JDM on Modern Education

“What happened to the schools?

“The pedagogues decided learning should be fun. For a long time they gave up phonetics and phonetic drill. Learn words by their shape. And they gave up keeping students back until they could pass the class work. There were lots of field trips. Still are. Lots of athletics and games. Kids can slide through without any special effort. Call it the Len Bias syndrome. At the time of his death he had been taking five classes at the University of Maryland, was failing them all, had given up two of them, and had stopped attending the remaining three. He would have been hard pressed to write a third grade theme, a simple three- or four-sentence description of a bunny rabbit. A fabulous athlete with a skull full of wet noodles. Quite obviously his attitude was that he did not need all that book shit…

“The life unexamined is the life unlived. Can one examine his own life without reference to the realities in which he lives? The political, geographical, historical, philosophical, scientific, religious realities? He does not have to know all aspects with some kind of deadly precision. He has to know the truth of them, the shape and the size, their place in relation to each other. He has to know them in the context to which reasonable and rational and thoughtful men of his times have assigned them.”

--- Speaking as "Meyer" in Reading for Survival (1986)

"College Man"

"College Man" is a passable John D MacDonald short story that originally appeared in the February 1958 issue of Cosmopolitan. It seems a rather odd entry for this particular magazine, concerning as it does the summer water skiing activities of a couple of high school boys, but by this time MacDonald already had eighteen pieces published in Cosmopolitan and they probably printed anything he sent to them. Still, one gets the feeling reading "College Man" that it was intended for a different kind of publication, like Argosy, Bluebook, or even Boy's Life. The author gets to show off his detailed knowledge of boats and skiing as he tells a fairly predictable tale of two guys pulling a prank on an older guy.

Told in the first person by eighteen-year-old Jud, "College Man" is the recounting of a botched attempt to show up a guy who has cut in on his girl Jean Anne. Jud's best friend is Dake, who also happens to be Jean Ann's brother. Jean is smart, pretty and an expert water skier. Jud and Dake own their own motorboat, the Banshee, which they rescued from a junkyard and fixed up into a superior speedboat, complete with a customized Cadillac engine. The three of them are a set and they love nothing more than to spend the summer boating and skiing along the west coast of Florida where they live.

"I'd been looking forward to our having a wonderful summer, like always, but this Foster Harmon had to show up. He and his folks moved down from Clearwater. He's nineteen, a college man. He's finished one year at Gainesville. That's where Dake and I are going, but not until fall... You get to thinking that a girl is your girl. So maybe you take it all a little too much for granted. And in comes another party. Name of Foster Harmon. And Jean Anne flips. And gets a gooey look in her eyes that could turn your stomach. So all of a sudden she doesn't have any time for all the old routines, and it's like something bit a hole out of the middle of summer."

Jud and Dake figure Harmon for "a phony" and devise a plan to show him up and reveal him as less-than-cool. That way they can "pry Jean Anne loose [and] open her eyes." Naturally, Jud doesn't trust this college man. "There was something too smooth about him," he worried.

Since water skiing is their thing, the plot to undo Harmon naturally involves that activity. The boys invite Harmon and Jean Anne for a day of water sports, and ask Harmon if he has ever skied before. "Some," he replies. "Not too much. I'm no expert." They all agree to go and the next Saturday finds them piling into the Banshee and heading south to Coquina Point, a favorite location on the gulf where many of their like-minded friends ski and scuba dive. On the way down Jean Anne decides to get on the skis, just to loosen up. As she rides expertly behind the boat both Jud and Harmon watch her.

"[She] came up like a feather and we headed south toward Narrow Pass. It was wonderful to watch her. Like a dance. Honey skin and white suit and the tangled auburn curls. She swung left and right in perfect form, skittering across the wake, dancing on the oyster bars, skidding toward the pilings, slanting the water up into temporary rainbows."

Harmon was "looking at her like a kid watching candy."

Once at the Point, Dake and Jud take turns on the skis, then coax Jean Anne to put on another exhibition, then finally ask Harmon if he is ready to give it a try. He agrees, so with Dake behind the wheel he begins what turns out to be a long and fast ride, far out into the gulf where the chop is heavy, farther than Jud or Jean Anne can see from the shore. When they finally return and Harmon coasts in, it is obvious that he is straining to keep erect.

