John D. MacDonald
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| Born: | July 24, 1916 Sharon, Pennsylvania |
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| Died: | December 28, 1986 |
| Occupation: | novelist, short story writer |
| Nationality: | USA |
| Writing period: | 1945-1986 |
| Genres: | Detective fiction |
| Influenced: | Carl Hiaasen, Stephen King, Spider Robinson |
John Dann MacDonald (July 24, 1916 – December 28, 1986), writing as John D. MacDonald, was an American writer best known for his series of detective novels featuring protagonist Travis McGee. MacDonald was named a grand master of the Mystery Writers of America in 1972 and won the American Book Award in 1980. Stephen King, who praised him as "the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller," dedicated The Sun Dog (a novella in his Four Past Midnight collection) to MacDonald's memory; MacDonald had previously provided the foreword to King's Night Shift.
Born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, MacDonald enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance but dropped out during his sophomore year to work menial jobs in New York City. While attending the Syracuse University School of Business, he met Dorothy Prentiss. They married in 1937, and he graduated from Syracuse the following year. In 1939, he received an MBA from Harvard University.
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[edit] Writing career
[edit] Early pulp stories
MacDonald served in the OSS in the Far East during World War II. While still in the military, his literary career began accidentally when he wrote a short story in 1945 and mailed it home for the amusement of his wife. She submitted it to the magazine Story without his knowledge, and it was accepted. In the first four months after his discharge, he put his total concentration into writing short stories, generating some 800,000 words and losing 20 pounds while typing during 14-hour daily sessions seven days a week. It only netted him 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 to the detective, mystery, adventure, sports, western and science fiction pulps. As the boom in paperback novels expanded, he successfully made the jump to longer fiction with his first novel, The Brass Cupcake, published in 1950 by Fawcett Publications' Gold Medal Books. His SF included the story "Cosmetics" in Astounding (1948) and the novels Wine of the Dreamer (1951) and Ballroom of the Skies (1952).
[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 in rusting armor," was all of that. 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, and the novels usually feature an ever-changing array of female companions, plus an appearance by a sidekick known only as "Meyer," a retired economist. As Sherlock Holmes had his well-known address on Baker Street, McGee had his trademark lodgings on his 52-foot houseboat Busted Flush, named for the poker hand that started the run of luck in which he won her. She's docked at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
[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."
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, to name just a few.
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.
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.
[edit] Media adaptations
MacDonald's novel Soft Touch was the basis for the film Man-Trap (1961). His 1957 novel The Executioners was filmed in 1962 as Cape Fear, a dark thriller of strong suspense and menace. Martin Scorsese directed the 1991 remake of Cape Fear. Among other film or television adaptations of MacDonald's work, the 1984 A Flash of Green was probably the most successful. When Travis McGee arrived on the big screen in 1970 with Darker Than Amber, the film received favorable reviews from Roger Ebert and other critics. The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything was adapted for a 1980 TV movie that failed to capture the spirit of the original novel. The novella "Linda" was filmed twice for television, in 1973 (with Stella Stevens in the title role) and 1993 (with Virginia Madsen). The 1980 TV movie Condominium, based on MacDonald's novel, starred Dan Haggerty and Barbara Eden.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Travis McGee novels
In chronological order:
- The Deep Blue Good-by
- Nightmare in Pink
- A Purple Place for Dying
- The Quick Red Fox
- A Deadly Shade of Gold
- Bright Orange for the Shroud
- Darker than Amber
- One Fearful Yellow Eye
- Pale Gray for Guilt
- The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
- The Long Lavender Look
- A Tan and Sandy Silence
- Dress Her in Indigo
- The Scarlet Ruse
- The Turquoise Lament
- The Dreadful Lemon Sky
- The Empty Copper Sea
- The Green Ripper
- Free Fall in Crimson
- Cinnamon Skin
- The Lonely Silver Rain
[edit] Non-series novels (selected)
- Barrier Island
- The Brass Cupcake
- Condominium
- Cry Hard, Cry Fast
- Deadly Welcome
- The Executioners (republished as Cape Fear (novel))
- A Flash of Green (not a Travis McGee, despite the color-themed name. Same for the one below.)
- One More Sunday
- Please Write for Details
- Slam the Big Door
- Where is Janice Gantry?
- Border Town Girl
- April Evil
- All These Condemned
- The Beach Girls
- Judge Me Not
- The Price of Murder
- You Live Once
- Contrary Pleasure
- Death Trap
- The Last One Left
- Drowner
- A Key to the Suite
- Murder in the Wind
- Murder for the Bride
- A Bullet for Cinderella
- The Crossroads
- The Only Girl in the Game
- Cancel All Our Vows
- Soft Touch
- A Man of Affairs
- Clemmie
- Area of Suspicion
- No Deadly Drug
- The Neon Jungle
- The Empty Trap
- The End of the Night
- On The Run
[edit] Short story collections
- End of the Tiger and Other Stories
- S*E*V*E*N
- The Good Old Stuff
- More Good Old Stuff
[edit] Science fiction
- Wine of the Dreamers (1950)
- Ballroom of the Skies (1951, novella)
- The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
- Other Times, Other Worlds (collection)
- The First One (1950)
[edit] Trivia
- The character of Meyer is widely believed to be based on John D. MacDonald himself. A rumored final Travis McGee novel (presumably narrated by Meyer), titled Black Border for McGee, has never been confirmed to exist. This has also been referred to as A Letter Etched in Black.
- In Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot, a minor character tells the novelist hero: "You ought to write books with better sense. Like the guy who writes those Travis McGee stories. A man can sink his teeth into one of those."
- Some fans may have come to McGee and MacDonald through Jimmy Buffett's reference in a song called "Incommunicado": "...Travis McGee's still in Cedar Key, That's what ol' John MacDonald said...."
[edit] Reference
Merrill, Hugh. The Red Hot Typewriter: The Life and Times of John D. MacDonald. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2000.
[edit] External links
