Awhile back, I stared a video book review site linked to an account on YouTube. Though it’s sadly lacking in updates, I haven’t given up on it – it’s much too fun. Not only talking to the camera (and then a wider, online audience), but getting feedback on my comments. One note especially, recently received, made me smile.

Of all my reviews, far and away the most popular is Now and Then by Robert B. Parker. (Yes, the video quality leaves much to be desired. It’s one of my earlier ones.) It’s about Parker’s detective Spencer. I wasn’t impressed with it, and now can’t remember much of the story except that I hated the protagonist’s love interest – Susan. She is the quintessential plot device, or as Ebert would say “to call [her] cardboard is to insult a useful packing material.” I spent most of the review ranting about her.
I am not alone. All of my feedback has been “Yes! We hate her too!” I’ve had personal emails, as well as YouTube comments, telling me how right I was. That is, until the other day when I got a much different note from Grinchmon:

You don’t understand men. Susan is Parker’s ideal of what men want the perfect woman to be. Throughout the series, the Spenser/Susan relationship is frozen in the early love stage of a relationship. They live separately but are committed. Susan never tries to change Spenser, cage him or corral him in any way. THIS, is a man’s ideal of a perfect woman, not to mention she is sexy and hot. As such, Spenser is crazy about her. I love Susan too.

This made my day, and still makes me smile. I’m not sure if it’s the opening line, or the “sexy and hot” that does it. But I can’t believe Susan is a “man’s ideal of a perfect woman.” She’s so…one dimensional. Passionless. Everything she says sounds like it came out of a psychology textbook, and an extremely dull textbook at that. Why are you so concerned with this case? Is it because I had an affair? Have you fully dealt with that issue yet? If you’re having issues coping, pick up How To Overcome An Affair and turn to page 149… She might not be trying to change him, but every time he talks to her she gives him a lecture in psychology, his feelings, their relationship, and the emotional follies of others. Believe me, after 30 pages it’s like nails on a chalkboard.

But Spencer loves her dearly, and doesn’t want to marry her for some random reason that’s never addressed. Maybe they’re “committed” to sleeping only with each other, but not much else. Like, say, doing each other’s laundry or loading the dishwasher. But maybe that’s what keeps it in the “early stages of love” — the whole infatuation, lust, if I call her will she see a movie with me? bit. You know, chapstick and chapped lips and things like chemistry.
But Spencer is far past teenage acne, and is a well developed, amusing character, deserving much more then the a plot device love.

Since Parker is fully capable of creating full characters, the only reason for Susan’s existence is that she must be some sort of ideal to him. Lifeless though she is. If that’s the case, I wish him and Grinchmon luck – for our multidimensional reality will never fit into that cardboard dream.

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