Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald | |
---|---|
Born | Kenneth Millar December 13, 1915 Los Gatos, California, U.S. |
Died | July 11, 1983 Santa Barbara, California, U.S. | (aged 67)
Pen name | John Macdonald, John Ross Macdonald, Ross Macdonald |
Occupation | Novelist |
Alma mater | University of Western Ontario, University of Michigan |
Genre | Crime fiction |
Spouse | |
Children | 1 |
Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of
The
Life
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his Canadian parents' native Kitchener, Ontario. Millar was a Scots spelling of the surname Miller, and the author pronounced his name Miller rather than Millar.[13] When his father abandoned the family unexpectedly when Millar was four years old, he and his mother lived with various relatives, and he had moved several times by his 16th year. Back in Canada as a young adult, he returned to Kitchener, where he studied, and subsequently graduated from the University of Western Ontario with an Honors degree in History and English. He found work as a high school teacher.[14] Some years later, he attended the University of Michigan and received a PhD in 1952. He married Margaret Sturm in 1938, though they'd known each other earlier in high school. They had a daughter in 1939, Linda, who died in 1970.[15][16] The family moved from Kitchener to Santa Barbara in 1946.[17]
Millar began his career writing stories for
For his fifth novel, in 1949, he wrote under the name John Macdonald (his father's first and middle names) in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed his pen name briefly to John Ross Macdonald, before settling on Ross Macdonald (Ross borrowed from a favorite cousin) in order to avoid being confused with fellow mystery writer John D. MacDonald, who was writing under his real name.[13] Millar would use the pseudonym "Ross Macdonald" on all his fiction from the mid '50s forward.[16]
Most of his books were set primarily in and around his adopted hometown of Santa Barbara. In these works, the city where Lew Archer is based goes under the fictional name of Santa Teresa.
In 1983 Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease.[15]
Work
Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye
The novels were hailed by genre fans and literary critics alike.[19] He has been called the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries.[20]
Macdonald's writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters.[21] His plots, described as of "baroque splendor", were complicated and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of upwardly mobile clients, sometimes going back over several generations.[22] Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels.[23] Critics have commented favorably on Macdonald's deft combination of the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller.[24] Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Tom Nolan, Macdonald's biographer, wrote,
"By any standard he was remarkable. His first books, patterned on Hammett and Chandler, were at once vivid chronicles of a postwar California and elaborate retellings of Greek and other classic myths. Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity, the family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present. He brought the tragic drama of Freud and the psychology of Sophocles to detective stories, and his prose flashed with poetic imagery."[13]
Recognition
The Lew Archer novels are recognized as some of the most significant American mystery books of the mid 20th century, bringing a literary sophistication to the genre. The critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist".[25] William Goldman, who adapted Macdonald's The Moving Target to film as Harper in 1966, called his works "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American".[26] A later film adaptation was The Drowning Pool (1975), also starring Paul Newman as the detective "Lew Harper".[27] In addition, The Underground Man was adapted as a TV movie in 1974.[28]
Over his career, Macdonald was presented with several awards. In 1964, the
Bibliography
Writing as Kenneth Millar
- The Dark Tunnel (a.k.a. I Die Slowly) – 1944
- Trouble Follows Me (a.k.a. Night Train) – 1946
- Blue City – 1947 (filmed with Judd Nelson as Blue City, 1986)
- The Three Roads – 1948 (filmed with Michael Sarrazin as Deadly Companion, 1980)
These first four novels, all non-series standalones, were initially published using Millar's real name, but have since been intermittently reissued using his literary pseudonym, Ross Macdonald.
Other non-series novels
Two later non-series novels were also published:
- Meet Me at the Morgue (aka Experience With Evil) – 1953, credited to John Ross Macdonald
- The Ferguson Affair – 1960, credited to Ross Macdonald
Lew Archer
Novels
- The Moving Target – 1949 (credited to John Macdonald, filmed with Paul Newman as Harper, 1966)
- The Drowning Pool – 1950 (also filmed with Paul Newman as The Drowning Pool, 1975)
- The Way Some People Die – 1951
- The Ivory Grin (aka Marked for Murder) – 1952
- Find a Victim – 1954
- The Barbarous Coast – 1956
- The Doomsters – 1958
- The Galton Case – 1959
- The Wycherly Woman – 1961
- The Zebra-Striped Hearse – 1962
- The Chill– 1964
- The Far Side of the Dollar – 1965 (1965 CWA Gold Dagger Award winner)
- Black Money – 1966
- The Instant Enemy – 1968
- The Goodbye Look – 1969 (filmed as Tayna 1992)
- The Underground Man – 1971 (filmed as a television series pilot in 1974)
- Sleeping Beauty– 1973
- The Blue Hammer – 1976
Short story collections
- The Name Is Archer (paperback original containing seven stories) – 1955
- Lew Archer: Private Investigator (The Name Is Archer + two additional stories) – 1977
- Strangers in Town (unpublished drafts edited by Tom Nolan) - 2001
- The Archer Files, The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer Private Investigator, Including Newly Discovered Case Notes, ed. Tom Nolan – 2007.
