King of the Paperbacks

The following brief profile of John D MacDonald was published in the Sunday newspaper supplement of the Bradenton Herald on March 31, 1974 and was ironically titled “John D MacDonald: King of the Paperbacks”. Ironic because just a few months earlier the author had published The Turquoise Lament in hardcover and would forever after (excepting a couple of short story anthologies) appear in that medium. There’s nothing new here, and although author Sally Remaley makes it appear as if she met with the author, given the short length of this piece it’s doubtful she did.

Reigning King of the Paperbacks... that's famous Sarasota author John D. MacDonald, who justifiably qualifies as that prestigious potentate and is a favorite with readers all over this country and many others.

For the undisputed ruler of Paperback Land, the prolific MacDonald, has authored pocket novels now in the hands (as well as pockets) of millions of devoted and dedicated subjects.

MacDonald, who lives the good life (when not slaving over his ever-hot typewriter, and he even enjoys that to the hilt) at his oceanside home, has a whole library of his brainchildren now in paperback print and there are always more "in the offing."

But don't ever belittle the paperback route to fame. John D. MacDonald deliberately and sagely, as it proved, chose the paperback realm over the sometimes considered more "snooty" side of the novel-writing business ... at which John D., as he is familiarly known, is an expert.

The Sarasota writer realized he could attain what he wanted most ... a big readership ... by means of the lowly and inexpensive pocket book medium,

He was smart enough to see what many other authors could not, or would not, see. The pocketbook method would bring his novels the greatest circulation, and the quickest.

It worked just as he had anticipated. Mention his name in Timbuctoo, in Trinidad, or in Paducah ... almost everyone knows who John D. MacDonald, "daddy'' of the famous Travis McGee, is.

In fact, it's almost impossible to find someone who doesn't know that John D. MacDonald is literally King of the Paperbacks. Drop in at any news stand and you'll see rows and rows of John D.'s fast-moving adventure titles, with colors in the names to help you remember which ones you've already purchased.

(John D. was the first person to use the color-key idea in publishing.)

And book store owners will tell you that many readers avidly collect John D.'s books. They don't take up much space, and they're inexpensive. Some readers couldn't afford to collect hardcover books, and wouldn't have room for the larger size in their homes."

MacDonald came home from service and read some of the current stories, decided he could write better fiction. He kept saying, “That's lousy writing. I could do better than that.''

One day his wife said, "So why don't you?"

Always one to accept a challenge, MacDonald couldn't let that one pass. He hauled out his typewriter and got busy. Editors agreed his stuff was better than they had been receiving. They bought some 500 short stories and articles from him up to 1950.

Then John D. decided to try the paperback field. It turned out to be the best decision he ever made.

He is completely in tune with paperback readers and has often remarked that "If the objective of writing is to acquire an audience, I can't think of a better place to find it."

MacDonald is also intrigued with paperback writing because of a category which he has developed to the fullest and which he sometimes terms the "why-did-it?"

Most of MacDonald's pocketbook novels are in fact this interesting type of story, in which MacDonald has become a master craftsman.

There is a difference between it and the "who-done-it." He explains it this way: "The thing I prefer about the 'why-did-it' is that the writer, instead of creating or solving problems, tries to establish why this particular chain of events came about."

MacDonald thoroughly enjoys what he's doing, for paperbacks have brought him a lovely secluded home and the opportunity to live the way he wants to live, to write what and how and when he wishes, and to enjoy his favorite hobbies, which include fishing and photography

He also likes to travel, especially all over southern and central Florida, scouting for the backgrounds he uses for his own novels while simultaneously becoming more and more knowledgeable as an environmentalist ... a subject dear to his heart.

MacDonald has a quick, brilliant mind, and talks fluently on a great many subjects ... a handy quality for a writer ... and he admits to having an excellent memory, although adding, I'm not blessed with what is known as 'total recall'."

MacDonald has a keen interest in his home community and in people. And he notes, getting back to his paperbacks, "One reason they go over so well may be that people are existing in a throwaway culture and want light, fast-moving, humorous reading. They can buy these books at low cost, then toss them away after they read them, if they want to."

The exciting thing is that very few readers toss out John D. MacDonald's paperback novels. Knock on any door, walk in, and you're likely to see some of John D's books on the shelf.

He Comes to Us One by One and Asks Us Who We Are

Back when I first discovered the writings of John D MacDonald in late 1975, I took note of the fact that one of my then-favorite authors Kurt Vonnegut, Jr was a JDM fan, and his blurbs were included in several editions of the books. The inside book flap of MacDonald’s first hardcover McGee (Turquoise) contained a quote, and the subsequent entry in the canon (Lemon) included what would become one of the most repeated lines extolling JDM and his works: “The works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”

The quotes from both books came from a piece Vonnegut wrote in 1973 for the July 15th edition of the Chicago Tribune’s Book World supplement. It appeared as part of a major celebration of JDM, including a long essay by MacDonald champion Clarence Petersen, a checklist of all of the author’s published books, and a review of the just-released The Scarlet Ruse.

Here is the complete Vonnegut article, titled, “He Comes to Us One by One and Asks Us Who We Are.”

John D. MacDonald and I have had the same literary agent for more than 20 years. He is Max Wilkinson, a cultivated man who has been described as a lovechild of Robert E. Lee and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I talked to Max one day about the deeper reasons for the popularity of John's books—as opposed to the surface of sex and gunpowder John puts on most of his tales. I will not try to reconstruct Max's elegant sentences, but two of his key nouns were encyclopedia and archaeology.