"His face had a gray, twisted look. He had the most obvious case of spaghetti legs I have ever seen... You could tell from his face that he desperately wanted to land well. But thirty feet out his legs just folded on him and he went down.... Nobody razzed him. He was shaking all over when he climbed up. I helped him. I don't know why. He stretched out, rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, breathing hard. I could see the muscles in his thighs and calves jump and quiver. Jean Anne sat close to him and they began to talk in low tones. I wandered away. I knew that in a little while he'd feel all right, but when he tried to get out of bed the next morning, he would have a big surprise."

Sore that their trick didn't work, Jud and Dake vow to come up with a new plan. Meanwhile, there is more skiing to be done. Dake takes Jud and another friend Mickey out, skiing doubles, which requires a counterweight on the bow of the Banshee to keep it from slowing down. Jean Anne volunteers, stretching out in the sun while Harmon stays ashore attempting to recover.

Things go fine until they are ready to head ashore. A "damn-fool skin diver" pops up directly in front of the boat, and Dake yanks fiercely on the wheel to avoid him. The force of the turn knocks him out of the boat, the skiers are unloosed, and Jean Anne tumbles into the cockpit, knocked unconscious. The Banshee, at full throttle, is pilotless and running in wide circles. It is clear that its course will eventually widen and cause the Banshee to pile up onto a rocky portion of the shore. There is no other boat there fast enough to catch the it, and several attempts to intersect its course fail. The next sweep will bring the boat and the unconscious Jean Anne straight into the rocks at fifty miles per hour.

Then the "college man" springs into action...

It's a nice little story, full of fairly pat and predictable characters, but told in such a way that they seem fleshed out and fully realized. It's MacDonald's gift of using setting and situation to help build character, defining them by their actions rather than attempting to describe them. It was one of the earliest lessons in writing the author learned and he never tired of reminding interviewers, fans and would-be writers of it. He also never tired of deriding many of the best selling authors of his time for their inability or unwillingness to try and use less in an effort to create character. MacDonald's singular talent lay in his ability to take a simple plot like "College Man" and make it read like something more.

The wonderful story art for "College Man" was created by JDM friend and Sarasota neighbor Thornton Utz.

The story has never been anthologized.

"Path of Glory"

Adventure magazine was one of the earliest and longest running pulp fiction periodicals of the twentieth century. Begun in 1910 as a direct response to the popularity of the earliest fiction pulps, Argosy and All-Story, it lasted for sixty years in one form or another before folding in 1970. True to its title, it published adventure stories in a variety of settings. As Ron Goulart put it in his essential history of pulp magazines Cheap Thrills, each issue contained "one cowboy, one explorer, one legionnaire, one pirate and two or three musketeers." Published as often as three times every month (in the early 1920's), Adventure logged 878 issues, sold millions of copies, and was wildly popular and highly regarded. Goulart reports that during its best years the magazine was "thought of as the aristocrat of the cheap magazines, the Atlantic Monthly of pulps." But by the time it was fading in the late Sixties it had become simply another men's magazine, featuring articles such as "Topless Charmers in Cheju," "Bikini-Watching in Crete" and "No-kini Blondes of Corsica." The February 1970 issue features an indispensible and instructive article titled "How to Undress a Girl."

John D MacDonald published three stories in Adventure, one in 1949, one in 1950 and one in 1951. It was still a fiction pulp at the time, containing from six to eight works of short fiction, some verse and a few regular "Departments," such as "The Camp Fire," "Ask Adventure," and "Lost Trails." The stories were for the most part straightforward adventures yarns, not unlike the kind that would air on the dramatic radio series Escape. Yet interestingly, MacDonald's final appearance in the pulp -- in the July 1951 issue -- featured a story quite unlike the magazine's usual fare. The editors even went out of their way to explain this in a brief preface to "Path of Glory."

"This is the story not of a hero but of a heel. As such, it's a bit out of line for an Adventure yarn, where the main character usually turns out to be a pretty good joe, at least in the end. Maybe we should label it an off-the-trail story, a phrase that has been used in this magazine for many years to describe an unusual piece of fiction. Anyway, it was too good to pass up -- hero or heel, we thought you'd want to meet the inimitable Major Stacy Barnett."

Not only was it unusual for Adventure, but "Path to Glory" was unusual for MacDonald as well, showcasing a thoroughly unlikeable and extremely disagreeable main character in a work of fiction. But as the editors stated, it is too good to pass up. They even gave MacDonald the issue's cover.