Omnibuses
- Archer in Hollywood – 1967 includes The Moving Target, The Way Some People Die, and The Barbarous Coast.
- Archer at Large – 1970 includes The Chill, and Black Money.
- Archer in Jeopardy – 1979 includes The Doomsters, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, and The Instant Enemy.
- Archer, P.I.—includes The Ivory Grin, The Zebra-Striped Hearse and The Underground Man. Mystery Guild, 1990. Collects three Vintage Crime/Black Lizard printings.
- Ross MacDonald: Four Novels of the 1950s - May 2015, Library of America, includes The Way Some People Die, The Barbarous Coast, The Doomsters, and The Galton Case.
- Ross MacDonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s - April 2016, Library of America, includes The Chill and The Far Side of the Dollar.
- Ross MacDonald: Four Later Novels - July 2017, Library of America, includes Black Money, The Instant Enemy, The Goodbye Look, and The Underground Man
British omnibuses
Allison & Busby published three Archer omnibus editions in the 1990s.
- The Lew Archer Omnibus. Vol. 1. includes The Chill and The Goodbye Look.
- The Lew Archer Omnibus. Vol. 2. includes The Moving Target, The Barbarous Coast, and The Far Side of the Dollar
- The Lew Archer Omnibus. Vol. 3. includes The Ivory Grin, The Galton Case, and The Blue Hammer.
Non-fiction
- On Crime Writing – 1973, Santa Barbara : Capra Press, Series title: Yes! Capra chapbook series; no. 11, The Library of Congress bibliographic information includes this note: "Writing The Galton case."
- Self-Portrait, Ceaselessly Into the Past – 1981, Santa Barbara : Capra Press, collection of book prefaces, magazine articles and interviews.
Notes
- .
- ProQuest 195365876.
- S2CID 161660586.
- JSTOR 4383163.
- ProQuest 210243329.
- ^ Grogg, Samuel L. (1974). Between the Mountains and the Sea: Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer Novels (Thesis).
- ^ Michael Kreyling. “Lew Archer, House Whisperer.” South Central review. 27.1 (2010): 123–143. Web.
- JSTOR 43959251.
- .
- S2CID 165787318.
- ProQuest 212626987.
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
- ^ ISBN 0-684-81217-7
- ^ Flash From the Past: Raised in Kitchener, read around the world 23 October 2020
- ^ a b Flash From the Past: Kitchener writers’ family lives were like a bad plot 6 November 2020
- ^ a b Weinman, Sarah (November 24, 2020). "Linda, Interrupted". CrimeReads. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
- ^ Ross Macdonald Invented Modern Detective Lew Archer 13 October 2015
- ^ Flash From the Past: Famous 20th century private eye is rooted in Kitchener July 10, 2020
- ISBN 978-0879723293.
- ISBN 978-1405115438.
- ISBN 978-1412988766.
- ^ Geoffrey O'Brien, Hardboiled America, Van Norstrand Reinhold, 1981, pp.125-8
- ^ Jones, Tobias (July 31, 2009). "A passion for mercy". The Guardian. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ISBN 978-1451696578.
- ^ J. Kingston Pierce, "50 Years with Lew Archer: An Anniversary Tribute to Ross Macdonald and his Heroic Yet Passionate Private Eye", January Magazine.
- ^ New York Times archive
- ^ "The Drowning Pool", Encyclopedia Britannica
- ^ Movietone News 32, June 1974
- ^ Mystery Writer Ross Macdonald, 67, Dies July 13, 1983
References
- ISBN 0-15-679082-3
- "Ross Macdonald: Family Affairs" in ISBN 978-1-4794-4546-2
- Kreyling, Michael. "The Novels of Ross Macdonald" University of South Carolina Press, 2005. ISBN 1-57003-577-6
- Nolan, Tom. Ross Macdonald: A Biography. New York: Scribner, 1999. ISBN 0-684-81217-7
- Nolan, Tom. "The Archer Files". Crippen & Landru 2007
- Schopen, Bernard A., "Ross MacDonald", Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1990. ISBN 0-8057-7548-X
External links
- Marling, William, "Hard-Boiled Fiction", Case Western Reserve University
- J. Kingston Pierce, "50 Years with Lew Archer: An Anniversary Tribute to Ross Macdonald and His Heroic Yet Compassionate Private Eye, [1] by January Magazine, April 1999]
- Lew Archer oder:Der Detektiv als Statthalter konkreter Utopie An interview with Macdonald
- Leonard Cassuto, "The last testament of Ross Macdonald", The Boston Globe, 11/2/2003