Ross MacDonald
Page 62
And thank you to Penny Coates, at the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.
INDIVIDUALS
My greatest thanks go to the resourceful and effective Mary Rousson, who provided excellent research assistance throughout this project.
The late Lee Goerner believed in this biography and enabled it to begin and to continue.
He learned of its possibility through Loretta Weingel-Fidel, surely the smartest and nicest literary agent ever.
Jane Rosenman at Scribner proved to be a superb and very supportive editor.
Her assistant, Caroline Kim, made the hectic times much less so.
Harris W. Seed and Eleanor Van Cott, cotrustees of the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Trusts, were extremely helpful and encouraging over the course of a long project. Their successor, Norman Colavincenzo, saw us safely into print.
Ralph B. Sipper extended many courtesies in my research.
Davis Dutton, of Dutton’s Books North Hollywood, proved time and again to be a fine bookman and a true gentleman.
Others giving much appreciated help or encouragement included Larry Dietz, Karen Stabiner, Carol Bruce, Clancy Sigal, and Steven Bach.
My wife, Mary, gave me unfailing strength and support.
A journey of a thousand miles, and a dozen years, begins with a single question. A special thank-you then to Dick Lochte, who in 1984 asked, “Why don’t you write a book about him?”
Author photograph by © Hal Boucher
TOM NOLAN never met Kenneth Millar, but Ross Macdonald has been on his mind since he was eleven years old growing up in southern California in the 1950s. Mr. Nolan reviews mystery fiction for The Wall Street Journal and has been a contributing editor for California and Los Angeles magazines. He has also written for Rolling Stone, Playboy, TV Guide, and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He and his wife live in Los Angeles.
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NOTES
These previously published books about Ross Macdonald have proved useful and interesting:
Dreamers Who Live Their Dreams: The World of Ross Macdonald’s Novels, Peter Wolfe (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976).
Ross Macdonald, Jerry Speir (Ungar, 1978).
Ross Macdonald/Kenneth Millar: A Descriptive Bibliography, Matthew J. Bruccoli (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983).
Inward Journey: Ross Macdonald, edited by Ralph B. Sipper (Cordelia Editions, 1984; Mysterious Press, 1987).
Ross Macdonald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984).
Ross Macdonald, Bernard A. Schopen (Twayne, 1990).
Certain sources have been abbreviated in the notes:
Many letters to and from Kenneth Millar, unpublished manuscripts by Kenneth Millar, and other documents and material pertaining to Kenneth Millar are contained in the Kenneth Millar Papers in the Department of Special Collections of the UCI Libraries at the University of California, Irvine; referred to in the notes as UCI.
Letters by Kenneth Millar to Matthew J. Bruccoli are in the Matthew J. Bruccoli Collection on Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald in the Department of Special Collections of the UCI Libraries at the University of California, Irvine; referred to in the notes as MJB Collection, UCI.
Correspondence between Kenneth Millar and Alfred A. Knopf and others at the Knopf firm (excepting Ash Green) are collected at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The University of Texas at Austin; referred to in the notes as HRHRC.
Millar’s correspondence with Ivan von Auw, Dorothy Olding, and others at the Ober Agency is contained in the Harold Ober Agency Archives, Manuscript Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; referred to in the notes as Princeton.
Millar’s letters to Anthony Boucher and to Ralph Sipper are in the Lilly Library at Indiana University; referred to in the notes as Indiana.
Millar’s correspondence to R. A. D. Ford are in the R. A. D. Ford fonds, Literary Manuscript Collection, National Library of Canada; referred to in the notes as National Library of Canada.
Millar’s correspondence with H. N. Swanson is in the H. N. Swanson Collection of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Beverly Hills, California); referred to in the notes as Margaret Herrick Library.
“ ‘Ten years ago’ ”: John Leonard, “Ross Macdonald, his Lew Archer and other secret selves,” New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1969.
“ ‘. . . the Archer books’ ”: William Goldman, “The finest detective novels ever written by an American,” New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1969.
“Yet he believed in the writing of candid biography”: “The more truth we learn about a man, no matter how damaging in a sense, the better we can love him,” Millar to Matthew Bruccoli, September 12, 1975, MJB Collection, UCI.
“He valued works that made connections between a novelist’s life and his fiction”: “I have been fascinated most of my adult life by the connections between imaginative work and the author’s life both secret and overt,” Millar to Daniel Halpern, March 26, 1976, typed copy, UCI.
“much material that proved helpful in explicating the books of Ross Macdonald”: “I can think of few more complex critical enterprises than disentangling the mind and life of a first-person detective story writer from the mask of his detective-narrator,” Ross Macdonald, “Down These Streets a Mean Man Must Go,” Antaeus, Spring/Summer 1977; reprinted in Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly Into the Past (Capra Press, 1981).
