John D. MacDonald

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This article is about an American author. For the British surgeon, see John Denis Macdonald.
John D. MacDonald
JohnDMacDonald.jpg
Born (1916-07-24)July 24, 1916
Sharon, Pennsylvania, United States
Died December 28, 1986(1986-12-28) (aged 70)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Occupation Novelist, short story writer
Nationality American
Period 1945-1986
Genres Detective fiction

John Dann MacDonald (July 24, 1916 – December 28, 1986) was an American writer of novels and short stories, known for his thrillers.

MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida. His best-known works include the popular and critically acclaimed Travis McGee series, and his novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1972, MacDonald was named a grandmaster of the Mystery Writers of America, and he won a 1980 U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Mystery.[1] Stephen King[2] praised MacDonald as "the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller." Kingsley Amis said, MacDonald "is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow, only MacDonald writes thrillers and Bellow is a human-heart chap, so guess who wears the top-grade laurels?"[3]

Contents

[edit] Early life

MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, where his father worked for Savage Arms. The family moved to Utica, N.Y. in 1926, where his father was now Treasurer of the Utica branch of the Savage Arms Corporation. In 1934, Young John was sent to Europe for several weeks, and this whetted his appetite for travel and for photography.

MacDonald enrolled at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania but was not doing well and dropped out during his sophomore year. He worked menial jobs in New York City for a short time and then was accepted at Syracuse University. While there he met Dorothy Prentiss; they married in 1937.

He graduated from Syracuse the following year. In 1939, he received an MBA from Harvard University. MacDonald was later able to make good use of his education in business and economics by incorporating elaborate business swindles into the plots of a number of his novels.

In 1940, MacDonald accepted a direct commission as a First Lieutenant in the Army Ordnance Corps. He later served in the OSS in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations during World War II. He was discharged in September 1945 as a Lieutenant Colonel.

[edit] Writing career

[edit] Early pulp story

MacDonald's literary career began accidentally; in 1945, while in military service, he wrote a short story and mailed it home to his wife. He had grown tired of trying to write when everything had to pass the military censors. She submitted it to Esquire magazine, where it was rejected, and then she submitted it to Story magazine. It was accepted for $25.00. He was informed of this just after disembarking from the ship home.

After his discharge from service, MacDonald spent the next four months writing short stories, generating some 800,000 words and losing 20 pounds (9.1 kg) while typing during 14-hour daily sessions, seven days a week. This effort netted him only hundreds of rejection slips, but in the fifth month, a $40 sale to the pulp magazine Dime Detective set his career in motion, and he continued to sell close to 500 stories to the detective, mystery, adventure, sports, Western, and science fiction pulps.[4] In a couple of instances MacDonald's stories were the only ones in the magazine, but hidden via pseudonyms.

[edit] Hardboiled thrillers

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As the boom in paperback novels expanded, MacDonald successfully made the jump to longer fiction with his first novel, The Brass Cupcake, published in 1950 by Fawcett Publications' Gold Medal Books.

His science fiction included the story "Cosmetics" in Astounding (1948) and the three novels Wine of the Dreamers (1951), Ballroom of the Skies (1952), and The Girl, the Gold Watch, & Everything (1962), which were collected as an omnibus in Time and Tomorrow (1980).

Between 1953 and 1964, MacDonald specialized in crime thrillers, many of which are now considered masterpieces of the hardboiled genre. Most of these novels were published as paperback originals, although some were later republished in hardbound editions. Many, such as Dead Low Tide (1953), were set in his adopted home of Florida, and were effective in suggesting a sinister aura lurking beneath the glittery surface of that state. Novels such as The Executioners (1957) (which was twice filmed as Cape Fear, first in 1962 and again in 1991) and One Monday We Killed them All (1962) penetrated the minds of psychopathic killers. As MacDonald honed his craft, he developed his narrative "voice," one of the most distinctive in the suspense fiction field.

He is credited with writing about the effect of the building boom on the environment, and his novel, A Flash of Green (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), is a good example of this effort. Many later Florida crime, detective, and mystery writers, such as Randy Wayne White, James Hall, and Jonathon King, have followed suit.

