by Tom Nolan
“he wrote dozens of stories, sketches, and poems”: Manuscripts, Millar Collection, UCI.
“ ‘Morley Callaghan was the one’ ”: Jerry Tutunjian, “A Conversation with Ross Macdonald,” Tamarack Review, 1974. Millar continued, “He wasn’t exactly a crime writer, or what you might call a member of the hard-boiled school, but his style belonged in that category. I think it had a great influence on me. I still have an enormous admiration for his work.”
“ ‘That’s when you really feel the entrapment’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“the half dozen stories he wrote for ‘the Sunday School papers’ ”: TN located these four: “Abernethy the Squirrel,” Explorer, November 5, 1939; “That Thy Days May Be Long in the Land,” Onward, January 7, 1940; “Alexander the Great,” The Canadian Boy, March 17, 1940; “Nora of the Cliffs,” The Canadian Girl, April 28, 1940.
“a comic verse taken by Saturday Night”: Kenneth Millar, “Fatal Facility,” Toronto Saturday Night, July 29, 1939.
“including ‘The Yellow Dusters’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “The Yellow Dusters,” Toronto Saturday Night, November 4, 1939.
“ ‘Saturday Night came out on Saturday morning’ ”: Ross Macdonald, introduction to Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘He was a born teacher’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“thought he spoke above most students’ level”: Warnock Macmillan interview with TN.
“ ‘Mother knows best’ ”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“She wanted to be a writer”: Apparently Margaret Sturm also sold stories to “the Sunday School papers,” unlocated.
“ ‘Probably just nerves’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘I was brought up with mysteries’ ”: Ibid.
“Nearly three hundred mystery novels came out in the United States in 1940”: “The market in the United States absorbs about one new mystery book every working day in the year,” in L. H. Robbins, “They Get Away with Murder,” New York Times Magazine, November 17, 1940; “Two hundred and eighty-two crime novels passed under the portals of The Criminal Record during the calendar year,” in Judge Lynch, “Come, Sweet Death,” Saturday Review of Literature, December 7, 1940.
“a murder mystery with a high school setting”: Millar notebook, circa 1940, UCI.
“ ‘I had to do something to get out of that bed’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘We both almost had a conniption fit’ ”: Stanley Handman, “Murder for Fun and Profit,” Weekend Magazine 8, no. 28 (1958).
“Doubleday’s contract listed Margaret and Kenneth Millar as coauthors”: Doubleday contract, UCI.
“Today’s Poets”: Chad Walsh, Today’s Poets: American and British Poetry Since the 1930’s (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964).
“the only American crime writer to receive early ethical training in a Canadian Mennonite Sunday school”: Macdonald, “Down These Streets”; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“Millar dubbed Auden”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“Millar attended Auden’s Friday-evening student ‘at-homes’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘It was strange’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘this certain scene I’d written’ ”: Ibid. The scene is in Margaret Millar’s Wall of Eyes (Random House, 1943).
“ ‘With so many fine books to read’ ”: Edmund Wilson, “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” New Yorker, January 20, 1945.
“used Auden as the model for his fictional detective”: Julian Symons, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (Mysterious Press, 1993).
“ ‘a remarkable kind of saint’ ”: Millar to Charles Miller, February 17, 1978, the Charles H. Miller Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan.
“Millar had ‘really loved him’ ”: Millar to Charles Miller, undated, the Charles H. Miller Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan.
“feel guilt at ‘betraying’ ”: Millar notebook, UCI.
“partly because Millar didn’t care to go . . . more because he didn’t think it a good idea”: Robert Easton letter to Matthew J. Bruccoli, September 22, 1982, courtesy of Robert Easton.
“ ‘The man in the black shirt’ ”: Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister (Houghton Mifflin, 1949).
“no doubt her husband was a genius”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“it was suggested he might wish to change his major”: Ibid.; Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“that way (Millar guessed)”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson; Millar discreetly didn’t mention Davies by name. He wrote Peter Wolfe of Davies: “For some time we sort of collaborated at a distance on a column of smart cracks but—by this time I was in Ann Arbor—I never met him” (January 20, 1973). Millar told his bibliographer Matthew J. Bruccoli that for much of 1941 “The Passing Show” was written “mostly, but not entirely” by him; Bruccoli, Ross Macdonald/Kenneth Millar: A Descriptive Bibliography (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983).
Judith Skelton Grant’s Robertson Davies: Man of Myth (Viking, 1994), written with Davies’s cooperation, does not mention Millar in saying that Davies “wrote much of ‘The Passing Show,’ the (Saturday Night) page-three column of wisecracks, rhymes and whimsies.”
“The Bat contract”: Doubleday contract, UCI.
“A Michigan newspaper piece”: unidentified publication, Margaret Millar folder, Kitchener Public Library.
“ ‘commendable’ ”: Saturday Review of Literature, July 19, 1941.
