From the Gregg Press edition, copyright 1981
INTRODUCTION
The Outfit (1963) was the third Parker story to be
written and the fifth to be made into a movie. The first novel of the series, The
Hunter (1962), had been the basis for the Lee Marvin film Point Blank (1967)
which has become the focal point of a crime-movie cult. Directed brilliantly by John
Boorman (Deliverance), Point Blank explores the American criminal world
in an unsentimental slam-bang manner; it is an astonishing movie, but not a particularly
faithful representation of the Parker novles. It was followed by The Split
(1968), starring Jim Brown in the part of the Parker character and featuring such tough
guys as Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates and Donald Sutherland. That
one--an entertaining action movie but nothing extraordinary--was based on the 1966 Parker
novel The Seventh, which was the sixth, not the seventh, novel in the series
[actually, it is the seventh-t.].
Then came two French versions, one of them
filmed by Jean-Luc Godard with the title Made in U.S.A., with Parker turned into
a woman character, Anna Karina starred. Neither of the two French films has been
distributed in America. At about that time, someone remarked to Parker's creator
that the character had been played by a white American, a black American and a white
Frenchwoman: obviously "the character lacks definition". A good joke; but
the charge is easily dismissed by reading any of the books. Parker is one of the
most vividly defined characters in American fiction.
Then, fifth, in 1973, came MGM's The Outfit,
with Robert Duvall in the Parker role and Joe Don Baker in the Handy McKay role. It
was written and directed by John Flynn, who initially wrote the screenplay as a period
piece, intending to set the film in the postware 1940s; for that reason he peopled the
supporting cast with such '40s "B" players as Elisha Cook Jr., Richard Jaeckel,
Marie Windsor (!) and Jane Greer. The studio, however, decided it would be too
expensive to shoot a period picture, so the script was superficially updated, the World
War II vets became Vietnam vets, and actors like Robert Ryan (it was his last feature
film), Karen Black and Sheree North joined the cast. The result was
that--inadvertently--the story was restored to its original conception.
Interestingly, it is also the only one of the five films to use the original (book)
title. [It has since been joined by Slayground-t.]
The Outfit--the film--turns up now and
then on television. Unfortunately it has been re-edited, the ending changed: in the
movie the two guys get away at the end but in the TV version they don't. Television
still hasn't caught up with reality. Nonetheless the movie is worth watching.
It simplifies the plot of the novel for reasons of time and cinematic necessity but
it is faithful to the idea and flavor of the novel. And Robert Duvall's portrayal of
the character (not called Parker in the movie because Columbia Pictures owns the rights to
the Parker name and Columbia has never made a Parker movie so the character always gets a
new name in his movie appearences) is superb, certainly the closest any actor has come to
the original. (Lee Marvin's "Walker" in Point Blank is
fascinating, but far more volatile and explosive than Parker is.)
Sidelight: in The Outfit, Robert Ryan plays the character who, in the book, is
called Bronson. Some years ago I was hired by producers at 20th Century-Fox to write
a screenplay based on Butcher's Moon, a 1974 Parker-Grofield novel by Richard
Stark. It was never produced, but it was intended as a vehicle for Charles Bronson.
The Bronson character in The Outfit, however, was conceived before Charles
Bronson's emergence as a major action-movie star. Of course "Bronson"
isn't Charles Bronson's real name (his name is Buchinsky); a good nom-de-guerre is a good
nom-de-guerre wherever you find it, and the characters in the Parker stories always have
terrific names. (I have, however, heard the auther complain that if he had it to do
over again, he'd call Parker something else. "Parker can't do anything with a
car. I can't bring myself to write, 'Parker parked the car.' ")
. . . . Movies are part of the literature of our
century. The five Parker films are part of that literature. But so far, as a
canon, they can't match the force and unique vitality of the Richard Stark novels that
inspired them. It's going to be quite a while before we see Parker turn up as the
protagonist of a weekly TV series; as far as I know, The Split has been shown
only once on TV and there are no plans to re-release it in theatres; Point Blank
and The Outfit turn up on the tube occasionally but both have been re-edited by
television philistines; the two French movies, for legal and financial reasons, are
unlikely ever to be shown in America. So when you want to meet the real Parker, that
unique American literary institution, you must read about him in the pages of books like
this one.
