Excerpted from The Minds of Peter Rabe By Rick Ollerman
SEE STARK HOUSE PRESS FOR THIS AND MANY FINE PETER RABE NOVELS
In the same interview with George Tuttle Rabe also states that despite his background in psychology, it has not influenced his fiction “in the least.” Rabe explains that both his fiction and his interest in psychology are independent and merely stem from the “same kind of orientation and interest.”
The fascinating part of this
statement is simply that it is natural for any reader of Rabe’s work with
knowledge of his background to ask precisely that question, as did George
Tuttle. This is because Rabe’s work is so character driven, and his characters
are so flawed, that their psyches, their psychoses and neuroses and thought
processes, all dictate the plots of his novels.
In other words, Rabe’s characters
don’t have mental quirks or attitudes that are used as devices to move the plot
along; rather his characters’ very natures are what dictate the plot. This
exact quality distinguishes Rabe’s work from most of his contemporaries, many
of whom used flaws of this type in much more superficial ways.
For these other writers in the
paperback original world, psychological elements were more a part of the
general themes of their work. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe must be noble
above all else, or as he said in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” “He must
be the best man of his world and good enough for any world. I do not care much
about his private life […]” Marlowe has the code Chandler has given him, and
this code guides Marlowe throughout his stories. Indeed, as Chandler has said,
he doesn’t care much about Marlowe’s life beyond that.
James M. Cain’s or David Goodis’s
protagonists are in more of a psychological rut: they have no intent to cause
the bad things they do, rather they fall into them with eyes wides open,
powerless to stop themselves or alter events in any meaningful way. It’s never
clear whether they’d even want to if given the choice. For the sake of the
story, they simply must march on.
Jim Thompson wrote about some
clearly psychologically damaged specimens, starkly so, prototypical sociopaths
and psychopaths, served up for mass consumption. When we know from the start
the protagonist has certain psychological issues, we know how he will act
throughout the book. The question may be in how far he will take things, or in
what manner he will betray himself or be caught, but psychological elements
infuse the entire narrative.
Rabe’s method of using
psychological attributes is far more subtle. His best protagonists are neither
completely sane nor completely crazy, all good or pure evil, right or wrong,
noble or ignoble. They’re quite often a blend, a combination of contradictions,
made up of psyches not quite working wholly together.
Like James Quinn from The Box, a mob lawyer intent on
splitting the organization he works for in half, siphoning power away from the
incumbent Ryder. Only Ryder won’t take this sitting down and cares nothing for
the precautions Quinn has made should something happen to him. Ryder makes it
happen anyway. His men dope Quinn, seal him in a crate, and send him on a trip
around the world via the hold of a cargo ship. Only Quinn is discovered early,
in the African port of Okar, before he experiences the full level of despair,
or even death, that Ryder intended. It’s clear to the Westerner who takes
charge of Quinn what has happened to him but when he seeks confirmation of
Quinn’s criminal past, Quinn merely tells him he has no record.
Quinn
thought that with no record he was either a very good criminal or no criminal
at all, and perhaps it came to the same thing. He had not been very much
interested in deciding on this because other things meant more to him. Whether
he had been smart or stupid, for example, and here the decision was simple. He
had been very stupid with Ryder, but that, too, was a little bit dim, since he,
Quinn, was here and Ryder was not. Maybe later, more on this later, but now
first things first.
So Quinn gives some thought to what had happened that got him shipped halfway
around the world by his arch enemy, but surprisingly not much. Instead he sets
about finding out who runs the local black market and immediately makes plans
to take it over. A lone man, with no money, friends or resources, only a
compulsion not justified or explained to the reader, only made felt by the
author, is absolutely driven to take over in Okar what he couldn’t back in the
States. We don’t know what happened to make Quinn this way. We wonder at his
audacity, his self belief, and above all what could possibly make a man, any
man, act this way. For Quinn it’s an inevitability; for Rabe it’s another
subtly nuanced “non-normal” protagonist. Quinn is just different.
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