There's no real story to relate in "Path to Glory." It's simply a day-in-the-life of an Air Force test pilot, from the moment he awakens in the morning, through breakfast, his drive to the base, a brief conversation with his commanding general, and ultimately his "big moment," the first air test of a brand new experimental supersonic jet, labeled the XP-181. It's the little vignettes along the way that slowly reveal the kind of person Major Barnett is. He's a "little man of twenty-eight, trim-bodied, cat-quick, with high hard cheekbones deep tanned, black hair parted low on the left, a crisp military mustache, the unforgiving eyes of a gambler."

That's just his physical description, for Major Stacy Barnett is indeed a heel. We watch as he indulges himself in the bathroom over a body he clearly is proud of, then re-pins the wings on his uniform because his wife has placed them an eight-of-an-inch too low. When he comes downstairs for breakfast, we get the first real indication of how awful this guy really is. As his wife Laura is putting his breakfast on the table his first words to her are, "You must have kept the kid quiet for a change." After a few curt exchanges between the two we are treated to a classic MacDonald paragraph, quintessential in its ability to present pages of background in a few well-written sentences.

"Once upon a time there had been, within Laura, a quick hard passion. Then came three years of constantly weakening spirit and defiance. Now there was nothing. When she thought of it, which was very seldom, she wondered that a person could become nothing. If he were completely a man, you could fight him with a woman's weapons. But he was more than a man. He was a controlled entity, with a man's cruelty, a woman's intuition, and the ruthlessness necessary to wield them cleverly, consistently.

"So after a time you ceased fighting."

As he's pulling out of the driveway he sees his young son looking at him, standing beside "a tired rose bush," and he can't resist playing a mind game with him. Stacy wins, of course.

"What could you expect? [The boy] had Laura's eyes. As spiritless as hers. Nothing to fight against, not any more."

As he passes through the gate of the airbase he reams out the guard for not checking his ID. The guard thought that on this "special day" he would save him the time. Stacy responds, "You're not being paid to think, Sergeant. You're being paid to check passes. Check mine."

In a meeting with his commanding officer he displays the same kind of social nastiness, to the point where the general asks him to "stop playing tin soldier." Stacy heads to the Kanteen, where it is revealed that he is having an affair with the counter waitress Betty. He doesn't treat her any better than he does his wife, grabbing her by the arm and inducing white-hot pain when she expresses her desire to see more of him. And then he's off to inspect the XP-181, barking orders to the civilian mechanics and demanding that they re-check everything they just checked, and to pump out all of the jet's hydraulics and have them strained and replaced. A defiant technician named Barney attempts to argue but is quickly bested by Barnett.

Finally it's into his overalls and up inside the cockpit, ready to test the jet for the first time, in front of the brass, the press, the politicians, and everyone who he has had an encounter with that day.

"Path of Glory" is a wonderful bit of writing, an undiscovered gem that lies moldering in the few fading issues of Adventure that still exist out there. It has never been anthologized. It displays MacDonald in full command of his craft, presenting a deeply compelling character, briefly and without a wasted word. There are so many of these forgotten delights, buried in the old pages of Argosy, Bluebook, Cosmopolitan and the like. Perhaps one day they will see the light of day again, to be studied, appreciated and most of all, enjoyed.

JDM on the Exploitation of Grief

As a confirmed news junkie, watching local news and, whenever possible, at least two of the networks, I am increasingly furious at the trend in local and national news for more and more invasions of the privacy of grief, and the jackass questions the young Airedales use to prime the tear ducts.
 

'Mrs. Brown, what did you think when the hurricane smashed your home?'

'Mr. Collins, what was your reaction to the death of your newborn quintuplets?'

'Miss Green, what was your thinking when they arrested your brother for the murder of his wife?'

All these people in crisis conditions have watched a lot of television. Now the lights and lenses are on them. In their genuine shock and grief they have no one to emulate but those gilded, glossy, improbable, two-dimensional actors in the soap operas, empty people who make a living giving dramatic and inaccurate imitations of reality.

And so the lens comes in tight and close to capture thirty-two seconds of an imitation of an imitation of pathos.
 

-- from "Exploitation of Grief"

JDM's entry in the November 1985 "Mad as Hell Issue" of National Lampoon.

