The Amusement in Reading Books Set in Vacation Destinations like Key West
Author Jim Harrison’s book Warlock is set partly in Key West, Florida. That the boozing, womanizing but married, overindulgent yet recently unemployed Warlock, the main character in Jim Harrison’s 1981 novel of the same name pays a visit to Key West during the course of his wanderings is no doubt why I picked up a copy of the work almost 30 years ago. I just recently got around to reading it, though, and probably my biggest takeaway is simply the conclusion that our culture really has changed.
Also the author of the Legends of the Fall novella (turned into an early Brad Pitt film), Harrison, who died in 2016 at age 78, has been described as Hemingwayesque, both in his writing and in his life.
A Private Eye Heads to Key West via Palm Beach
Harrison was an outdoorsy sort, and so is Warlock, a mid-lifer who is floundering before being hired by a mysterious medical device inventor to investigate various associates who just might be ripping him off. Fortunately for readers, the mad inventor’s investments are diverse, and so we get to roam in the woods with Warlock, to get lost in same, and to spend a mind-altering night in the wilderness. Eventually we get to head south to the Palm Beach and Key West of a different time.
As a reader, I am amused to come across appearances in books of places I have been. So in Warlock, readers get to appreciate the still-long ride down the Florida Keys, the Pier House and fishing boats, bars and the preening of its inhabitants. We also get a glimpse of Palm Beach and its very different sort of excess.
Warlock’s journey involves plenty of guns and alcohol and women and bravado and bluntness as well as meat eating (Harrison was also a food writer of sorts) and a measure of disdain for quiche and for anything remotely wimpy. Warlock is a bit of a vengeful scoundrel who is not beyond mixing drugs and alcohol for his own recreational purposes.
Drug-Fueled Labeling with a Pinch of New Age
Warlock lives in a bygone time, when combining valium and tequila and a bit of strong pot did not seem quite as sinful—or merely stupid—as it does today. He is not at all woke and indulges freely in gender stereotypes, racial stereotypes, and sexuality stereotypes, some of which are offensive.
Were Warlock operating in the new millennium, he probably wouldn’t care. He would have no patience for those he would probably call ‘snowflakes.’ Nevertheless, Warlock’s trip is an amusing one so long as his offensive remarks about various interest groups and uncomfortable delight in underage women are conveniently overlooked. Even as Warlock is not at all politically correct and dismisses its “puny mousse, its lighthearted quiches,” he occasionally is surprisingly spiritual as he wonders if “some secret power had been given him that summer solstice night in the forest.”
Why bother to read Warlock? It is always fun to read books set in locations you are visiting and, in this instance, to appreciate how very much the world has changed.
—Lori Tripoli
Planning a visit to Key West? You might like these posts:
- Key West for Christmas
- Life and Death at the Key West Cemetery
- Key West Reverie: What I Did after the Green Parrot
- Losing My Veganity in Key West
- The Ghosts of West Martello Tower
- The Duval Crawl
- Southernmost Shelter
- Bagatelle Restaurant in Key West, FL