“ ‘like burglars who secretly wish to be caught’ ”: Macdonald, preface to Archer in Hollywood (Knopf, 1967).
“ ‘I’m amazed at some of the chances I took as a boy’ ”: Millar to Peter Wolfe, September 19, 1972, UCI: “As for the spiritual risks, the ones with people, I remember with pleasure and some nostalgia and pride the chances I took in my youth, the like of which now would probably kill me.”
“ ‘I don’t have to be violent . . . my books are’ ”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘long conspiracies of silent pain’ ”: Ross Macdonald, foreword to A Collection of Reviews (Lord John Press, 1979); included in Self-Portrait (Capra Press, 1981).
“ ‘I stood beside him in the offshore light’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘fatal predisposition to words’ ”: Macdonald, introduction to Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald—A Checklist (Gale Research Co., 1971).
“a huge black lifeguard kept watch like Neptune”: Millar to Paul Nelson, UCI; Millar fiction fragment, notebook, UCI.
The lifeguard was Joe Fortes, a well-known figure from early Vancouver history. See for example Vancouver’s First Century: A City Album 1860-1960 (Vancouver, Canada: J. J. Douglas Ltd., 1977).
“a body spread-eagled in the alley below”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI; Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“he blamed himself”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘I must be the only American crime novelist’ ”: Macdonald, “Down These Streets”; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘My original sin, so to speak’ ”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“Sometimes she took Ken into the street and begged for food”: “Ken remembered begging for money and food on the streets at the age of six,” Robert Easton, “A Quiet Man,” in Inward Journey (Cordelia Editions, 1984; Mysterious Press, 1987).
“she brought the six-year-old to an orphanage”: Ibid.
“ ‘Mos
t of the detective work that accomplishes anything’ ”: “No More Crime Films, Producers Promise: Portrayal of Crimes in the Movies Distinctly Menace the Future of Youth,” Canadian Echo, September 20, 1922.
“ ‘The Mystery of the Silver Dagger’ ”: Advertisement, Canadian Echo, 1922.
“Kenneth bullied younger classmates”: Details of Millar’s youth from Millar notebook “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“He devoured the adventure serials”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI. Regarding Tarzan and Oliver Twist, see also Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI. Millar speaks extensively to Kaye and to Nelson of his boyhood travels among his relatives; see also Jerry Tutunjian, “A Conversation with Ross Macdonald,” Tamarack Review, 1974. The more intimate details in this section are revealed in Millar’s “Notes of a Son and Father.”
“sons of well-to-do merchants and ministers”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“Ken Millar liked stories of heroes who worked outside the law”: Ibid. For extended reference to Falcon Swift, see Macdonald preface to Lew Archer, Private Investigator (Mysterious Press, 1977).
“a ‘sophisticated’ woman who smoked cigarettes and drove an automobile”: Dr. Gordon MacDonald interview with TN.
“Aunt Margaret had worked as a Detroit bookkeeper”: Douglas McDonald (cousin of Millar’s) to Millar, June 21, 1938, UCI.
“Her party guests were active on the stock and grain exchanges”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“There were odd things about his aunt’s household”: Millar spoke of his uncle with the handgun in the Packard to Arthur Kaye, Paul Nelson, and other interviewers, and in his preface to Archer in Jeopardy (Knopf, 1979).
“ ‘smiled like a lioness’ ”: Millar notebook, UCI.
“He got into fistfights”: Personal details from Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘An excellent scholar’ ”: W. Burman (headmaster), St. John’s College School midsummer term 1928 report, UCI.
“ ‘Be kind, industrious and independent’ ”: John Macdonald Millar to Millar, July 1, 1928, UCI.
“ ‘Throughout my life’ ”: Macdonald, introduction to A Collection of Reviews (Lord John Press, 1979); reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘A most promising young Scholar’ ”: W. Burman (headmaster), St. John’s College School midsummer term 1929 report, UCI.
“an after-school job as stockboy and handyman in a ‘groceteria’ ”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI; also Millar short-story manuscript, UCI.
“Brubacher said Kenneth’s poems reminded him of early work by Byron and Shelley”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI; Jerry Tutunjian, “A Conversation with Ross Macdonald,” Tamarack Review, 1974.
“hunted in secondhand-book stores for back issues”: Millar to Alfred Knopf, August 10, 1971, HRHRC.
“ ‘I had read all of Crime and Punishment’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “Murder in the Library,” Mystery Writers of America Annual, 1965.
“She submitted a Maugham-like tale”: M. Sturm, “Impromptu,” The Grumbler, 1931; reprinted in Early Millar: The First Stories of Ross Macdonald & Margaret Millar (Cordelia Editions, 1982).