"A Matter of Life and Death"

If you're looking for a John D MacDonald short story with absolutely nothing to recommend itself (I know... why would you?), look no further than "A Matter of Life and Death." Published in the June 14, 1953 issue of the Sunday newspaper supplement This Week, the brief 1,750-word piece is one of MacDonald patented family vignettes, featuring his typical suburban family-of-four addressing some typically overblown "crisis" that is happily resolved once the father realizes what a fool he has been. The difference in "A Matter of Life and Death" is that the "crisis" is not comedic in nature and, for once, the foolish parent is the mother. The story was the second This Week tale to be published in 1953, the first time since 1950 that MacDonald had more than one This Week story in a given year, and from this point forward his stories would appear in the magazine several times each year, up until 1958 when he took a four year vacation after writing "Man in a Trap."

The crisis in "A Matter of Life and Death" is Yo-Boy, or more specifically, what to do about Yo-Boy. The family dog is getting long in the tooth and now spends most of each day sleeping in a heap on the kitchen hearth. He's too lethargic to play, stinks like "five Egyptian rug merchants," and snores like a buzz-saw. It takes all the effort he can muster to simply raise his tail before letting it flop back down on the floor. Mother Miriam has had enough, and she broaches the subject with her husband Norris. Afraid to come straight out with the suggestion of putting the dog to sleep, Miriam simply says that they need to "do something," and Norris never does understand what she is driving at until she comes straight out with it.

"I mean, Norrie, that there has be an end to sentimentality. There's no pleasure in him. It's been years since he played with the children. They pet him about once a month. He's got about three teeth in his head. I think it would be the kind thing to do. Really."
 

Norrie, of course, objects, but Miriam is adamant and eventually gets her point across. They decide that they will announce the decision to their two children over dinner that evening, sure that the kids -- who typically ignore Yo-Boy now -- will agree and enthusiastically support the purchase of a new puppy. Once the subject of Yo-Boy is brought up, the kids' comments consist mainly of remarks about how bad the dog smells and how loudly he snores. But when Norrie announces that he and Miriam have decided to take Yo-Boy "to the vet," ten-year-old Chucky's eyes widen and he asks, "K-kill him? You mean kill him?" He puts his spoon down and solemnly asks to be excused, just as desert is about to be served (!) He is excused and his younger sister Alice runs after him, "making a sound like a very small clogged drain." Miriam insists that the children are just "being dramatic," but Norrie isn't so sure, and once the dishes are done they go upstairs to Chucky's room and talk with him.

This story is competently written and it ends with a bit of child-like wisdom and a comic remark from Miriam, but I'm not really sure I want to be reading John D MacDonald channeling Albert Payson Terhune. The author was himself a pet-lover, although his dog-owing days were limited to his youth and he preferred the company of cats to the less independent cur. As I've written before, these early This Week stories, all framed from the same template, are briefly interesting but have little lasting value outside of showing MacDonald as an all-around craftsman who could write a story in almost any genre. His strengths lay not in these sappy homilies but in the world of crime, suspense and real-world problems.

For the completest only, "A Matter of Life and Death" has yet to be anthologized.

"Heritage of Hate" ("Secret Stain")

Black Mask magazine was undoubtedly the most influential and most highly regarded mystery pulp ever published. The list of authors that appeared within its pages is a literal 'who's who" of detective fiction, including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and the creator of the hard boiled detective, Carroll John Daily. Its initial focus, articulated by editor Joseph T. "Cap" Shaw, was "...simplicity for the sake of clarity, plausibility and belief...[and] action [that] involve[d] recognizable human character in three dimensional form." It's place in American fiction cannot be overstated.

Many of the finest works by the great mystery writers were published in Black Mask. Hammett's Sam Spade originally appeared in the serialized debut of The Maltese Falcon, and the prototype for Chandler's Phillip Marlowe was born in a number of Black Mask stories, later "cannibalized" by the author for his early novels. And while John D MacDonald published stories in the magazine long after the greats had either stopped or moved on to novels, his entries there were uniformly excellent. I've already written about two of them -- "Killing All Men" and "Jukebox Jungle" -- both terrific examples of "revenge" writing with much psychological subtext. "Heritage of Hate" fits nicely into that category as a story of retribution and redemption, filled with mystery, violence, an interesting and instructive background and an ending that doesn't quite resolve itself.

The story takes place in the world of the "numbers racket," a setting that must seem quaint to today's readers, what with state-run lotteries and ubiquitous Powerball promises of instant riches. Before it became "OK" to gamble, lotteries were illegal and the purview of organized crime, meticulously stratified organizations that thrived in poor urban neighborhoods. For the gambler the cost was low, the chance of winning real, and the ease of involvement ridiculously convenient. It was a lucrative business that naturally invited competition, and in the world of criminals, any inroads made against their flow of money was met with violence and gunplay.

