This may seem out of character, but I love Jack Reacher. I’ve read most of the books and I also enjoy the Prime series. To me, Jack (No Middle Name) Reacher is an endlessly fascinating cultural artifact.

First of all, the Reacher novels are written by a British guy (and, more recently, his brother). Sure, the author has lived in the US for a long time, but he still has an outsider’s perspective of American culture in some ways. Like, Lee Child absolutely gets our obsession with violence and the seamy underbelly of idyllic small-town life (he has that in common with David Lynch), but he also gets weird American details wrong, like Reacher searching for a vicar in Wyoming. (I think he meant pastor. Or maybe preacher? Which rhymes with Reacher. That’s fun. Never mind.)

Child has been known to spout off about the grand literary tradition of traveling knights and their quests, but I think it’s safe to say that the Reacher stories have a lot more in common with American pulp westerns than anything they made you read in lit class. But that’s kind of my jam! I like shoot ’em ups and page turners — nothing wrong with a thriller. Reacher is a man with no (middle) name who wanders into town (on a Greyhound instead of a horse), uncovers some corruption or witnesses some unlikely crime, and then Does the Right Thing, which is inevitably a Very Violent Thing or Two. Then he has a Big Showdown with the Big Bad at the end and leaves town. It’s all completely standard.

But here’s the thing: Jack Reacher is an idealist, a truly rigid and uncompromising idealist. There are right things and wrong things in Reacher’s mind. As dangerous as that viewpoint can be in the real world, when you’re in trouble and you need a giant with ham-sized fists (this is canon) to take out the local bad guy, absolutes are very compelling. And after the giant successfully removes your problem, he moves on, and his absolutely black-and-white moral authority becomes some other villain’s problem.

Reacher’s idealism is also deeply eccentric. He owns nothing more than his boots and a toothbrush. In fact, the most unrealistic detail of the novels — and remember, these are novels filled with extra-judicial killings — is that Reacher buys new clothes at a thrift store when his clothes get too dirty or worn out. Like, one outfit at a time. I mean, he’s not going to tote a damned suitcase around like a tourist or something. Luggage weighs the mountain down, you see, and he must be free to punch and shoot and Do the Right (Very Violent) Thing. And if you’re thinking, “Okay, that’s weird enough. But why is this the most unrealistic detail when Reacher leaves giant piles of bad guy corpses in every town but suffers few consequences?” Here’s why: Jack Reacher is almost 7 feet tall and, as I’ve mentioned, has hands the size of frozen turkeys (this is also canon). He’s not walking into any retailer that isn’t expressly a big and tall store and finding anything that fits. The giant guys of America aren’t dropping off lightly worn linebacker-sized wardrobes at each and every thrift store for Reacher’s convenience. I mean, that’s hilarious. It’s my favorite thing.

Jack Reacher is a justice hobo, riding the Greyhounds of America and keeping us safe. The television adaptation understands this and translates the novels into a visual medium in a delightful way. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the two movies and felt that Tom Cruise accurately portrayed Reacher’s character. But he is a diminutive Sc*entologist, not a lumbering mountain of violence with hands the size of microwave ovens (that might not be canon). Alan Ritchson, who portrays Reacher on TV, truly fits the bill. He not only looks right, but manages to preserve the wry humor Reacher sometimes exhibits while plowing through henchmen and being a violent weirdo. I can’t think of a better actor to throw a grill at a passing car and then get pissed because the driver dies of a heart attack (from the shock of having a grill thrown at him) before Reacher can get any answers out of him.

Anyway, aside from my rambling, I do have a minor point. I think maybe Reacher proves that all idealists are freaks, at least on some level. I’m not saying that to discourage anyone from living by their ideals. I mean, I try to do so myself. And I am definitely a freak, albeit a less violent one than Reacher. You have to break from convention to live by your values, at least in small ways. I mean, if anything is very important to you, you probably have to sacrifice other aspects of “normal” life to make enough time and energy to devote to it.

You don’t have to be as extreme as Jack Reacher to stick to your principles. But you do have to let your freak flag fly. Sure, you can have a home address and take some luggage with you when you travel, but even minor deviations from the norm stick out in a crowd. You need conviction to find such social uncertainty bearable.

Maybe try not to kill so many henchmen in real life, though. That kind of thing tends to get people who aren’t Jack Reacher into legal trouble.

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MEA CULPA TIME. As Brian gently pointed out in the comments last time, I confused Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi in my previous post. I corrected my mistake on the web archive, but you folks got the boneheaded and incorrect email version. So, sorry about that! What can I say? The brain fog was driving the bus that week. And if you want a Wendig recommendation to make up for my error, please check out Black River Orchard. I read it last fall, and it was so creepy that I still feel a way when I eat an apple. Months later! That’s some staying power.

All right, talk to you next time.