by Tom Nolan
“Linda Found, Heads Home,” June 11, 1959.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Mystery at Tahoe—UC Coed Lost 8 Days,” June 8, 1959, with UPI photo.
“ ‘Missing Coed in L.A.,’ ” June 9, 1959.
“Coed Mystery Deepens—Warrant for Her Arrest,” June 10, 1959.
“ ‘Lost’ Coed Home After Reno Trip,” June 11, 1959.
“Missing Coed Found Safe, Going Home,” June 11, 1959, final.
“ ‘Lost’ Coed Home After Reno Trip,” June 12, 1959.
“The Worrier,” This World section, June 14, 1959.
“Judge Spares ‘Vanishing’ UC Coed,” July 7, 1959.
“ ‘She could be anyplace in the United States’ ”: “Davis Coed Disappears,” Woodland Daily Democrat, June 8, 1959.
“ ‘You know,’ he told Slayman”: “Hunt for Missing Coed Shifts to L.A.,” Woodland Daily Democrat, June 9, 1959.
“ ‘Come home, dear’ ”: Quoted in whole or in part in several newspapers.
“ ‘I had to teach the next day’ ”: Lid to TN.
“ ‘He was almost out of his mind’ ”: Stump interview with TN.
“ ‘I’m afraid she is trying to sink out of sight’ ”: June 10, 1959, unidentified LA paper, Los Angeles Examiner clip file archive, Regional History Center, USC library.
“Millar scrawled on the back of a Channel 5 logsheet”: Logsheet dated June 9, 1959, UCI.
“ ‘Mystery Writer Disappears’ ”: (Los Angeles) Mirror News, June 10, 1959.
“ ‘The answer of course is yes’ ”: Lid to TN.
“ ‘some kind of psychic break’ ”: “Linda Millar Back Home with Family,” Santa Barbara News-Press, June 11, 1959.
“ ‘I do know I tried my hardest to get back’ ”:People vs. Linda Jane Millar, Linda Millar handwritten statement.
“ ‘I personally don’t believe Linda called home’ ”: Lid to TN.
“ ‘on the spur of a rather desperate moment’ ”: Millar to von Auw, July 24, 1959, Princeton.
“ ‘I have to make some money’ ”: Millar to von Auw, July 12, 1959, Princeton.
“Mystery”: Gene Davidson and John Knoerle, “Ross Macdonald Interview,” Mystery, November/December 1979.
“New Yorker”: unsigned review, “Mystery and Crime,” New Yorker, August 13, 1960.
“ ‘the wrong side of the tracts’ ”: Ross Macdonald, The Ferguson Affair (Knopf, 1960).
“ ‘I am now one of those health bugs’ ”: Millar to Knopf, October 26, 1959, HRHRC.
“ ‘This may seem like an odd simile’ ”: Olding to Millar, July 15, 1960, UCI.
“a rave in the New York Times Book Review”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large,” New York Times Book Review, July 24, 1960.
“ ‘Happy Day!’ ”: Millar to von Auw, January 8, 1961, Princeton.
“ ‘rather staggering’ ”: Von Auw to Millar, August 15, 1960, Princeton.
“ ‘almost laughably good’ ”: Millar to von Auw, September 3, 1960, Princeton.
“ ‘as if England had joined the European Community’ ”: Millar to Knopf, June 21, 1960, HRHRC.
“ ‘Talk about togetherness!’ ”: Maurice Dolbier, “About the Millars of Santa Barbara,” New York Herald Tribune, November 13, 1960.
“ ‘The Millars do not collaborate’ ”: Publishers Weekly, November, 1960.
“ ‘I don’t think I write escape fiction’ ”: Martha MacGregor, “The Art of Writing About Murder,” New York Post, November 27, 1960.
“a comical New Yorker sketch”: S. J. Perelman, “Oh, I Am a Cook and a Houseboy Bland,” New Yorker, February 18, 1961; included in The Rising Gorge (Simon and Schuster, 1961).
“ ‘Maggie’s a hard girl to keep away from home’ ”: Millar to von Auw, November 8, 1960, Princeton.
“ ‘We’ll have a man in the White House’ ”: Margaret Millar to Sandoe, November 9, 1960, the James Sandoe Collection, Special Collections and Manuscripts, Brigham Young University.
“ ‘as a token of affection’ ”: Millar to Olding, December 6, 1960, Princeton.
“ ‘Ken and I would talk about Alfred’ ”: Harding Lemay interview with TN.
“They should have seen a 1955 photo”: illustrating “Former KCI Teacher Urges New Library.”