I first met
Donald E. Westlake--alias Richard Stark--in 1965 at a poker game. Others who played
in that game over the years included novelist Lawrence Blcok, literary agent Henry
Morrison, novelist Justin Scott, folk-singer Dave Van Ronk, screenwriter Hal Dresner,
science-fiction writer/editor Robert Hoskins, editor-poet George Dickerson and publisher
Irwin Stein. It wasn't exactly the Algonquin Round Table but it was close. (In
fact, for years the game took place directly across the street from the Algonquin Hotel.)
A few businessmen an ddoctors also became regulars in thegame but it was
essentially a writer-publisher gang and many of us came to count on The Game as a weekly
clearinghouse for ideas and problems that came up in our work. We felt free to
discuss works-in-progress with one another because there was an unspoken rule that nobody
stole any ideas that were revealed att he poker table. Mostly, of course, the game
was simply for entertainment and we all labored under the challenge of topping each
other's gag-lines. But it did affect our lives. It was the poker game that
persuaded me to change agents and quit writing paperback Westerns and get into the
mainstream with thrillers and non-fiction books and screenplays.
Chief wit and raconteur of the game was
Westlake. The game broke up in the mid-1970s, mainly out of ennui, but its members
still meet once a month for a "non-poker dinner" which Abby Westlake
describes, resignedly, as the Boys' Night Out. In the years between my
joining the game (which then had already been in progress for some seven years)
and its eventual dissolution, Westlake and I became close friends. We
still are. We are winter neighbors in New Jersey and summer neighbors at
the beach; I was best man at his wedding to Abby Adams; we collaborated on a
novel (Gangway!, 1973) and have worked together informally on books,
films and television scripts; we criticize each other's
manuscripts-in-progress--sometimes forcefully, for often nobody except the
emperor's best friend has the nerve to tell him he's got no clothes. We
share a therapeutic interest in carpentry and sometimes band together on
projects like the building of the bookshelves in Otto Penzler's Mysterious Book
Shop on West 56th Street in New York: Westlake and I built the shelves with the
architectural assistance of Justin Scott and Caroline Penzler.
For those reasons it's both enjoyable
and awkward for me to write this introduction. It's enjoyable for obvious
reasons. But it's also awkward because I think of Don Westlake as my close
friend; I have an obvious bias. Therefore let us establish and admit the
bias right up front: I am a thorough admirer and fan of Westlake's talent, wit
and work; I am a devotee of the Parker novels and especially The Outfit,
which in some ways is my favorite of them.
Parker--and Richard Stark--first
appeared in 1962 with The Hunter (subsequently re-titled Point Blank
to conform with the movie title). Originally it was a paperback, published
by Pocket Books. It wasn't intended to be the first book of a series; it
was simply a novel. But by the time it was published Parker was already on
his way to further capers. The Man With the Getaway Face, The Outfit,
and The Mourner were published in 1963, and The Score in 1964, by
which time Parker's actor-thief partner Alan Grofield had already begun to
appear in the stories. Grofield later was to star in his own spin-off
series of crime novels by Richard Stark. Grofield doesn't appear in The
Outfit; I mention him here simply to allay the rumor that Grofield was named
after me. I didn't meet Don Westlake until a year after he'd introduced
Grofield in the series.