The protagonist in "Heritage of Hate" is the mysterious Lawrence Hask, a right-hand-man to a syndicate lieutenant named Gus Lench. Hask came to be employed by Lench after he showed up one day attempting to run his own numbers game inside Lench's territory. He was dragged into Lench's office by a couple of strong-arms and immediately began explaining why he was muscling in on Lench: his operation was "soft."

"You've got no penetration in your area. Stinking little candy stores and horse rooms and newsboys. Hell, you've got half a hundred big plants in your area. One out of every three foremen and sweepers and setup men ought to be peddling for you."

Lench -- a man whose "weakest point was his inability to think of any motive beyond profit" -- hires Hask and makes him his "promotion manager." For one full year Hask has been working, improving the operation, all the while "gently prodding Lench ... telling him how smart he really was, of how unappreciated he was by the higher-ups." That higher-up is a man by the name of Carter, a big, dignified, well-dressed boss known for his ruthlessness. The story opens at Lench's luxurious Westchester home, where a party is underway, including drinks, dinner and swimming in the heated indoor pool. Carter is there and Hask senses that this is the evening Lench is going to make his move against his boss. With the help of his ex-swimmer wife Gail -- who is secretly having an affair with Hask -- he has arranged a pre-dinner swim for all the guests. Once everyone is in the pool the lights suddenly go out and Hask immediately heads to where he last saw Carter. Sure enough, Carter is underwater and unconscious, and after quickly getting the lights back on, Hask pulls Carter out of the pool and revives him with artificial respiration. The look on Lench's face shows he is not pleased.

Once Carter is conscious he asks who saved him, and when he is told it was Hask, he tells him that the two of them are leaving and that Lench's days are numbered. Although he didn't see his assailant he knew it was a woman's arm that grasped his throat from behind, and he also recognized Gail's perfume. Lench sputters his claims of innocence as Carter is walking out the door, but Carter will hear none of it.

"You, my greedy friend, may live another twelve hours, or even as much as thirty-six hours if you stay and fight it out. If you run like a rabbit, it may take my people a year to find you. If you want another year -- run."

As Hask leaves with Carter he gives the frightened and enraged Lench a wink, as if to tell him that this is all part of some grand plan. Carter brings Hask on as his assistant and immediately begins pumping him for information on Lench's operation, seeking the best way to rub him out. Hask tells him that Lench is too well fortified to go down in a direct assault and suggests a double cross: Hask will go to Lench and propose a burglary of Carter's safe, while Carter will hide out in his office and gun down Lench during his attempt. A time and alibi is established, but when he makes the proposal to Lench he gives him a different time, one that will take both of the crooks by surprise. Just who's side is Hask really on?

The story ends violently with plenty of bloodshed, and includes a scene that may or may not be a surprise to the reader. Running 6,300 words, "Heritage of Hate" zips along at a rapid pace and is ultimately satisfying, if morally ambiguous. It would prove to be MacDonald's penultimate entry in Black Mask.

Black Mask ceased publication in in 1951, ending with its July issue. In May of 1953 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine "merged" with the defunct Black Mask, announcing on the cover of that month's issue, "Black Mask Magazine -- originator of the hard-boiled mystery -- is now part of EQMM." This simply amounted to reprinting one or two old Black Mask stories in each issue, under a separate heading in the table of contents. In the very next issue (June 1953) EQMM reprinted MacDonald's first Black Mask story, 1947's "Manhattan Horse Opera," re-titled "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose." A year later in their April 1954 issue they republished "Heritage of Hate," again under a new title, "Triple Cross."

To make matters even more confusing to bibliographers, MacDonald restored his original title -- "Secret Stain" -- when he included the story in his second anthology of pulp tales, More Good Old Stuff. Happily, because of the unique setting of the numbers racket he had employed, MacDonald was unable to "update" the story into a modern setting, an unfortunate practice that marred so many of the stories reprinted there.

JDM on White Guilt

"I feel no guilt, shame or remorse for the social and economic oppression of the black, because I do not feel any personal responsibility for the past actions of political animals within the historic fabric of our country. I feel no guilt, shame or remorse for the gutted countryside in Kentucky and West Virginia, for the disappearance of the buffalo and passenger pigeon, for the poisoning of the soil and the water and the air. Man can always be expected to do the worst possible job with his environment, and with his relations to people of other races and of other nations. Were I to feel guilt, remorse and shame, it means that I was feeling guilt, remorse and shame for being a human being. Perhaps that would be a proper posture, but it is a negation of life to be ashamed of being the creature one is.

