popular thinking

ROBERT PARKER TALKS TO ME: I had the pleasure of visiting the Spenser author -- whose new book, Appaloosa, showed up in stores last week -- at his home for a chat. Parker had some nice things to say about the Herald, which he remembered his father reading when it was still a broadsheet paper. But enough about my job. Let's hear more about his job.

In a way, novelist Robert B. Parker has mimicked the characters in his new western, Appaloosa.
Much as Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch ride into the titular town to save it from outlaws, so too did the 72-year-old Parker decide to rescue his book idea from the dustbins of Hollywood.
"Several years ago, I did a treatment for a western movie that didn't go anywhere,'' Parker said.
That treatment about "town tamers'' - men called in to restore law and order in the wild West - eventually evolved into the story of Cole, Hitch and Appaloosa. Parker maintains a fast pace and manages to adapt his hard-boiled detective work into the old-fashioned western genre.
Relaxing in his Cambridge study, however, neither Parker nor his favorite German shorthaired pointer, Pearl, are in a hurry.
This Pearl (actually his third dog of that name and breed) is sprawled on the sofa while Parker kicks back in front of his Apple computer, the "electronic typewriter'' that produces books with manic efficiency. Parker already has his next four books in the can - two Spenser novels, one Sunny Randall and one Jesse Stone.
But to paraphrase his newest protagonist, Cole, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, "What he must do concerns him, not what people think.''
So no big book tour for Appaloosa, despite the fact that it's quite a departure from detective writing.
In Parker's first western, he tackled the famous historical figure of Wyatt Earp. For Appaloosa, Parker deliberately kept the setting and people a mystery.
"This is the mythic West,'' Parker said. "I didn't know where it was. I didn't want to know. I wanted to keep it mythic.''
Likewise, Cole emerges as a mythical hero, his legend told through the eyes of his loyal deputy, Hitch. "It's like 'Great Gatsby' in a way,'' Parker said. "Nick Carraway tells us about Gatsby. Carraway had to tell the story.''
Despite its western setting, Appaloosa manages to reference New England throughout, from the Boston House Saloon to Emerson to the novel's first character, a bartender named Willis McDonough after the late sportswriter and friend of Parker's. The novel has a classic western ending with a twist.
"I have a sequel in mind, but that is essentially a question of business, not art,'' he said.
Hollywood will produce two more Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck portraying the police chief. Parker said he won't be actively involved in any more adaptations of his books, except for possible cameos, as he did in TV versions of Walking Shadow and Thin Air.
"I've been in the infantry in Korea and in the movie business - and Korea looks good to me,'' Parker said.

Parker rides to rescue of his `Appaloosa' (Boston Herald)