[edit] Travis McGee

MacDonald's protagonists were often intelligent and introspective men, sometimes with a hard cynical streak. Travis McGee, the "salvage consultant" and "knight-errant," was all of that. McGee made his living by recovering the loot from thefts and swindles, keeping half to finance his "retirement," which he took in pieces as he went along. He first appeared in the 1964 novel The Deep Blue Good-by and was last seen in The Lonely Silver Rain in 1985. All titles in the 21-volume series include a color, a mnemonic device which was suggested by his publisher so that when harried travelers looked to buy a book they could at once see those MacDonald titles they had not read.

The McGee novels feature an ever-changing array of female companions, some particularly nasty villains, exotic locales in Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean, and appearances by a sidekick known only as "Meyer," an economist of international renown and a Ph.D. As Sherlock Holmes had his well-known address on Baker Street, McGee had his trademark lodgings on his 52-foot (16 m) houseboat, the Busted Flush, named for the poker hand that started the run of luck in which he won her. She is docked at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

[edit] On sequels

[edit] From Cal Branche

"Fans of JDM ,who have long clamored for someone to continue the novels, have made their wishes known along with plenty of suggested authors to take on the task. However, the Estate has not allowed this to happen, but there has not been any good reason given publicly for that position.

Until now, that is. The statement below by JDM’s son, Maynard, came to light first a few years ago when he responded to a request by someone who wanted permission to write a sequel. Maynard copied me with his answer since many such requests happen as a result of my JDM web site (jdmhomepage.org) which I have maintained on the internet for 16 years.

I was very impressed by the logic of the denial, and by the empathy shown to the person making the request. (While that part is not included below Maynard made it clear that the person might want to write his own story, and not use someone else’s characters.)"

[edit] Maynard’s statement

"Within a week of my father's death in 1986, the question of sequels to his Travis McGee series was raised. It became a hot issue for many years, and even now, 26 years later, it still provokes spirited, and sometimes contentious, discussion.

Early on, before I even began to come to terms with the ethics of having someone else try to step into my father's shoes, the commercial implications were an immediate issue.

A sequel would obviously affect the ongoing value of that literary property for our family.

Ok, it could also enhance the value. But if the sequel bombed, it would turn off potential fans as well as outraging the old ones, thus killing the goose that might continue to lay a modest number of golden eggs for the publishers and ourselves.

It took me a long time to get clear about the idea of sequels. And while I was slowly finding that clarity manuscripts, book proposals, and copies of books by recommended authors, rolled in. For some of the writers who loved my father's work, doing a sequel was pure fun; for a few others it was pure piracy.

Many years ago, at the 1990 John D. MacDonald Conference in Ft. Lauderdale, I was approached by a very large man who lived on a houseboat, and who claimed to have written the ultimate sequel about McGee's hitherto unknown son Trevor, who takes up where his dad left off.

This author's negotiating technique consisted of regrets that we might end up facing each other in court if I resisted the publication of his sequel. His approach remained confrontational. He later claimed that any effort by us to stop him could only benefit his book with more publicity.

Eventually, I think someone from the legal department at Random House sat on him and he backed away. He has become a legend in my family, as ever since meeting him, we refer to any one using his approach as negotiating from a position of cranial-rectal misadventure.

In contrast, a wonderful sequel prospect came from my dad's great friend, Stephen King. He wanted to do something with a black theme that would be the final McGee. Obviously, a sequel by him would have been tremendously successful commercially, and it would have been a personal tribute to my father rather than a knock-off. It was an extremely difficult choice for me. I wish the idea had come up while my dad was still alive because it would have been sensational to publish a back-to-back book with each of them imitating the other.

As you can see, the offers to extend my father's work have run from a tacky, blatant, commercial knock-off to a respectful, professional postscript to his work by a true friend. And between those extremes there have been many well-crafted manuscripts that were done with warm regard and sincere admiration for my old man.

As these offers and manuscripts continued, and the enthusiasm from Random House snowballed, I was forced to finally define and face my own personal resistance to the idea of a sequel.

Given that I am not immune to the money, why refuse?

It is because I have never seen a really good imitation, be it art, literature, or music, that carries that poignant echo of the original artist- as a man. Even if the work itself is excellent, there is an inevitable flatness on that most intimate level, the level where the artist reveals himself.

To me, a work of art is a souvenir of the artist. It is a reflection of his inner and outer experience. It represents who he is and where he has got to at that moment of his life. In this sense, the creative process defies copying. I enjoy my father's work immensely. Part of him is still there, present on each page. Trying to echo that by imitating it is like trying to paint like Van Gogh by cutting off an ear. It also strikes me as a question of fairness. The dead cannot answer back and I feel it is presumptuous and disrespectful to play with their work.

