From the Top of the Hill # 17: February 12, 1948

This next installment of John D MacDonald’s 1947-48 newspaper column for the Clinton Courier was written in the teeth of a typically brutal upstate New York winter. It is full of fascinating biographical tidbits -- fascinating, that is, if your are fascinated by JDM’s biography.

Here we learn that one of his favorite books of the season was Ross Lockridge’s huge novel Raintree County, a work never mentioned in later years when the author listed his favorite books. The novel was filmed nine years later and featured, in a supporting role, Rod Taylor, who -- of course -- would go on to inhabit the only big screen incarnation of MacDonald’s Travis McGee.

We also learn that JDM had a literary agent, a female named Marian, who evidently supplanted the “joker” he had initially hired and complained about to editor Babette Rosmond in 1946. “Marian” would herself be supplanted by Cap Shaw, former editor of Black Mask Magazine, although I’ve never been able to discover when that coupling took place.

Finally, there is an interesting bit on the MacDonald’s offspring, Johnny, who later renamed himself Maynard, and who, when young, was nicknamed Pen -- short for pencil. John writes about his son’s nascent artistic ability, somewhat humorously, but with obvious pride. “Pen” was no doubt encouraged and instructed by his artist mother Dorothy. As of this writing he was two months shy of his ninth birthday.

Finally, there is a beautiful coda, another reverie recalling the family’s winter of 1946-47’s stay in Ingram, Texas, a time which obviously made a huge impact on them all. MacDonald mentioned it often in his column, recalled it in The House Guests, and used it as setting in more than one work of fiction.


Mystery:

Having recently finished Ross Lockridge's Raintree County and being very firm in our belief that it is the best novel we have read in five years we were interested in finding out the general reaction to it. Not the critic's reaction.

In Utica, we talked to a lady who handles the loan library for one of the stores. She told us that the first three people who took Raintree County out returned it unread, had given up somewhere along the line.

If it had no suspense, we could understand. If it was all conversation and no action, we could understand.

Maybe the size -- one thousand something pages -- scared them off. When a book is good, we like it to be long.

* * *

Our Friend, the Martian:

He went to the hockey game as we suggested. Apparently nobody noticed him. He looks a good deal like people. At the present time he has gotten himself up as a middle-aged, middle-sized man in a grey overcoat.

We reproduce his report in its entirety:

"Local creatures divide themselves into two groups and conduct mimic warfare on a slippery substance. They carry clubs with which they attempt to kill one another, seldom succeeding. They wear knives strapped to their feet, thus causing them to fall quite often and to run into the wall surrounding the slippery area. The players are surprisingly durable. During this period of warfare, a surprising thing happens. Every few minutes one creature who wears Number 25 hurries down the ice and propels a black wafer into a net. The others apparently watch him do this thing and are powerless to stop him. I do not understand all this. I do not even know why I like it. The creatures who do not play merely sit, shiver and make warlike shouts."

* * *

New Trend in Decorating:

The other day a letter came from our agent in New York and, instead of containing the usual disparaging comments about the deathless prose we have sent her, this letter said that her client, Jesse Stuart, had sent her a picture as drawn by his five-year old daughter. She liked it and decided that it would be nice to decorate her apartment with framed masterworks by the children of all her clients.

The request should have come a year ago. Before the Era of the Horse. Our offspring cannot pick up a pencil nowadays without turning any nearby hunk of paper into a quivering memorial to the Spirit of the Hoss.

We transmitted Marian's request to him and he went into a trance, returning some time later with a profile picture of a horse's head, complaining that the paper wasn't large enough or he would have made it life size. He wondered if we could find him a piece of paper big enough so that he could draw the entire horse, life size. In the picture he considered unsatisfactory, there was a balloon, a la comic strip, coming out of the horse's mouth with the cabalistic sound, "Wheeee". A very happy and contented hoss.

These horses of his have a wild look and teeth. The also seem peculiarly absorbed in the problem of trying to kick themselves in the head.

Next door is a fine friendly horse named Blue Genius. Pen's drawings lack Blue's placidity.

They also lack background. Some time back he did fine pictures in which there were houses, smoke, hillsides and blue mountains in the distance. We reminded him of those old happy days before the hoss. His second attempt had a background. A horse in the foreground and a background composed of horses.

He is anxious to please the agent -- almost as anxious as we are -- and he doubtless considers her to be a woman of intelligence who wants nothing better than a picture of one of his happy horses. If we should try to tell him that maybe she doesn't want a full face or profile of a trusty steed, he will lose all respect for her.

* * *

Winter Scene:

This morning, in the Hill Country of Texas, the doves were sitting in the live oaks, hooting at the dawn. The sun came up bright and hot, and the hills were misted with the grey-blue smoke of burning cedar. When the wind died, you could hear the faroff silver of the bells on the lead goats. In town cafe doors were open, the juke boxes filling the street with the nasal whine of the music of the plains.

