me the kind of structure in which I work. I would not be able to explain why that is so exactly, if I were pressed. But I have a sense that it probably is so. Rather than constricting me, the form allows me a kind of freedom. Was it Ross Macdonald who compared the novel to a sonnet in its structure? I don’t have a sense as I write a novel that I am required to do anything because I am writing hard-boiled detective fiction. I suppose that certain common sense decisions have been made — like not to kill Spenser in the middle of the second novel. But those are not artistic; those are common sense decisions.

NBMQ: Ross Macdonald has said the detective story is like a welder’s mask in that it enables the writer to deal with material that is too hot for other contexts.

Parker: I don’t think so, but it may be. He spoke very beautifully about detective fiction. But I’ve always found it a little hard to figure out what he meant by what he said. It’s one of those nice quotes that sounds good. He also said the detective was so thin that you could barely see him; that he was interested in other people. When I read Macdonald I am interested in Archer much more than the other characters. It always seemed to me that the novels were about him.

NBMQ: The term “hard-boiled” is abused so much today that it has almost lost its meaning. And yet, certainly there is a hard-boiled tradition at work. The influence of Hammett and Chandler is obvious.

Parker: Oh, hell. Hemingway was of the hard-boiled tradition. It doesn’t have to be about a detective to be hard-boiled. It’s in many ways the post-World War I tradition of American fiction. There is a kind of hardboiledness to The Great Gatsby.

NBMQ: What have you brought to this tradition to make it different from the way it was when Hemingway and Chandler and Hammett wrote?

Parker: Love. I write about love, and I don’t think any of them did. Much of what I write about is about love. The relationship between Spenser and Susan, the relationship between parents and children, the relationship between husbands and wives. I would guess that the good news is that not many people have been doing that. One estimable person said I do it better than anyone now writing. Another estimable person said that the plots between Susan and Spenser should be sub-plots, but they become major plots and that damages my work. So you can take either one you want. If I have changed the form, whatever that form quite is, I think it’s because of the degree to which I use it as a vehicle to write about love, which certainly not many hard-boiled private detective writers do. There’s not much American fiction about love.

NBMQ: As a trained literary historian, if not literary critic, what do you think of the way the literary critics and reviewers have served you? Have they been perceptive?

Parker: There are different answers to that. I am generally well treated. That is, I generally get reviews which are favorable. I’ve had enough negative ones to know the difference, but by and large, in ten years of publishing fiction I’ve been treated kindly by reviewers, which may be because I deserve to be. That aside, I think that I don’t pay much attention to reviews. I don’t read them. What was it Hemingway said? If you believe the good stuff they say, you gotta believe the bad too. In truth, I do not read the reviews. Dell sends them to me, and I throw them away without reading them. This is not to say if someone called me up and said that there was a feature piece on me in Time magazine I might not whip out and look at it. But generally I don’t. They are of no value to me because I am doing the best I can. If they say I should do something better, they may be right; but I can’t. I’m doing it as well as I can. I never learned anything from a review that was useful to me. Reviews are normally for the furtherance of reviewers’ careen. I’ve done a few reviews, and that’s why I did them. I didn’t do them for the thirty-five dollars someone was paying. All told it seems to me that if you get reviewed on a very large scale, say nationally or internationally, everything that can be said about you gets said. Plots are weak, characters are strong; strong character, weak plots. It’s up to you. Trying to guide yourself by reading the reviews, you’d simply fragment. So I find that reviews are for readers, not for writers. I don’t read them and consequently don’t have a vigorous opinion about how they deal with my work.

NBMQ: What happened to the short story, particularly the mystery short story? Hard-boiled mystery fiction was born in the stories in Black Mask. Now it’s difficult to find a good detective short story. Is it just a matter of markets?

Parker: I think so. It’s hard to make a living writing short stories. There’s damn few markets for them. One reason you don’t find them is because Dime Detective and Black Mask are gone. I think a lot of the people who were writing short stories might be writing episodes for weekly television series now, and making a lot more money at it. Many of the detective series that you see on television — which I also don’t watch, so I can’t name them — are probably the equivalent to some extent of what would have been in Black Mask in the twenties and thirties and forties and up to the fifties, actually. I myself don’t do short fiction because I have no skill at it. I wrote one at the behest of Playboy magazine; Alice Turner insisted. I said No; I really have no skill at short stories. She insisted that I try one anyway. They would give me lots of money and let me dance with a bunny. So I sent one in and they rejected it, thus proving my point.

