Fletch by Gregory McDonald, chapters 1 - 5

So, I have a decision to make: Should I continue to read Fletch? Because quite frankly it's made out of shit. Well, that's not quite accurate. I've read five chapters and what it's actually made out of is 1970s adolescent boy power fantasies. And being a woman who wasn't alive during the 70s, I'm not sure I'll be able to make it all the way through without straining whatever muscles you use when making expressions of disgust. So, what do we have.

We have Fletcher, who, while dictating his notes to one of those old fuck-off tape recorders at the end of the second chapter, literally refers to himself like this:
"What Stanwyk doesn't realize is that I am the great hotshot young reporter, I. M. Fletcher of the News-Tribune, who so dislikes his first names, Irwin Maurice, that he never signs them. I am I. M. Fletcher." p.13
Okay, one: Thanks, author, for giving us that information in an entirely natural way. Tying in to one, Two: Nobody speaks like this, at least not un-ironically, and if they do, nobody wants to speak with them. Maybe this is why he has to tell it to his tape recorder. Three: Ugh.

So, in order to make his character relatable and likeable, at least to a certain type of man, we learn several things about good old (young!) Fletch. He was in the Marines and won a Bronze Star but hasn't gone to pick it up because he doesn't care or something. Two, he's been married and divorced more than once and his ex-wives are continually trying to get alimony from him. One of them left him because she feared him after he threw her cat out the window of their seventh floor apartment. This is relayed in such a way that it's clear the readers are supposed to side with Fletch and think she's being ridiculous. She is not. He doesn't like his editor, Clara. This is an interesting bit. It's the bit where the awesome male character who is top notch at his job is being impeded by the female who is (the male informs us without actual proof) incompetent but has her position because she is supposedly sleeping with the boss. Something Fletch never fucking shuts up about. In fact, his harassment of her is constant.

"I love you, too, bitch." "Don't get any crumbs in Frank's bed." "You sound relaxed and subdued, like just after sex." "...how is our editor-in-chief, Frank Jaffe, in bed?" "As a cooking writer. You know nothing about hard news. You know nothing about features. You know nothing about the mechanics of this business." "...you are totally unqualified and, I might add, totally incompetent. Go to bed with Frank if you like..." "...bitch editor." "You don't know what you're doing." "If you do that, Clara, you'll be dead before me. I will kill you. Make no mistake." "Christ, I wish I didn't have to talk to you, you're such an idiot." "Stupid bitch."
Most of that is in one conversation.

Also. Fletch is shacking up with an exploited 15 year old heroin-addicted child prostitute. So there's that.

I can already tell that Fletch is going to be made to look like a genius because everyone else is dumb as a brick. He calls up business offices and doctors and they just give him private information because... he says he needs it.

Also, he steals stuff from the newspaper library which is deserving of death by a thousand papercuts, frankly, and would be the worst of his character traits if he weren't a pedophile.
Have I mentioned he's apparently sleeping with a child? Because that should probably be mentioned multiple times. If it turns out he really is just living with her without any actual sex then awesome. He may be a thieving duplicitous misogynist pet killer but at least he wouldn't be a pedophile.

Oh yeah, what's the mystery. Some guy hires Fletch to kill him because he has terminal cancer and wants to leave the insurance money to his family without going through the pain of his illness. He's rich, it sounds like a story. Whatever. I'm sure there will be intrigue of some sort and Fletch will never be wrong and everyone else is just an idiot who gets in his way because other people are stupid but especially girls. God, it's like some of them might get to be your boss or something but man, it's cool. They're actually stupid bitches who only got the job because they're fucking the boss. You're still the man and way smarter than that stupid whore, guys, just read my Self-insert character and slip into the warm power fantasy of a really weird and gross man.
Also, something about drugs on the Beach. Who is the main supplier? Where is Fat Sam getting them? I'll try to contain my enthusiasm for the outcome of this mystery. Clearly, it's just as interesting as what Fletch cleverly titles "The Murder Mystery." I can see why people hire him to write words down.

Maybe I'll read another couple of chapters just to see if he can top pedophilia as his worst character trait. That's hard-going but I believe in him! He is the great hotshot, after all.

Can not brain today, I have the dumb

Bah. I have to get up for work tomorrow at 5:30 and then leave early to go to an interview. It's a second interview where I get to sell my talents to the director in the hopes that I can somehow gain a regular salary. If that happens I'll actually have to work. Really, really hard. It's an exciting opportunity; I'd be creating a library and I already have a process in mind to do it but wow. From scratch. So yeah.

I'm getting ahead of myself. It's very possible that someone with more experience will get the position. The only thing I can offer (other than my massive intelligence, of course) is my energy and that I'm cheap.

Wait, that doesn't sound right.

So I've finished Night Train by Amis. I don't even know what to think about it. It's difficult to tell exactly what it was supposed to be. Was it a joke? A parody? Noir? It seemed to play the grit straight but it had this attempt at humor running through it and I couldn't tell if it was meant to overturn the street dirt feel or not.

If it was supposed to be a parody he should have set it in a culture he knew well enough to get right. Or made it less rancid. Describing a mindless quiz show the boyfriend is watching, "What do Americans think is America's favorite breakfast? Cereal!... Where do Americans think France is? In Canada!" Ha ha ha. Ha. Ha ha. We get it, Europeans think we're stupid. That's not actually a joke, that's just an insult.

If it was supposed to be noir he should have taken it a bit more seriously; not that noir can't have humor, but his tends to undermine rather than accompany.

The whole thing is very self-conscious. It's like he couldn't forget he was an Englishman trying to write an American story (complete with spelling). You get the distinct feeling of looking at the whole thing with the eyes of an outsider, of watching something foreign. Of the author's unconscious "Those foreigners and their funny ways of doing things" attitude. The slip-ups in dialogue and action become more apparent because of this disconnect between the author's attitude smeared over everything and the story. He uses the slur 'beaners' in reference to Italians, talks about the numerous mafia hits found in rental cars parked in airport lots in what seems to be the Pacific Northwest, and uses the qualifier 'American' in phrases where a native never would. "American juries...American judges..." "Paulie No speaks perfect American..." The main character leaps around from one theory of how and why the victim died to another with no evidence or any hint she should be looking in that direction and goes from speaking like a truck driver to a middle-aged Southern woman.

Put the whole thing together and you get an amateur crime story with bigoted overtones.

Thing is, despite all the (hilarious) badness you can see he's a good author when he isn't pretending to be something he's not. I'll have to try something else by him.

Boy, that was kind of fun. I should read incredibly stupid books more often. It was also interesting. I've read books by American authors set in foreign countries. I should read more books by authors who aren't American that are set in the U.S. just to see what I come across.