Ross Macdonald, the Early Novels

 

Some of Raymond Chandler's short stories were published in magazines in the years before his first novel, The Big Sleep, cane out. He was 51, and a fully realized writer, by the time that first novel reached its first readers in 1939.

The situation was different for Ross Macdonald (1915-1983), usually considered the last of the great triumvirate of U.S. hard-boiled detective noir writers (Dashiell Hammett is the first of the three). Macdonald published four novels before the first book in his Lew Archer detective series. I read all of those novels in the last few weeks as I prepare to teach my detective fiction course again this spring. The books are (in order) The Dark Tunnel (1944), Trouble Follows Me (1946), Blue City (1947), and The Three Roads (1948).

Each of these books was a pleasure to read. Maybe the fourth, The Three Roads, was the toughest going. None of them are as successful as the Archer series, the first book of which, The Moving Target, was published in 1949, when Macdonald was 34. The action in these early books is sometimes overblown, sometimes silly, and yet always fascinating enough that I wasn’t tempted to put any of them down. Parts of all of them are riveting. All four are murder mysteries too, minus a central detective, but they’re also noir action thrillers mired in the problems of World War II as it is affecting people living in the U.S. All of them feature central characters with experiences as soldiers who are either on leave or recently discharged.

The novels have many of the strengths of Macdonald’s later, more successful books, a great style, compelling conflicts, unexpected turns. It’s also interesting that some of their shortcomings are similar to some that turn up in the later books as well if in smaller degrees. In any case all four remain very readable today, and not just as exercises in the development of greatness, although they certainly proved very valuable to me in showing the characteristics of Macdonald’s writing in proto-form.

Raymond Chandler and Jack Spicer

 

The similarities between these two books are remarkable. Stylistically, they both feature taut understated prose that’s remarkably precise and filled with restrained tension. Thematically, both dwell significantly and harshly on the limitations of the larger environment of writing that they’re part of: in Spicer, the failings of poetry and poetry cultures, in Chandler, the failures of the detective fiction marketplace and publishers and the limitations of the Hollywood culture of writing for films. Both books significantly (if hardly exclusively) discuss California and California writing cultures. And both are written largely during the same time period, the 40s and 50s, although Spicer continued living into the 60s. Spicer was interested in detective fiction and likely knew of Chandler’s work, but Chandler almost certainly never heard of Spicer.

Neither of these writers has huge sympathy for others or for themselves. Their harsh takes might seem cynical if not for the fact that they also often seem painfully correct. Still, both men are also at points unpleasantly misanthropic. They are both loners and alcoholics who don’t quite seem able to find stable friendships or communities. Both did have a community context and were in touch with lots of people, but the written conversations they were involved in do not always seem sustaining to them as friendship.

I’m not sure what to make of these similarities except that the cultural contexts of these two writers were not as far apart as it might seem on the surface. However, because genre remains so divisive in U.S. literary contexts, how many readers are likely to be interested in both Spicer and Chandler? The similarities between these two might be very easy never to notice.

And that last point might be emphasized by the fact that it’s to some degree accidental that I’m reading these books simultaneously. I bought the book of Spicer’s letters when it came out. Suzanne recently found the book of Chandler’s selected letters in an antique mall and thought I might be interested, and since I’m teaching a Detectives in Film and Fiction class in the spring semester, I thought I would read it before teaching the class. I had no intention of looking for similarities when I started reading both books, but the similarities are impossible (for me anyway) to ignore.