"I will feel my guilt, remorse and shame for the negative anti-life acts which, consciously or unconsciously, I commit. I will feel guilt, remorse and shame for my failure to take any kind of action in situations where action was an ethical imperative."

-- from a 1969 letter to Dan Rowan

"Escape to Chaos"

Sometimes, John D MacDonald could be too smart for his own good.

Take, for example, his 1951 science fiction novella "Escape to Chaos." What is basically a sprawling space opera becomes bogged down by some of the most mind-numbing science I've ever encountered in a s-f piece, requiring repeated re-readings and head-scratching. Combining quantum physics, statistical probability and multiple dimensions of reality, the premise for this saga is so confusing that even after you've read it you're not really sure of what happened. Perhaps it's just me, or perhaps MacDonald was padding a basically-simple adventure story to garner a higher paycheck -- who knows? And it's not as if one can just gloss over the difficult passages, because they are essential to understanding the basic premise of the story. Thankfully most of JDM's science fiction is far more readable than "Escape to Chaos."

Appearing in the June 1951 issue of Super Science Stories, this 18,000-word story would mark MacDonald's final appearance in that venerable pulp, as the magazine would publish only one more issue before folding. In any event, the author was winding down his work in s-f and would write only a handful of subsequent stories. One gets the feeling from "Escape to Chaos" that he was tiring of the genre and was looking for a way to keep it interesting, but unfortunately his method put enjoyment of the story out of the reach of all but the most dedicated and learned readers.

At its most basic, "Escape to Chaos" is MacDonald's favorite science fiction construct, the same premise used in his two early s-f novels and in several of his stories: aliens of superior intelligence and technological advancement surreptitiously manipulating the direction of civilization's social evolution. In Wine of the Dreamers and Ballroom of the Skies, it was aliens working to change the people of Earth, but in "Escape to Chaos" Earth is the advanced culture, or at least one of them, working to secretly advance the peoples of other planets in various different dimensions, here called Eras. The science of "Symbolic Probability" has made possible the discovery of 26 separate Eras, all in different stages of advancement. Through a principle called the "Oxton Effect" a government agency known as the "Bureau of Socionetics" has begun sending teams of trained agents into these different Eras in order to bring about a more rapid level of evolution. Since open involvement would cause a greater deviation and a lower probability of success along the lines desired, everything is done in secret. Once a certain level of advancement is reached the Oxton Effect allows these different dimensions of reality to co-exist, affecting each other's "languages, the mores, even the fads and fashions." The ultimate goal of all of this? Unity.

The action of the story follows the efforts of one particular team, a male and a female, working together in a fairly advanced civilization that has nonetheless fallen into a state of social decay. Ruled by a despotic emperor named Shain, this empire controls an entire galaxy from the central planet of Rael, and it rules it with an iron fist. Shain's third son, the big, handsome hunk known as Andro, has taken a look around the empire and he doesn't like what he sees.

"He had seen the prancing perfumed artists, claiming an ultimate reality in incomprehensible daubs. He had visited the slave markets of Simpar and Chaigan, and had been sickened. He had seen that the ships were old ships, the weapons old weapons, and the old songs forgotten. He had seen the dusty rotting machines that had been the hope of man, while ten thousand laborers built, by hand and whip a temple to the glory of the House of Galvan...And he had said, 'This is the dark age of Empire. We have had enough.'"

For five years Andro has led an open revolt against his father's empire, and for five years he has made several miraculous escapes, thanks to the hidden work of the Field Team of Calna and Solin. Calna (the female of the team) has gradually become emotionally attached to Andro and his work, and after a sixth near-death-experience saved by Calna, the team is call to the office of the Deputy Director to explain themselves. It is determined that a.) Calna needs a vacation, b.) Andro will be left in a permanent state of suspended stasis and, c.) a distinctive tattoo on Andro's arm will be removed and somehow delivered to his father's top agent Deralan, who has been in charge of hunting down the rebellious son, as proof that Andro is dead.

Calna pretends to go along with the plan but at the first opportunity steals one of the Team ships allowing her to travel between dimensions, saves Andro and goes into hiding with him in one of the twenty-six dimensions. All of the other Field Teams are pulled from their assignments in order to hunt her down. Meanwhile, Deralan has received the tattoo and has shown it to Shain in order to prove that he has at last accomplished his task, but he has his own secret doubts and begins an undercover search of his own for Andro. Calna and Andro fall for each other and Calna begins working for the rebellion, knowing that she can never return to the Bureau of Socionetics.