“its sound plot”: “Briefly Noted,” New Yorker, July 19, 1941.
“ ‘a mystery find of considerable voltage’ ”: Will Cuppy, “Mystery and Adventure,” New York Herald Tribune Books, July 20, 1941.
“ ‘Margaret Millar is a humdinger’ ”: Will Cuppy, “Mystery and Adventure,” New York Herald Tribune Books, February 22, 1942.
“ ‘Ken was very impressive’ ”: Georgia Haugh interview with TN.
“ ‘They both at that time’ ”: Marianne Meisel to TN.
“a novel published by Scribner’s”: Marianne Roane, Years Before the Flood (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945).
“ ‘For God’s sake be quiet’ ”: Marianne Meisel interview with TN.
“She rescinded her ban”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“Millar was often cheerfully physical”: Anna Branson interview with TN.
“ ‘You never knew when’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘There was a lot of fighting’ ”: Marianne Meisel interview with TN.
“Millar contributed to Linda’s repertoire”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘For what is the sensibility of our age?’ ”: Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947).
“ ‘the private detective employed by your parents’ ”: Chad Walsh, Campus Gods on Trial (Macmillan, 1953, 1962).
“ ‘To me’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘We were talking’ ”: Ibid.
“Alone with his wife”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“Once she threw an egg at him”: Shelly Lowenkopf, “Santa Barbara Mystery Writers,” Santa Barbara News & Review, August 29, 1985. (“Yes, it was a three-minute egg. He ducked and it splattered on the wall. I was so piqued with him that I let it stay for some time.”)
“Another time she dropped a typewriter from a second-story window”: “I once threw a typewriter out a second-story window”: Margaret Millar quoted in “Margaret Millar and the Greatest Opening Lines Since ‘In the Beginning . . . ,’ ” in Dilys Winn, Murderess Ink: The Better Half of the Mystery (Workman Publishing, 1979).
“Talking late one night”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘She was always nervous’ ”
: Marianne Meisel interview with TN.
“ ‘I really think’ ”: Anna Branson interview with TN.
“ ‘Margaret was talking’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘And Margaret Millar’ ”: University of Michigan English Department Newsletter, September 7, 1943, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (Flmu C26 Eng.); used by permission.
“the Toronto Star paid”: Millar notebooks, UCI.
“ ‘a definite reputation and standing in mystery fiction’ ”: Isabelle Taylor to Margaret Millar, January 21, 1943, UCI.
“ ‘It doesn’t come off’ ”: Ibid.
“She’d begun corresponding”: Margaret Millar interview with TN. Margaret Millar’s Do Evil in Return (Random House, 1950) is dedicated to Faith Baldwin.
“an advance of five hundred dollars”: Random House contract, UCI.
“Things weren’t good”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘While we were very very proud of each other’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“Millar hastened to the Ann Arbor rental library”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘He was rather smug and pleased’ ”: Marianne Meisel to TN.
“New York Times Book Review”: “New Books for Christmas: MYSTERIES,” New York Times Book Review, December 5, 1943. Among ten other mysteries selected were Dorothy B. Hughes’s The Blackbirder and Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake.
“ ‘Everyone else looks pretty shoddy to me’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, May 13, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘The waiter just brought me’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, July 8, 1944, UCI.
“he managed to master Morse code in fifteen minutes”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 29, 1944, UCI.
“in the rented house of Listerine manufacturer Gerard Lambert”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI; Millar to Matthew J. Bruccoli, September 12, 1975, MJB Collection, UCI.
Millar was pleased to read in Bruccoli’s 1975 biography of John O’Hara that O’Hara had dined at this same Lambert house in the fall of 1949.
“New York Times”: Isaac Anderson, “Crime Corner,” New York Times Book Review, October 1, 1944.
“Chicago Sun”: Elizabeth Bullock, “Sleuths and Slayers: There Are Real Ideas in ‘The Dark Tunnel,’ ” Chicago Sun Book Week, October 8, 1944.
“New Republic”: E.H. (unidentified), “Crime and Punishment,” New Republic, October 16, 1944.
“Saturday Review’s mystery critic”: Judge Lynch, “ . . . let him die!” Saturday Review, January 6, 1945.
“ ‘The only place I imagine with automatic ease’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 12, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘really first-class’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 4, 1945, UCI.
“‘good, though not so good’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 30, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘It’s going to be a strange book’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 12, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘Please don’t tell me’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 14, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘It does sound Chandlerish of course’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, April 19, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘Just did it so I could report to you’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, March 5, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘slinging crap’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, February 25, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘you will not have to’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘I think it’s excellent’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 30, 1945, UCI.
“Dorothy B. Hughes”: Dorothy B. Hughes, Albuquerque (New Mexico) Tribune, May 11, 1945.
