It's a bitch when your character proves to be so popular that you have to
suspend calendar time and work with "novelization time."

Way back in The Godwulf Manuscript, published in 1973, Spenser was 37
years old and learned how to march long distances in the Korean War. If
we crunch the numbers we get a birth date in 1936 and in the year 2000 he
would have 64 candles on his cake. By now he should be hanging his holster on
the side of his walker.

Spenser has gone from a size 48 to a 50, and caffeine has become a large
problem in his life, but his character (and those who surround him)
seemed to have stopped in their late 40's.

I approve of this state of affairs. It beats the hell out of some other
authors who keep their creations at the same age (and level of
enlightenment) over the course of a twenty or thirty year series.

The comics section of newspapers struggle with this issue every day.
Some strips have kept their characters at the same age for decades
(see the recently retired Peanuts), while others (see For Better or Worse)
keep pace as the time passes. The Spenser books work on a non-linear
scale best described as a flattening curve . The main characters have
aged over the years but at a rate not available to the rest of us. I started
out much younger than Spenser but he may very well outlive me.

In my latest reading of "The Widening Gyre" I was struck by one passage.
Spenser goes to the office of Joe Broz to talk to him about Gerry, and he
notices the Joe has gotten old. "Amazing. And here I was as youthful
and vigorous as ever." Sure, he is being sarcastic, but that was
published in 1983 and he is still firmly middle-aged.

Dr. Parker commented on this, or shall I say laughed it off, on a local
radio talk show soon after Hush Money was published. During the
hour he and the host (David Brudnoy) commented on how he was still in his
forties and lifted several thousand pounds of weights on a daily basis.

I like to think that by now Spenser is aging physically at about the same
rate that that Parker is aging mentally, so there is not much chance that
our favorite Private Eye will wind up as the bouncer at a retirement center
any time soon.

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