What could have been a halfway-enjoyable, pulpy, adventuresome joyride is undermined by MacDonald's insistence on bogging down the narrative with overly-technical passages that bring the story to a dead halt. It would be one thing if this "science" was understandable -- perhaps it is, to some readers -- but it borders on the indecipherable for a reader like me. Like most of JDM's loyal readership, I enjoy his forays into science fiction only when the "science" doesn't undermine the "fiction," and when he's more concerned about the characters he has created than the make-believe world they inhabit.

"Escape to Chaos" has been reprinted once, included in a 1976 anthology titled Galactic Empires (Volume Two), edited by Brian Aldiss. Used copies appear now and then.

A Black Border for McGee

Of all the legends surrounding the writing career of John D MacDonald -- and there were a few -- none took on a life of its own more than the "Black McGee." According to this myth, MacDonald had written a final installment in his flagship Travis McGee series where Travis is killed. The remainder of the book -- as well as the case -- is finished by his sidekick Meyer. Since all of the McGee books featured a unique color in their titles, this would of course be black. This book was supposedly locked in a vault in MacDonald's office, to be released only after his death. The title was uncertain, but the one used must frequently was A Black Border for McGee.

It's been twenty-three years since MacDonald passed on, and we're still waiting.

Although this rumor has been credibly denied by no less an authority than MacDonald's wife and son, it lives on, popping up in blog postings, websites and the occasional newspaper article. Since starting this blog last November I have already received two email inquiries asking if I have a copy of this mysterious book and how to obtain one. I've looked into the background of this myth and found a few surprises.

Ironically, it may have been MacDonald himself who started it. In the Spring of 1980 the very first issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection was published and featured the full transcripts of several scholarly papers that had been presented at the John D. MacDonald Conference on Mystery and Detective Fiction on November 18, 1978. JDM attended that conference and responded verbally to the papers immediately after they had been read, and those comments were published in the July 1979 issue of the JDM Bibliophile (# 24). The subsequent publication of the full papers in Clues offered MacDonald an opportunity to respond again, in writing this time and with much more careful thought. In his comments on a paper by Classics Professor Erling B. Holtsmark titled "Travis McGee as Traditional Hero," MacDonald attempted to explain how the unique characteristics of the McGee novels came to be. He wrote that a strong erotic element to the stories was necessary in order to make the plot compelling, since due to the very nature of a series character the element of his death was absent.

"The constant reader is going to know, subliminally, that no matter how grievously I endanger McGee, he will survive -- at least until until I do a book with black in the title. The reader does not know whether or not a person for whom McGee has formed a strong attachment will survive."

It seems pretty obvious to me that this was an offhand comment and that he had no actual intention of writing such a book at the time. And since there is no reference to a previous mention of the book or of a longstanding rumor, this could very well be the rumor's origin. At least I have found no earlier mention of it.

This is not to say that MacDonald never grew tired of McGee or thought about ending the series. Biographer Hugh Merrill quotes a letter penned during the writing of The Lonely Silver Rain where JDM said "I can see now that I'm aiming for an end to the series with the 22nd installment." After the book was published he gave an interview to Peter Heck where he stated the following:

"I'm gonna end with the twenty-second book. I got it blocked out enough to know that if the book goes all right, which I trust it will, he's gonna pull up stakes with a bunch of about five or six other boats, good friends and what not and acquaintances. Well, he's gonna go find the place and then go back to Bahia Mar and they're gonna load up and take off and move to a new marina up in the Panhandle. Up there you can find areas that are as pleasant as Fort Lauderdale was twenty years ago."

Tellingly, MacDonald requested this paragraph be removed from the interview and it did not see the light of day until Merrill's book was published in 2000.

MacDonald did tell Heck that some form of Black existed, but it bore no resemblance to a finished or complete work and had been done primarily as a negotiating tool, not as a real end to the series.

"I've got some materials on it, but not for immediate publication and I don't want to publish it because it would spoil the fun for people who are just now finding McGee and people wouldn't want to read a book about a dead hero, right? So I use that threat and twenty to thirty pages... I've used that as a bargaining base with my publishers. When they get funny ideas how long it takes them to get the royalties... Why, then I start muttering about that book. I say, 'You better treat us right, McGee and me, or I'll kill him.' That straightens things out. That's practical economics."

