Serial Killers and Lew Archer
Published November 06, 2003
Via Maud Newton's blog, an article by Leonard Cassuto in the Boston Globe that tries to pinpoint the fall of Ross Macdonald. For the uninitiated, Ross Macdonald was a mystery writer whose tales of Lew Archer nestled somewhere in time between Phillip Marlowe and Spenser. He was another icon of the tough, hardboiled guy with a soft spot for distressed damsels and underdogs. Macdonald wrote 18 Archer noves in all, and as Cassuto notes:
In book after book, Lew Archer gently pieces together broken family ties. An Archer novel typically features a labyrinthine plot involving mistaken identities within clans haunted by tragedy. Archer solves murders by uncovering the traumatic memories of adults who had suffered or witnessed misdeeds as children.
When Macdonald died some twenty years ago, he was often considered the greatest American crime novelist since Raymond Chandler and praised as a "lterary artist" and a "major American novelist," not just some guy writing detective stories. Yet Cassuto poses the question: Unlike Chandler, Macdonald's star has since slipped. Many of his books are no longer in print, and his reputation "lags" behind those of other writers, such as Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith.
Why? Cassuto posits that "it was the serial killers who did Macdonald in."
In many respects, Macdonald's suffering children anticipate today's generation of fictional serial killers. The Iceman, the debut villain in John Sandford's popular "Prey" series, grows up neglected by his one living parent, devising cruel games to substitute for his mother's love. James Ellroy's Martin Plunkett, sexually abused by his father's lover, makes a career of murder even as he wonders, "What was having a family like?" Even Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter, the embodiment of pure, inscrutable evil, turns out to have been an abused child.Today's army of fictional serial killers are Macdonald's child victims grown up — but with all hope for them gone. Nothing can redeem the serial killer. He needn't even confess; he just has to be killed. He's a monster in human form.But Ross Macdonald's murderers are not monsters. Macdonald understood that the acts of grown-up abused kids inevitably raise questions of responsibility. In his interconnected fictional world, everyone shares responsibility for these acts. In "The Blue Hammer" (1976), Macdonald's last published work, a weary Archer sums it up when he says, "We're all guilty."Macdonald's kind of story — backward-looking, involuted, self-probing — is not the kind people want to read in an age of monsters, when you can blame everything on outside malevolence.
- Serial Killers and Lew Archer
- Published: November 06, 2003
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- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: Crime, Books: Mystery
- Writer: W.E. Wallo
- W.E. Wallo's BC Writer page
- W.E. Wallo's personal site
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Great thoughts on Ross Macdonald, whose The Galton Case and The Freeze, among others, are masterpieces of their genre. One of the things I love about Macdonald is that he's so compelling, with some turn of events every page, sometimes every half-page.
Another point of interest, worth noting given the last few months: Macdonald, whose real name was Ken Millar, was an idol of Warren Zevon's, as well as one of several pals who helped Zevon kick the bottle. You can read the whole tale here.
Zevon recalls their meeting:
"Jesus, I remember that day well," Zevon says. "I was in such terrible shape. I don't think I've ever felt worse. Ken said a lot of things to me that nobody had ever said before. 'We writers are overcompensated in this society' he told me. 'In this house, at your age, you feel guilty.' We both got a laugh over our religious backgrounds. And I found myself telling him things that I'd never told anybody. I said I was disillusioned because I thought writing had to be fun. He just looked at me and smiled. I told him I drank to force the fun, to get rid of the anxiety and guilt I'd had all my life. For the first time, everything made a crazy kind of sense to me. Since what I felt guilty about was also destroying me, crime and punishment were taking place simultaneously, so I must have thought I didn't have anything to worry about. If somebody reprimanded me for my conduct, I could tell them, 'Don't fret. I know I'm being bad, but I'm punishing myself for it. I'm taking care of it.'
"The scariest part about alcoholism -- about any addiction, for that matter -- is that you credit the booze for all your accomplishments. You could be dying from drink and unable to move anything but one finger, yet still be convinced that, without another shot, that finger was going to stop, too. Ken Millar made me realize that I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it."
"What did you think when you opened the door and saw him there?" I ask.
"It was like a dream come true," Warren Zevon says. "At the lowest point in my life, the doorbell rang. And there, quite literally, was Lew Archer, on a compassionate mission, come to save my life."
Zevon's masterful LP, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, is dedicated to Ken Millar.