Ross Macdonald

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Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar (Template:IPAc-en; December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works (particularly the Archer novels) have received attention in academic circles<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> for their psychological depth,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> sense of place,<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref><ref>Michael Kreyling. “Lew Archer, House Whisperer.” South Central review. 27.1 (2010): 123–143. Web.</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> use of language,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> sophisticated imagery<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and integration of philosophy into genre fiction.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Brought up in the province of Ontario, Canada, Macdonald eventually settled in the state of California, where he died in 1983.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that:

... it is the sheer beauty of Macdonald’s laconic style—with its seductive rhythms and elegant plainness—that holds us spellbound. "Hard-boiled," "noir," "mystery," it doesn’t matter what you call it. Macdonald, with insolent grace, blows past the barrier constructed by Dorothy Sayers between "the literature of escape" and "the literature of expression." These novels, triumphs of his literary alchemy, dare to be both.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref name=Nolan1999/> 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, graduated from the University of Western Ontario with an Honors degree in History and English. He found work as a high school teacher.<ref>Flash From the Past: Raised in Kitchener, read around the world 23 October 2020</ref> 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.<ref name="therecord.com">Flash From the Past: Kitchener writers’ family lives were like a bad plot 6 November 2020</ref><ref name= Weinman>Template:Cite web</ref> The family moved from Kitchener to Santa Barbara in 1946.<ref name="investors.com">Ross Macdonald Invented Modern Detective Lew Archer 13 October 2015</ref>

Millar began his career writing stories for pulp magazines and used his real name for his first four novels. Of these he completed the first, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, Millar returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in literature.<ref>Flash From the Past: Famous 20th century private eye is rooted in Kitchener July 10, 2020</ref> For his doctorate, Millar wrote a dissertation on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and studied under poet W. H. Auden. Unusual for a prominent literary intellectual of the era, Auden held mystery or detective fiction could rise to the level of literature and encouraged Millar's interest in the genre.<ref name=Nolan1999/>

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.<ref name=Nolan1999/> Millar would use the pseudonym Ross Macdonald on all his fiction from the mid '50s forward.<ref name= Weinman/>

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.<ref name="therecord.com"/>

Work

Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye Lew Archer in the 1946 short story "Find the Woman" (credited then to "Ken Millar"). A novel featuring him, The Moving Target, (1949) was the first in a series of eighteen. Macdonald mentions in the foreword to the Archer in Hollywood omnibus that his detective derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lewis Wallace, author of Ben-Hur, though the character was patterned on Philip Marlowe. Macdonald also said the surname "Archer" was inspired by his own astrological sign of Sagittarius the archer.<ref name=Nolan1999/>

The novels were hailed by genre fans and literary critics alike.<ref name=baker>Template:Cite book</ref> He has been called the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Macdonald's writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>Geoffrey O'Brien, Hardboiled America, Van Norstrand Reinhold, 1981, pp.125-8</ref> Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels.<ref name="tobias jones">Template:Cite news</ref> During adolescence Macdonald engaged in petty crime and delinquency from school, and his own daughter Linda dropped out of college and disappeared for a week in 1959 only to be found living with an older man, events which he later said explained his sympathy for the troubled young adults often featured in his novels.<ref name=Nolan1999/> Critics have commented favorably on Macdonald's deft combination of the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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."<ref name=Nolan1999>Tom Nolan, Ross Macdonald, A Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999 Template:ISBN</ref>

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. Literary critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist".<ref>J. Kingston Pierce, "50 Years with Lew Archer: An Anniversary Tribute to Ross Macdonald and his Heroic Yet Passionate Private Eye", January Magazine.</ref> 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".<ref>New York Times archive</ref> A later film adaptation was The Drowning Pool (1975), also starring Paul Newman as the detective Lew Harper.<ref>"The Drowning Pool", Encyclopedia Britannica</ref> In addition, The Underground Man was adapted as a TV movie in 1974.<ref>Movietone News 32, June 1974</ref>

Over his career, Macdonald was presented with several awards. In 1964, the Mystery Writers of America awarded him the Silver Dagger award for The Chill. Ten years later, he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and in 1982 he received "The Eye," the Lifetime Achievement Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. In 1982, he was awarded the Robert Kirsch Award by the Los Angeles Times for "an outstanding body of work by an author from the West or featuring the West."<ref>Mystery Writer Ross Macdonald, 67, Dies July 13, 1983</ref>

Bibliography

Writing as Kenneth Millar

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:

Lew Archer

Novels

Title Year Highest
NYT position
reached		 Number
of weeks
on NYT list		 Notes
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 1952 — — aka Marked for Murder
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 — — CWA Gold Dagger Award winner
Black Money 1966 — —
The Instant Enemy 1968 — —
The Goodbye Look 1969 #7 14 filmed as Tayna 1992
The Underground Man 1971 #4 17 filmed as a television series pilot in 1974
Sleeping Beauty 1973 #9 6
The Blue Hammer 1976 — —

Source: The New York Times Best Seller list<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Figures are for the Adult Hardcover Fiction lists for the years of publication: highest position reached and total number of weeks on list (possibly nonconsecutive). A "—" indicates it did not make the list. Note that the Times list consisted of a Top 10 from 1973 through 1976, but a Top 15 in the covered years before that.

Short story collections

Omnibuses

British omnibuses

Allison & Busby published three Archer omnibus editions in the 1990s.

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

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References

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