That paragraph reads to me like a grand put-on, and MacDonald admitted that he lied frequently in interviews. As far as I know there was never any such "material" found among his papers. One can see he never intended to actually publish such a work, and his most direct response to the idea of killing McGee was made to a fan who wrote in 1981 and asked him about the notion point blank. MacDonald replied, "There will never be one called BLACK where he is killed off. It wouldn't be fair to the people who are just discovering the fellow."

Still, the author was working on a twenty-second McGee when he died. Merrill quotes JDM in a letter to Stephen King where he states "I have made enough of an inroad on the 22nd McGee to know now it will be twice as long as any which have gone before. It will be two books in one, twenty years apart in time." But he was working primarily on Barrier Island at the time and was only in the plotting stages of the new McGee. MacDonald had no intention of rushing things, as can be seen from this excerpt from a May 1984 letter to friend Mickey Spillane.

After MacDonald died in 1986, Dorothy and Maynard MacDonald wrote a brief thank you to the fans of the author that was published on page one of the January 1987 JDM Bibliophile (#39). Titled "A Thank You to John's Friends," it contained the following postscript:

"There is no book or manuscript by John which ends in Travis McGee's death. We think John would have missed him as you would."

This was probably in direct response to the mention of just such a book in nearly every newspaper obituary published, with the Associated Press version even quoting the supposed title.

So how far along did MacDonald get with McGee 22? That wasn't revealed until December 1990 when MacDonald's bibliographer Walter Shine wrote a paragraph on the subject in his JDM Bibliophile column. He revealed that JDM's correspondence with Spillane was the earliest mention of the book, with a subsequent mention in a December 1985 letter to his publisher, stating that the book would be "twice as long as the average of the others." (Shine doesn't mention the letter to Stephen King, which was written in January 1986.) At the end of April he was "about to start it," and the following month JDM said he "was chugging away at [it]" and thought it might be published in the Spring of 1987. According to Shine, the last recorded mention of McGee 22 was on September 2, 1986, only a few days before MacDonald left for Milwaukee and his fateful heart operation.

"[MacDonald wrote] that 'the very last work' he was able to do 'before the lethargy got too heavy was [Reading for Survival, a travel article on the Yucatan], and the fourth chapter of the 22nd McGee'... Those four chapters have not been located..."

As near as I can see from the JDM Collection finding guide, they never were located. MacDonald had been writing on a word processor for several years by then and he may not have printed hard copies of those chapters. Perhaps the words are still sitting on some floppy disc or hard drive deep in the bowels of the University of Florida library. They have no listing for JDM's word processor or of floppy discs, and I'm not sure what happened to the machine. It could have been auctioned off, along with much of the MacDonalds' other belongings in the notorious 1989 estate sale. Maybe some unknowing fan has the last four chapters of McGee sitting in his attic, waiting to be fired up and downloaded to a waiting world.

JDM on the English Mystery Novel

"I have always felt an impatience with the novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, and have been mildly puzzled at their lasting popularity... I cannot fault the quality of the prose -- Sayers' especially. Nor the professionalism.... There was a bloodlessness, a papery quality about this work which put me off. Even the screams were mannerly. Weekends in the British countryside seemed an impossibly placid ritual...

"These are, of course, puzzle stories, some of them of the had-I-but-known pattern... But they are, too many of them, unfair puzzle stories. They mystify, and one may even pick out the culprit through using the least-likely-suspect theory, but the mechanics of solution are beyond us because they depend upon some field of knowledge so esoteric that in many cases we have never even heard of it. Lord Peter Wimsey in The Nine Tailors is a case in point. I learned something about bell-ringing, but not enough, soon enough, to help Wimsey nail the guilty person... Poirot, Wimsey, Marple and company may add new bits to my dust bin of knowledge, but they never give it to me in time for me to use it in independent solution.

"When I read a puzzle story, I want a measurable chance, no matter how small, of beating the author to the punch line. Sherlock Holmes is an offender equally guilty, and I do not care for him either, heresy though this may be. It is like attempting to solve a cross word puzzle where one of the key words can be found only in a Sanskrit dictionary.

"So the vast readership achieved by these people would seem to indicate that people do not want to solve the puzzle. They want to be mystified, confused, and then amazed at the startling resolution. And terribly impressed by the absolute genius of the detective, his dazzling brilliance."
 

-- from Clues: A Journal of Detection

Vol 1, Issue 1 (1980)