NBMQ: Did you get to dance with a bunny?

Parker: No. Nothing. Zip. The bunny would have been the kill fee, but no. Then there are all the economic and practical reasons not to write stories. One novel will earn a lot more money than, say, five short stories.

NBMQ: Is The Catskill Eagle a novel-in-progress, or is it finished?

Parker: It will be out in June. I’ve finished it. I’m starting to noodle a new one.

NBMQ: It has been called the “Fat Spenser.” Four hundred pages by contract. Why 400 pages?

Parker: Publishers like big books. Ninety to 100,000 words is what the contract said, I think it will probably come out in print to about 300 pages. But in my final typescript it was 422. A big book, from the publisher’s point of view, is a more marketable book, and it achieves a different audience. It gets a different treatment; it is sold differently by the sales force. The size of the book, from this point of view, makes it strictly a “giant economy tube.” That’s why they wanted it large. I thought it would be interesting to try.

NBMQ: Is this an attempt to break out of the classifications we were talking about earlier?

Parker: Oh, sure. There’s every reason to do that marketing-wise. To some extent, I have already broken out. Valediction was on the Times best-seller list for two consecutive weeks. Thank God for that second week, I have broken out in the way John D. MacDonald did, though not yet as vigorously, and sort of the way Elmore Leonard is in the process of doing, and the way Ross Macdonald did. If you are writing detective fiction, the good news is that it is easier to publish. What was it Chandler said? The average detective novel is no worse than the average straight novel, but the average straight novel won’t get published. Detective novels are genre books, and it is easier to get them published because you can count on a minimum number of sales. There are people who will buy practically every new mystery that comes out, regardless. A publisher can give you a small advance and bring it out and make a small profit without much effort. The bad news is that if you are strictly a category detective writer there tends to be ceiling as well. I don’t know what that ceiling is; it changes — 12,000 copies, something like that. The big book tends to help a writer break out. If you are going to make an unduly successful living you have to break out of that mold — or write a hell of a lot of books, like Ed McBain, who has become an institution.

NBMQ: Spenser has now had twelve adventures (the same number of adventures as in the Faerie Queene, by the way). Do you see any danger of Spenser becoming fat or less interesting to you?

Parker: No. It’s what I do. I will periodically write a non-Spenser novel simply because now and then there are things that I choose to write about that are not appropriate to write about through his eyes, Love and Glory being the most recent example. I wanted a thirty-year love story, and there is no way you can have a thirty-year love story in a Spenser novel. But if I am remembered fondly by literary historians it will be for Spenser. It’s what I do and I would want to do it regardless of whether I needed money, regardless of whether I made the front page of The New York Times Book Review. It is what I know how to do and what I do best. I have no interest in discontinuing it. I won’t stop. No matter what you say I’m going to keep right at it.

NBMQ: Do you miss teaching?

Parker: No. Oh, God, no. I was no Mr. Chips. I went into it simply to find a job that would not require me to put in long hours so that I could write. I did that, got the Ph.D., and found myself teaching nine hours a week, which left a few hours open. I taught so I could write. Once I was able to make a living writing, I stopped teaching. Some people say I stopped teaching a long time before I left.

NBMQ: Promised Land is being made into a TV movie. Who is playing Spenser?

Parker: Actually there is a reception this evening by the governor to welcome the cast and crew before they start shooting. It is starring Robert Urich, who played on “Vegas.” And that’s the only casting we have firmly made. The screenplay is by producer John Wilder and me. He did most of it. I did one revision. I have some title in this process — creative consultant, associate producer, or whatever — which means I can hang around and offer opinions. It’s scheduled to be shot between now and February 5. I hope we get more people in the cast by then. I sat in a little on the casting. It’s scheduled to run this spring or next fall or next spring on ABC. But if we don’t deliver it in time for this spring, it will go on later. It will be a two-hour movie. There may be a series out of it. Nobody’s calling this a pilot, but if it does well and ABC likes it — we have already started to work on the first four episodes of the series.

NBMQ: Are you worried about being spoiled by the glitter of network television?

Parker: No. Fear not. I think it is inappropriate for me to bite the hand that is at this moment feeding me, but you needn’t fear that I will be seduced by network TV.