“ ‘Dear Ivan’ ”: Millar to von Auw, January 27, 1961, Princeton.
“ ‘Dear Ken’ ”: Knopf to Millar, May 29, 1961, HRHRC.
“ ‘admirable,’ ” “ ‘excellent,’ ” “ ‘illuminating’ ”: Unsigned reader’s report on “Coleridge and the Inward Eye,” sent with letter from Mark Saxton to Ivan von Auw, December 10, 1959, UCI.
“Millar was overwhelmed”: Millar to von Auw, December 26, 1959, Princeton.
“ ‘I hardly care what auspices’ ”: Millar to von Auw, January 8, 1961, Princeton.
“ ‘not wholly without misgivings’ ”: Millar to von Auw, January 21, 1961, Princeton.
“ ‘As at Harvard’ ”: Millar to von Auw, November 25, 1961, Princeton.
“ ‘rather eccentrically changed her mind’ ”: Millar to von Auw, February 7, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘I presume at least’ ”: Millar to von Auw, March 17, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘Ken adored all animals’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“she managed without calling home”: Margaret Millar, The Birds and the Beasts Were There (Random House, 1967).
“in several letters to the Bransons”: Millar to Anna Branson, June 15, 1962, UCI; Millar to the Bransons, October 27, 1962, UCI; Millar to Branson, August 19, 1963, UCI.
“ ‘They are stupider than people’ ”: Millar to Olding, March 22, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘an excellent man’ ”: Millar to von Auw, September 18, 1961, Princeton.
“ ‘All the news from here is good’ ”: Millar to Olding, March 22, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘It is, I think, more of a novel’ ”: Millar to von Auw, March 1, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘I’ve tried to give it more of my personal style’ ”: Millar to Knopf, April 2, 1962, HRHRC.
“ ‘A lot of people think that’s my best book’ ”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘Well . . . some choice’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘It’s difficult to cut a book down to twenty-five thousand words’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘Good bold transitions are the secret’ ”: Millar to Olding, Princeton.
“ ‘This was in the sixties’ ”: Seed interview with TN.
“Raymond Chandler Speaking”: eds. Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Walker (Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
“ ‘Patronage seems to be a powerful force’ ”: Millar to von Auw, March 9, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘I like it better now’ ”: Millar to Anna Branson, December 7, 1962, UCI.
“ ‘my most horrible plot yet’ ”: Millar to Olding, August 4, 1962, Princeton.
“Plato, Phaedrus”: Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin Books, 1987).
“ ‘continually developing mess’ ”: Millar to Anna Branson, June 15, 1962, UCI.
“More than one commentator”: e.g., T. R. Steiner, “The Mind of the Hardboiled: Ross Macdonald and the Roles of Criticism,” South Dakota Review, Spring 1986; Joyce Carol Oates, “The Simple Art of Murder,” New York Review of Books, December 21, 1995.
“ ‘like an albatross’ ”: Ross Macdonald, The Chill (Knopf, 1964).
“ ‘The tortoise will never catch Achilles’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 30, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘Archer, Macdonald’s narrator’ ”: Thomas J. Roberts, An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (University of Georgia Press, 1990).
“ ‘It is with The Chill that he found his own voice”: Otto Penzler, The Crown Crime Companion (Crown Trade
Paperbacks, 1995).
“1985 Newsweek list”: David Lehman, “A Sleuth’s Hall of Fame,” Newsweek, April 22, 1985.
“ ‘The once omnipresent private eye’ ”: James Sandoe, “Mystery—Detective—Suspense,” Library Journal, June 1, 1963.
“ ‘THE ZEBRA-STRIPED HEARSE’ ”: Unsigned review, New Yorker, January 12, 1963.
“ ‘I felt I deserved to win’ ”: Millar to Olding, April 18, 1962, Princeton.
“why give awards at all?”: Olding to Millar, April 24, 1962, UCI.
“ ‘He is a master of the lost art of plotting’ ”: Robert R. Kirsch, “Notes from the Crime File: Mystery Writer in Groove,” Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1962.
“ ‘lives of quiet bourgeois desperation’ ”: Roger Sale, “Gossips and Storytellers,” Hudson Review, Spring 1963.
“a review of The Wycherly Woman on the book page of the New York Post”: Gerald Walker, “Mystery Man,” New York Post, May 21, 1961, courtesy of Gerald Walker.
“Carolyn See cited Macdonald”: The Drowning Pool and The Barbarous Coast are quoted in “The Hollywood Novel: An Historical and Critical Study”—“A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Carolyn Penelope See,” September 1963, UCLA.