“a sketch of his own”: Ken Miller [sic], “The South Sea Soup Co.,” The Grumbler, 1931; reprinted in Early Millar.
“ ‘Mint machines’ ”: Millar the budding social critic worked a reference to “mint machines” into his Sherlock Holmes parody for The Grumbler.
“a kind of conspiracy of silence”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“ ‘As I stood there absorbing Hammett’s novel’ ”: Macdonald, “Down These Streets”; reprinted in Self-Portrait. Asked by Arthur Kaye in 1970 which Hammett book he’d read that day in McCallum’s, Millar said, “I think it was probably The Glass Key.” In later years, when his memory was less reliable, Millar began saying it was The Maltese Falcon. Surely The Glass Key is more likely to have induced Millar’s profound reaction; its first scene is set in a billiard room where men are gambling and making political deals: a place rather like McCallum’s.
“Millar dropped this junk down a manhole”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘Form News’ ”: These two items may well have been written by Kenneth Millar, the Grumbler’s literary editor.
“ ‘Someday I’m going to marry that girl’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“Millar didn’t want to work in an office”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“he counted the number of rooms he’d lived in”: “The year I graduated, 1932, I counted the rooms I had lived in during my first sixteen years, and got a total of fifty.” Macdonald, introduction to Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“reading Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard into the night”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“ ‘Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart’ ”: Millar notebook, UCI.
“ ‘His writing was so shaky’ ”: Macdonald, introduction to A Collection of Reviews; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘The best of his talents were wasted’ ”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘Thou sad-voiced sky-born Fury’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “Wild Goose,” The College Cord, February 3, 1934.
“ ‘Ken Millar has a reflection’ ”: “Discords,” The College Cord, April 13, 1934.
“a smart scholarship student who found him intense”: Margaret Gretchen Kalbfleisch Kingsley interview with TN.
“someday Esquire would publish his work”: Millar to Matthew Bruccoli, April 27, 1968, MJB Collection, UCI.
“Craving sex”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“He’d struggle for years with her memory”: Ibid.
“ ‘roars of laughter’ ”: Don Herron, “Players’ Club Spring Play Well Presented Last Night,” University of Western Ontario Gazette, April 3, 1936.
“he saw Emlyn Williams’s Night Must Fall”: Millar to Nolan Miller, January 4, 1977, the Nolan Miller Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan; also, typed copy, UCI.
“marching in an antifascist demonstration”: Millar to Julian Symons, courtesy of Julian Symons.
Other details of Millar’s European trip from Millar interviews with Arthur Kaye, Paul Nelson, and others; and from Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“he made good Munich contacts”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“an affair with a melancholy German girl”: R. A. D. Ford letter to TN, November 12, 1991; Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“he’d shaken the worst of his depression”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘Millar Speaks of Recent Journey’ ”: “Millar Speaks of Recent Journey: Large Gathering at Hesperian Club Hears Talks by Kenneth Millar and Donald Herron,” University of Western Ontario Gazette, March 5, 1937.
“ ‘I came after Armageddon’ ”: Unsigned Kenneth Millar essay, “Dog Eats Dog,” The Gazette Literary Supplement, University of Western Ontario Gazette, December 17, 1937.
“ ‘I thought he was not only sort of sinister’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘Sin is despair’ ”: Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Edification and Awakening, trans. Alastair Hannay (Penguin, 1989).
“ ‘There is a force’ ”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘rich on the heritage of the Christian West’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘He was always serious’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“had a ‘nervous breakdown’ ”: Details of Margaret Sturm’s history from Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘He knew his fate when he saw it’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘a true Kierkegaardian view’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘bitter choice’ ”: Ibid.
<
br /> “ ‘Dear Mr. J__________’ ”: Handwritten copy, UCI.
“ ‘Will meet you in the lobby’ ”: Letter, UCI.
“the teetotaling sister of alcoholic brothers”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘If light were dark’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “If Light Were Dark,” Toronto Saturday Night, May 4, 1940.
“ ‘The King in Yellow’ ”: Raymond Chandler, “The King in Yellow,” Dime Detective, March 1938; collected in Five Sinister Characters (Avon, 1945), et al.
“They were too young”: Millar to Steven Carter, July 2, 1971, courtesy of Steven Carter.
“ ‘When the boat came back for us’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘A woman feels funny’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘Would you like a little divorce?’ ”: Anna Branson interview with TN. Also unpublished Kenneth Millar manuscript, circa 1939, UCI.
“The newlyweds slept in separate rooms”: This and other details of the Millars’ married life and parenthood from Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“a lot of drillwork he found distasteful”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“They couldn’t afford movies”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“In bed late one Saturday morning”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“Millar went to hear a high school commencement address”: Macdonald, introduction to Archer at Large; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“A radio quiz announced”: Ibid.; also Donald Pearce interview with TN.