Under his own name, Westlake wrote a
number of hardboiled crime novels--The Mercenaries (1960), Killing
Time (1961), 361 (1962) (the title comes from the Roget's Thesaurus
index number for "Killing"), Killy (1963)--before he started
writing the Parker stories. Only after that did he begin to select his
pen-names on a brand-name basis: comedies by Westlake, hardboiled crime novels
by Richard Stark, brooding detective stories by Tucker Coe, so forth. The
early Westlakes were not comedies; they were grim crime novels, precursors to
the Parker series. By the time Parker appeared, Westlake had already done
his apprenticeship: he had learned his craft and his art, and Pity Him
Afterwards (1964) is a spellbindingly harrowing novel of madness, terror and
murder which today probably comes as a horrific surprise to those book-browsers
who, when they see the Westlake by-line, think they are picking up a
lighthearted comedy. After 1964, however, the brand-names were established
and nobody was likely to confuse a Richard Stark novel with a Donald E. Westlake
comedy.
(But it is interesting to note that
Westlake's "Dortmunder" series of comedy-caper novels, beginning with The
Hot Rock (1970), grew out of the Parker stories. Westlake sat down one
day to start writing the next Richard Stark novel, decided that the situation in
the plot was too funny to let pass, and converted Parker into Dortmunder,
Grofield into Kelp, and the tough plot into a comedy.)
I have heard Westlake describe Parker
as a 1930s Depression character out of his time, or as a European criminal
rather than an American one: European in the sense that he is an existential
crook. Parker's daddy wasn't lynched by an evil railroad company (á la
Jesse James in American mythology). Parker wasn't driven to crime by a
bad environment (á la the James Cagney characterizations) or forced into
a life of crime in order to buy an operation for his kid sister ( á la
the Hollywood crime romances of the 1940s). Parker is a crook simply
because that's what he does. He is what he is.
In the
fourth section of the first chapter of The Outfit, Parker's history
is recapped for those who haven't read the preceding two novels in the
series. In a few terse pages the plot of The Hunter is
reprised. And Parker, apparently, sprang to life full-blown before that,
like Minerva from the brow of Zeus. If Parker ever had a childhood we
aren't let in on it. He is supremely existentialist.
In the seventh section of the third
chapter of The Outfit, a character describes Parker and his kind:
"They're outlaws, crooks. They don't think of themselves as part of
society, they think of themselves as individuals, alone in a jungle.
Therefore, they are always on the defensive, always ready to protect their
own. They'll never call for the police, never put in a claim on their fire
and theft insurance, never look to society to protect them or repay them
or avenge them." And later (first section of Chapter Four), to Parker
himself, thinking about his erstwhile partner Handy McKay, "It was a bad
sign when a man like Handy started owning things and started thinking he could
afford friendships. Possessions tie a man down and friendships blind
him. Parker owned nothing; the men he knew were just that, the men he
knew. They were not his friends and they owned nothing . . . When a man
like Handy started craving possessions and friendships, it meant he was losing
the leanness. It was a bad sign."
The leanness . . . Parker is probably the
leanest character in fiction. He carries no baggage. He simply is.
Like a rock or a mountain or a law of nature.
Parker is a criminal: he robs for a
living. Sometimes he is double-crossed by his partners or his
victims. (When one of his victims cries out for help, Parker reacts as
follows: "Parker shot in irritation and ducked back out to the hall.
Behind him, [the victim] sagged onto the desk." It is that irritation
that terrifies us because it so coolly informs us of Parker's amoral leanness:
he doesn't live by the rules that the rest of us take for granted.) When
he is double-crossed and loses the loot, he takes action to get it back.
His attitude toward loot is that of a seasoned poker player: it may have been
your money before I won the hand, but it's my money now and if you steal it from
me I'm going to get it back. When Parker knocks off a bank or a football
stadium he thinks of it as winning a game: after the game, it's his money,
not the bank's or the stadium's.
Parker is supremely logical. All his
decisions are based on perfect syllogisms. Once you accept his premises,
you accept the logic of his behavior. In a peculiar sense I find Parker
more apt to the 1970s and 1980s than he was to the 1960s when he was created: in
this me-first generation Parker fits right in. His morals are the morals
of survival in a hostile universe. His victims and enemies, by and large,
are loathsome: bureaucrats, gangsters, mindless fools, greedy executives.