“the first feature article on Ross Macdonald”: Robert F. Jones, “A New Raymond Chandler?” Los Angeles, March 1963.
“ ‘I’d been in the navy in Long Beach’ ”: Robert F. Jones interview with TN.
“ ‘Macdonald’s detective, Lew Archer, is no “eye”’ ”: Walker, “Mystery Man.”
“ ‘Tony really made Ken Millar’ ”: Dorothy B. Hughes interview with TN.
“ ‘I write for you more than any one single person’ ”: Millar to Boucher, July 9, 1951, Indiana.
“ ‘Gramps is fine’ ”: Millar to the Bransons, May 17, 1963, UCI.
“ ‘He’s one of the lights of our life’ ”: Millar to Bransons, August 19, 1963, UCI.
“ ‘Mr. Macdonald writes mysteries’ ”: Publishers Weekly, November 26, 1962.
“ ‘While Lizzie Borden was no saint’ ”: Millar, “Ode to Lizzie,” Millar notebook, UCI.
“Mystery of the Missing Scroll”: “Mystery of the Missing Scroll,” The March of Crime (Southern California MWA newsletter), May 1963.
“ ‘In a purely personal opinion’ ”: Dorothy B. Hughes, “Mystery & Suspense,” Sunday (New York) Herald Tribune Book Week, March 22, 1964.
“ ‘More people are saying the right things’ ”: Knopf to Millar, January 17, 1964, HRHRC.
“ ‘On one occasion’ ”: Margaret Millar, The Birds and the Beasts Were There.
“ ‘Anyone, anything, being victimized’ ”: Robert Easton, “A Tribute,” Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1983 (A Bruccoli Clark Book/Gale Research Company, 1983).
“ ‘a wonderful madman’ ”: Millar to Olding, December 12, 1964, Princeton.
“Atkinson wrote several columns”: Brooks Atkinson, “Sometimes It’s Not Too Easy to Get a Good Look at a California Condor,” New York Times, January 28, 1964; Brooks Atkinson, “The Vanishing California Condor Is Today More Preyed Upon Than Preying,” New York Times, June 19, 1964 (Millar cited).
“ ‘Do we have to reveal ourselves as pleasure-greedy’ ”: Millar, “Remarks of Kenneth Millar, Information Officer, Santa Barbara Audubon Society, prepared for meeting called by Forest Service, February 27, 1964,” typescript, UCI; also HRHRC.
“ ‘This one made even the Regional Forester look uncomfortable’ ”: Ross Macdonald, “A Death Road for the Condor,” Sports Illustrated, April 6, 1964; included in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘Which seemed to imply’ ”: Ibid.
“Largely thanks to Millar”: Unsigned story, “Fate of Condors Debated on Coast,” New York Times, March 3, 1964 (Millar quoted); unsigned story, “The Road That Might Doom Our Unique Bird,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 1964 (Millar quoted); Robert S. Brodey, “California Condor Menaced,” Letters to the Times, New York Times, June 15, 1964. Washington Post and Washington Star editorials unlocated but cited by Millar to Knopf (March 8, 1964, HRHRC).
“ ‘A Death Road for the Condor’ ”: Macdonald, “A Death Road for the Condor.”
“ ‘When I sat down with him’ ”: Robert Phelps interview with TN.
“in which Millar was quoted”: Robert H. Phelps, “Volunteer Force to Guard Condors in California,” New York Times, May 17, 1964.
“OF COURSE PLEASE ACCEPT”: Millar to Olding, April 28, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘I remember one Christmas’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘It was rather strange to me’ ”: Easton interview with TN.
“ ‘about as colorful as a window shade’ ”: Ping Ferry interview with TN.
“ ‘He regarded them as misguided academics’ ”: Easton to Matthew Bruccoli, October 10, 1982, courtesy of Robert Easton.
“ ‘a moral duty’ ”: Easton interview with TN.
“ ‘Life is very interwoven’ ”: Millar to Knopf, June 9, 1964, HRHRC.
“ ‘Perhaps I could believe you’ ”: Olding to Millar, UCI.
“ ‘My good wife’ ”: Millar to Knopf, April 25, 1964, HRHRC.
“ ‘Margaret on a bicycle’ ”: Knopf to Millar, April 28, 1964, HRHRC.
“ ‘something extraordinary’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “A Roundup of Criminals at Large,” New York Times Book Review, June 21, 1964.