Max said in effect that John did more research for his books than any other fiction writer, was crazy about reliable information. Slam the Big Door, for instance, ends in a head-on collision between two automobiles, a disaster most writers would describe without leaving home. But John had a long look at the accident files of the Florida State Police, at the photographs especially, and he went to Cornell University, too. Cornell was doing research on wrecks. John then wrote the most harrowing wreck in all of literature, a sort of Beethoven's Fifth for coroners and safety engineers. John's wreck has been reprinted in its entirety, incidentally, in a booklet on good and bad driving habits put out by the Army Quartermaster Corps.

Another agent friend of John's and mine, Knox Burger, had to go to a hospital one time for minor first aid, and John came along for company. John passed the time chatting with hospital employees in the corridor, finding out what their workdays were like. He was especially fascinated by a floor-sweeper, Knox recalls. That sweeper will surely appear in a MacDonald novel sooner or later, and he will just as surely behave as real hospital floor-sweepers do. Some character may even die or be detected as a murderer because he doesn't know what John bothered to find out: what real hospital floor-sweepers, hour by hour, really do.

This is beautiful.

John's latest book, The Scarlet Ruse, tells us, among other things, what the stamp-collecting business is really like-how much money can be made by collectors; how negotiable stamps are; how common fakes are, and how the faking is done; how children are encouraged to become stamp collectors in the hopes they will become big-time speculators when they grow up. And so on. It justifies once again Max Wilkinson's feeling that John's collected works constitute a delightful, un-indexed encyclopedia, an encyclopedia jazzed up by fictional characters who care desperately about the information therein.

It also justifies the use by Max of the word archaeology. Max was speaking of diggers a thousand years from now. His guess was that those archaeologists would be like our own, hungry for the feel and smell and sound and taste and sight and muscle tone of human beings in the long ago. And the itches. And the tedious duties, and so on. A fairly lucky digger would find a Britannica. But the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.

Most of us lead narrow, queerly specialized lives. We play intricate games for a living, usually with rules which have never been recorded. John comes to us one-by-one with his keen and owlish curiosity, asks us what the rules are. Then he builds a crime and punishment story around those rules, and our livelihoods are immortalized.

I haven't said anything about how much John writes. Not only does he get his facts right, but he is probably the most prolific writer alive, now that Simenon has thrown in the towel. In his first four months of free-lancing, John says in his autobiographical House Guests, he wrote eight hundred thousand words-late in 1945. Some freedom! Some lance!

Volcanic productivity like that can be a symptom of many things, not all of them attractive. In John's case, however, it is an expression of enthusiasm for life, something else Max might have mentioned. John depicts us as attractive enthusiasts for our often fairly ridiculous games. He likes us. So guess what? We're only human, so fair is fair. So we like John.

Some Further Adventures of MacDonald in Auctionland

 

John D MacDonald’s fourteenth Travis McGee novel The Scarlet Ruse was published in January 1973 and was the last paperback original in the series. Its plot revolves around stamp collecting and a dealer who is swindled out of a valuable collection in his keeping. On October 28 of that year the following article appeared on the stamp collecting page of the Chicago Tribune and was written by the paper’s Helmuth Conrad. It’s instructive in detailing how long a novel could gestate in JDM’s imagination before coming to fruition, as well as illuminating the sheer volume of research the author did on any chosen subject matter. The piece was syndicated and was picked up by several other newspapers in the country, including the Miami Herald. It was titled (in the Tribune, at least) “Some Further Adventures of MacDonald in Auctionland."

Not long ago, I urged everybody to rush out and buy The Scarlet Ruse, a new mystery novel which draws heavily on stamp speculation for its plot and is authentic down to the tiniest detail.

Afterward, I wrote to its author, John D. MacDonald. and asked him for background on how he put the book together. He was more  than gracious and sent me a 700-word reply which I will condense as best I can.
About five years ago, MacDonald spotted a newspaper article on stamp investing, and that was the genesis of the Ruse plot. "My first step (while working on other books, of course) was to read all the reference works I could find, and to subscribe to the periodicals in the field,” he said. 

"Next, I reviewed some 10 years of auction catalogs, comparing the prices realized with the catalog values in Scott, Minkus, Gibbons, etc. Then I talked to dealers and collectors."

"My next step was to subscribe to the auction catalogs of Siegel, Harmer, HarmerRooke, Wolffers, Apfelbaum, Schiff, Mozian, Robson Lowe, and Stanley Gibbons, and to write down imaginary bids on items being sold.

"After all the study and experimentation, I began placing bids and acquiring lots and putting them in the safe deposit box, after authentication by the Philatelic Foundation."

MacDonald bought fine to extremely fine copies of classics issued by the United States, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and Barbados.

Now that Ruse has been published, he is beginning to sell off his holdings. “On some items, such as a superb, never hinged block of U.S. Scott 40, I expected to receive, after auction commission, about 175 per cent of the purchase price. I would doubtless do better if I kept the items longer."

A byproduct of MacDonald's meticulous research is that he is again hooked on collecting for fun, a hobby he gave up at the age of 14.

"And I am now toying with the idea of doing a nonfiction account of my specific and detailed adventures in auctionland," MacDonald said.