“ ‘There are mountains and the sea’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, April 13, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘Sweet, darling Gates’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, April 15, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘Chandler is undoubtedly one of the best’ ”: D. C. Russell, “Raymond Chandler, and the Future of Whodunits,” New York Times Book Review, June 17, 1945.
The essayist was Diarmuid Russell, Eudora Welty’s lifelong literary agent.
“ ‘Now a publisher’ ”: James Sandoe, “Dagger of the Mind,” Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, April-September 1946.
“the studios were especially impressed by books that were well promoted by publishers”: “Movie Companies Look to Detective Story Writers for the New ‘Psychological’ Film,” Publishers Weekly, March 9, 1946.
“ ‘I am excited, scared and miss you like hell’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, June 12, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I know you won’t go Hollywood’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 22, 1945, UCI.
“No city had ever looked better to him”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“ ‘Hello my darling’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, July 27, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘All writers lunch together’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, July 30, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘He was perfectly charming’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, August 3, 1945, UCI.
“great admiration for Melville”: Millar to Fred Dannay, November 25, 1946, Frederic Dannay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“ ‘It’s not good’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, August 1, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘WE ALL had to listen’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, August 3, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I’m so busy’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, July 30, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘He said, “Good God” ’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, August 1, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘Tall [very]’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘Encourage me in this’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, July 30, 1945, UCI.
Details of August 14 events from Margaret Millar interview with TN; also Millar to the Bransons, October 7, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I don’t know how she got stuck with him’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“his concern for a foaling mare”: Margaret and Kenneth Millar, prefatory note to Faulkner story (“The Hound”) in the Mystery Writers of America anthology Murder by Experts (Ziff-Davis, 1947).
The Millars were responsible for this anthology’s title, submitting it with other possibilities to the book’s editor, Fred Dannay (one-half of “Ellery Queen”), in a letter of November 25, 1946 (Columbia University). In 1949, the title Murder by Experts was licensed for an MWA-approved radio series, which ran for two and a half years on the Mutual network.
“ ‘He has a knack’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 20, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I liked Boucher’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, October 15, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I really enjoyed writing’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, November 4, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I’m developing a detective’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, October 15, 1945, UCI.
In obvious jest, Millar wrote “Christopher Marlowe,” then lightly lined out “Christopher” so as to leave it clearly visible. The “successor to Marlowe” part was no joke, though.
“ ‘Give me another twenty years, baby’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 16, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘marvellous’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, November 22, 1945, UCI.
“a $300 fourth prize”: Second prize went to a William Faulkner entry (one of his “Uncle” Gavin mystery tales), first prize to Manley Wade Wellman.
“ ‘The dandified esthete’ ”: Herbert Marshall McLuhan, “Footprints in the Sands of Crime,” Sewanee Review, October-December 1946.
“ ‘I make a point’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “Find the Woman,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1946.
“The couple’s 1945 income”: Millar notebook, UCI.
“ ‘It’s your own business’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, July 14, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘You stated quite bluntly’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, January 3, 1946, UC
I.
“ ‘I’ve been trying’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, February 8, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘If we live here’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, February 22, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘. . . We could make more money’ ”: Kenneth Millar, Trouble Follows Me (Dodd, Mead, 1946).
“ ‘The Stateside Blues’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 4, 1945, UCI. Other manuscripts written aboard the Shipley Bay are at UCI.
“ ‘That is because’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, December 20, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘The main cause’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, January 19, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘That wild strange marvellous night we had together’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, February 6, 1946, UCI.
This paragraph links quotes from several letters from Kenneth to Margaret Millar: “we had a lovemaking . . . I worship you,” February 7, 1946; “The way other people believe in god [sic],” January 20, 1946; “The sweet and powerful language of your body . . . beyond everything else,” January 19, 1946; “I cling desperately,” January 12, 1946; all UCI.
“ ‘merely to cohabit’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, December 3, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘I’ll be resuming’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, December 27, 1945, UCI.
“Those hours’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 11, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘There’s something’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘Can’t get enough of jazz’ ”: Ibid.
“‘best I ever heard,’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 12, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘Between the mountains and the sea’ ”: Francis Fisher Browne, “Santa Barbara,” from Volunteer Grain (1897).
“ ‘When I was a boy’ ”: Marshall Bond Jr., “Around the Upper East,” from Adventures with Peons, Princes & Tycoons (Star Rover Press, 1983).
I owe these two quotes to their inclusion in Tales of Santa Barbara: From Native Storytellers to Sue Grafton, selected by Steven Gilbar and Dean Stewart (John Daniel & Co., 1994), which also nicely juxtaposes Ross Macdonald’s fictional brush fire in The Underground Man with Margaret Millar’s nonfiction account of the Coyote fire in The Birds and the Beasts Were There.
“a magical place where the light came from”: Jerry Tutunjian interview with TN.