His life is lonely, ungiving, but proud and self-sufficient. He is amoral
but in another sense he is the quintessential Teddy Roosevelt moralist:
"Don't tread on me."
Parker--he has a first name and I know it but
I've agreed never to disclose it--is a unique character in modern American
fiction. As a series, the Parker canon is more interesting than, say, the
Travis McGee series (John D. MacDonald) or the Earl Drake bank-robber series
(Dan J. Marlowe--it parallels the Parker stories both in time and in
conception), simply because in those series the characters never change; they
never grow--Parker grows. He changes during the series--as in his
relationship with Claire, or his increasing interest in grandiose scores, as if
he were an addict seeking ever increasing doses of risk. Because of this
growth and change in the caracter, I think the Parker series can be regarded as
an extended novel; and as such, it is an important part of the literature of our
age. We may not acknowledge that fact for quite a few years yet, but I
suspect in the long run Westlake may actually be remembered more vividly as the
creator of Parker and Parker's milieu than as the creator of the crime-comey-caper
genre with which, at present, he is most closely identified.
(Actually, of course, nothing prevents him from being remembered for both.
Edison invented both the light bulb and the motion picture, didn't he?
Well never mind--at least he's remembered for having invented them.)
Part of the series' uniqueness can be identified
by the construction of the stories: they are as meticulously put together as
formal sonnets. One notes the four-chapter structure of each novel (in
which Chapters 1, 2, and 4 are told from Parker's viewpoint, and Chapter 3 from
somebody else's), the opening sentence (always beginning with the word
"When", at least in the early books of the series), the plot sequence
(a robbery goes wrong and Parker strives to set it right), the characters who
keep turning up from book to book--instantly identifiable--until one by one they
die violently; all except Parker, who is eternal.
"The Violent World of
Parker" is the way one publisher billed the series when it was reissued in
the early 1970s (Berkley Books). And truly the Parker stories create an
entire world: a milieu as specific and recognizable as that of Sherlock Holmes's
London or Nero Wolfe's New York. And Westlake--like Conan Doyle and Rex
Stout--has imposed his own unique auctorial style on his canon of Richard Stark
novels:
" 'One time when Skimm was
here,' Parker said, 'he buried a wad of dough out bak some place. If you
haven't looked for it, you can now. He's dead.'
" 'You know who you sound like?'
" 'Parker.'
" 'Be damned if you don't."
"Parker went in and saw a man in
the entrance to the parlor. He was holding a gun, but not aiming it
anywhere in particular at the moment.
" 'Hi, Jacko,' said
Parker."
Nobody else could have written those
paragraphs. And few readers are likely to mistake them for anybody's but
Richard Stark's.
It is a series of novels that started
on a very high plane. I thought at the time when I first read it, and I
still think, that the opening chapter of the first novel in the series--The
Hunter--is probably the tightest, most astonishing, and most brilliant first
chapter of any crime novel I've ever read. It is a tour-de-force of
auctorial legerdemain. It is one of those jobs of work by one writer that
can make another writer sit up in awe and exclaim, "I wish to hell I could
write like that." Well the most astonishing thing of all is that
Westlake just goes right on writing like that. I like all the Parker
novels, but in a way The Outfit is my favorite of them all. It is
quintessential Richard Stark, quintessential Parker. In it, Parker takes
on the entire Mafia (herein called The Outfit) and bests them on his own terms.
It's a superb introduction to
Parker. But I must warn you, if you're coming to Parker's world for the
first time in this book, that you will find it habit-forming and you are likely
to drop everything in the rush to get your hands on all the other Richard Stark
novels.
Do so. You won't be
disappointed.
Brian Garfield
Alpine, New Jersey
Special thanks to Mr. Garfield for his kind permission to post this introduction.
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