“ ‘It seems a healthy thing’ ”: Millar to von Auw, November 9, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘One question’ ”: Millar to Olding, January 3, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘unless you want us to withdraw it’ ”: Olding to Millar, January 7, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘He didn’t know’ ”: Millar to Olding, January 18, 1964, Princeton.
“‘Ferguson sold for $16,500 cash’ ”: Millar to von Auw, March 23, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘A producer who last year was toying with the idea’ ”: Ross Macdonald, “The Writer as Detective Hero,” Show, January 1965; reprinted in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘I suppose because I’m well satisfied’ ”: Millar to von Auw, May 8, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘Nothing good ever happens in Hollywood’ ”: Millar to Olding, June 26, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘of course I had to turn the negotiation over’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘though God knows’ ”: Millar to Olding, June 30, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘If there should be any movie interest’ ”: Millar to Olding, July 21, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘Ivan—Here we go again’ ”: Ibid., margin note.
“ ‘we can forget this cat’ ”: Swanson to Millar, November 4, 1964, UCI.
“ ‘not exactly a sought-after property’ ”: Millar (quoting what he’s written Swanson) to von Auw, November 9, 1964, Princeton.
“Von Auw wrote back quickly”: von Auw to Millar, November 13, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘do you tell Swanee or do I?’ ”: Millar to von Auw, November 16, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘We hope we’ll be able to get you a decent and proper contract’ ”: Swanson to Millar, November 23, 1964, UCI.
“ ‘It’s all I can do to keep up with him’ ”: Millar to Knopf, July 5, 1964.
“a fire on Coyote Road”: The Coyote fire is described superbly in Margaret Millar’s The Birds and the Beasts Were There. See also Raymond Ford Jr., Santa Barbara Wildfires: Fire on the Hills (McNally & Loftin, 1991).
“he picked out volumes to save”: List of books imagined by TN, based on Millar mentions of volumes important to him. Certainly Millar would have included his and his wife’s works, some hardcover copies of which were all but impossible to replace.
“ ‘I won’t try to describe a forest fire’ ”: Millar to von Auw, September 27, 1964, Pr
inceton.
“ ‘We were able to start a tiny backfire’ ”: Easton interview with TN.
“Betty Lid never forgot a brief telephone exchange”: Betty Lid interview with TN.
“ ‘You’re still sending my mail to’ ”: Millar to Knopf Mail Forwarding Dept., September 10, 1964, HRHRC.
“ ‘Thank you so much for your prompt reply’ ”: Millar to Pat Powell, October 11, 1965, Princeton.
“ ‘He had a great talent’ ”: Millar to Olding, December 12, 1964, Princeton.
“ ‘Without in the least abating my admiration’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large,” New York Times Book Review, January 24, 1965.
“ ‘Mr. Macdonald, like Chandler’ ”: Walter O’Hearn, “Chandler Tradition,” Montreal Star, February 13, 1965.
“ ‘the power and dimension of a Greek tragedy’ ”: Robert R. Kirsch, “Far Side of the Dollar Has Power of Greek Tragedy,” Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1965.
“ ‘nothing less than a literal search for personal identity’ ”: Clifford A. Ridley, “Murder Takes On New Dimension in Macdonald Story,” National Observer, January 18, 1965.
“ ‘an important American novelist’ ”: William Hogan, “The Far Side of Ross Macdonald,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 18, 1965.
“ ‘with foolish joy’ ”: Millar to Knopf, November 8, 1964, HRHRC.
“ ‘Now I have just enough success’ ”: Millar to Olding, January 20, 1965, Princeton.
“ ‘with enormous gusto’ ”: Millar to Olding, March 29, 1965, Princeton.
“a logjam-breaker for her”: Ibid.
“ ‘Oh, they’d have clashes’ ”: Easton interview with TN.
“ ‘Ken never forgave bad writers’ ”: Dennis Lynds interview with TN.
“ ‘Dresser was a shit’ ”: Gault interview with TN.
“ ‘He said the other day at lunch’ ”: Millar to Olding, April 2, 1962, Princeton.
“ ‘He was a charming man’ ”: Jackie Coulette interview with TN.
“ ‘While I have good poets with me’ ”: Millar note, UCI. Millar once wrote Julian Symons (among other things, a poet), “We prose writers secretly write for the poets and secretly yearn to be noticed by you” (January 20, 1973; courtesy of Julian Symons). To Ash Green (October 20, 1969, UCI) Millar admitted, “More heartening than almost anything is the good opinion of good poets like [Donald] Davie and Henri Coulette.”