My stand in this matter may have disappointed many of John D. MacDonald's fans, and I apologize for that.

Maynard MacDonald ©2012"

[edit] Death

MacDonald died at the age of 70, on December 28, 1986, at St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from complications of an earlier heart bypass operation.[5]

[edit] Media adaptations

[edit] Thrillers and science fiction

MacDonald's novel Soft Touch was the basis for the 1961 film Man-Trap.

His 1957 novel The Executioners was filmed in 1962 as Cape Fear, a dark thriller of strong suspense and menace starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Martin Scorsese directed the 1991 remake of Cape Fear.

The novel Cry Hard, Cry Fast was adapted as a two-part episode of the TV series Run for Your Life in November 1967.

The novella "Linda" was filmed twice for television, in 1973 (with Stella Stevens in the title role) and 1993 (with Virginia Madsen).

The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything was adapted for a 1980 TV movie. It led to a 1981 sequel, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Dynamite.

The 1980 TV movie Condominium, based on MacDonald's novel, starred Dan Haggerty and Barbara Eden.

The 1984 A Flash of Green with Ed Harris.

[edit] Travis McGee

When Travis McGee arrived on the big screen in 1970 with Darker Than Amber, starring Rod Taylor, the film received favorable reviews from Roger Ebert and other critics, but there was no follow-up into a series. The 1983 TV movie Travis McGee: The Empty Copper Sea starred Sam Elliott.

[edit] Influence

Various writers have acknowledged the trail that MacDonald and McGee blazed, including Carl Hiaasen in an introduction to a 1990s edition of The Deep Blue Good-by: "Most readers loved MacDonald's work because he told a rip-roaring yarn. I loved it because he was the first modern writer to nail Florida dead-center, to capture all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise, and breath-grabbing beauty." Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., wrote another memorable tribute: "To diggers a thousand years from now . . . the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen."

Most of the current crop of Florida-based mystery writers acknowledge a debt to MacDonald, including Randy Wayne White, James Hall, Les Standiford, Jonathon King and Tim Dorsey.[6] Lawrence Block's New York-based fictional hero, Matthew Scudder, is a character who makes his living doing just what McGee does—favors for friends who have no other recourse, then taking his cut.

Homage to MacDonald was evident in the 1981-88 CBS-TV series Simon & Simon with scenes showing Rick Simon's boat docked at Slip F-18 in San Diego.

Stephen King stated in the book Faces of Fear: "John D. MacDonald has written a novel called The End of the Night which I would argue is one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century. It ranks with Death of a Salesman, it ranks with An American Tragedy."

The science fiction writer Spider Robinson has made it clear that he is also among MacDonald's admirers. The bartender in Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Mike Callahan, is married to Lady Sally McGee, whose last name is almost certainly a tribute to Travis. In a recent sequel to the Callahan's series, Callahan's Key, a group of regulars from the former saloon decide they've had enough of Long Island, so they move to Key West, Florida, in a colorful caravan of modified school buses. On their way to Key West, they stop at a marina near Fort Lauderdale specifically to visit Slip F-18 (where Busted Flush was usually moored) and meet a local who was the prototype for McGee's sidekick Meyer. The slip is empty, with a small plaque mentioning Busted Flush.

The popular mystery writer Dean Koontz has also acknowledged in an interview with Bookreporter.com's Marlene Taylor that MacDonald is "(His) favorite author of all time... I've read everything he wrote four or five times."

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Travis McGee novels

In chronological order:

[edit] Non-series novels (excluding science fiction)

[edit] Anthologies

[edit] Short story collections

[edit] Science fiction

[edit] Non-fiction

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "National Book Awards – 1980". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-08. (With essay by Glen David Gold from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
  2. ^ King, Stephen. On Writing (Hodder and Stoughton, 2000, ISBN 0-340-76996-3)
  3. ^ Amis, Kingsley (1971). "A New James Bond". What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 69. ISBN 9780151958603. 
  4. ^ Jonathan Yardley, "John D. MacDonald's Lush Landscape of Crime", Washington Post, Nov. 11, 2003
  5. ^ Fraser, C. Gerald (1986-12-29). "John D. Macdonald, Novelist, Is Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-06. 
  6. ^ Mystery Readers International: Florida Mysteries, Volume 15, No. 4, Winter 1999-2000

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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