* * *

See you next week.

A Hero for Our Time

When John D MacDonald passed away on December 28, 1986, all but eleven of his 77 books -- novels, anthologies, non-fiction and a monograph -- were still in print in one form or another.* This included, of course, all 21 titles in the Travis McGee series. As far as I have been able to tell, these titles have never gone out of print and have enjoyed multiple editions over the years. While MacDonald was alive these various editions changed only insofar as their cover art and the accompanying blurbs. The Deep Blue Good-By, for example, went through 43 unique editions through 1987, including 38 in paperback (with five different cover illustrations), two Lippincott hardcovers, two large print editions, and one Detective Book Club edition. And I’m not even counting the two JDM trilogy anthologies that were produced. But if the McGee’s ever did go out of print, it would have happened sometime between 1987 and 1995, a period where my research is spotty and MacDonald’s popularity went into a steep decline.

Then, in the summer of 1995, Ballentine/Fawcett Crest began publishing brand new editions of the series, with new covers and, for the first time, additional material included. There was an introduction by fellow author and Floridian Carl Hiaasen and a brief piece by MacDonald’s son Maynard. That the covers stunk -- easily the worst ever produced for the titles, consisting of huge block lettering -- didn’t matter to JDM fans: the extras and the fact that they were available and taking up space in the Mystery sections of bookstore shelves was all that mattered.

To publicize this event, JDM biographer and editor of the JDM Bibliophile Ed Hirshberg wrote an article for the Tampa Bay Times titled “A Hero for Our Time,” which was published in the July 9, 1995 edition. I have transcribed it and present it below. Although it contains nothing that would have been new to readers of MacDonald’s works it does give a good sense of how far JDM had fallen off of the cultural radar, in that he even needed to be reintroduced to the reading public.

A Hero for Our Times
By Ed Hirshberg

Have you ever heard of Travis McGee, “that big brown loose-jointed beach bum, that pale-eyed, wire-haired girl-seeker, that slayer of small savage fish, that beach-walker, gin-drinker, quip-maker, peace-seeker, iconoclast, disbeliever, argufier, that knuckly. scar-tissued reject from a structured society”?

No? Well now's your chance to get acquainted.

Starting this month with The Deep Blue Good-by, Ballantine/Fawcett Crest is republishing the entire Travis McGee mystery series written by Florida novelist John D. MacDonald. The classy new paperback edition of The Deep Blue Good-by includes such extra goodies as an enthusiastic introduction by Fort Lauderdale satirist Carl Hiaasen, a note from John D.'s son Maynard, and testimonials from Mary Higgins Clark, Sue Grafton, Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman and Donald Westlake.

The Deep Blue Good-by was originally published in 1964, closely followed that year by three more Travis McGee adventures: Nightmare In Pink, A Purple Place For Dying and The Quick Red Fox.

McGee calls himself a "salvage expert," who waits until he needs money, then "goes out and takes it from the taker, keeps half and gives the rest back to the innocent." That's his profession, at which he makes a very good living, enabling him to take his retirement "in chunks" as he goes along instead of waiting until he's too old to enjoy it. He lives on the Busted Flush, a 52-foot barge-type houseboat, luxuriously accoutred with a sunken bathtub and plush furnishings. He won the boat in a poker game with a rich South American who was afraid to call his bluff, hence the name.

A superb physical specimen, McGee is handsome in a rough sort of way. He is of that indeterminate age at which he remains attractive to most women of practically any age. He keeps his boat moored at the Bahia Mar Marina on the Inland Waterway in Fort Lauderdale, where a permanent plaque near Slip F-18 now marks the sacred spot.

What Travis McGee has, in short, is everything: enough money, a plethora of women and an interesting job doing good for people, all of which has made him a fascinating figure for millions of readers of both sexes. He is the kind of guy most women would like to be in love with and most men would like to be.

John D. MacDonald, who died in 1986, wrote 21 books about McGee, between 1964 and 1985. The books, each with a different color in its title, have continued to sell briskly (though not nearly as briskly as they did when the author was alive, despite the efforts of a passionate group of MacDonald aficionados.)

So why has Fawcett Crest chosen to republish the Travis McGee series? The publishing house obviously wants to win over a new generation of readers who has never heard of Travis McGee, but the timing is also right: These days we all need heroes like McGee.

MacDonald carefully crafted his character in a heroic mold. In the tradition of such mythical heroes as Hercules, Achilles and Theseus, McGee is of mysterious origins, has great physical strength, and is indefatigable in his amorous exploits. Despite his sybaritic and free-wheeling lifestyle, including his daily tot of Plymouth gin and tonic and the stream of women who pass through the door of the Busted Flush's snug cabin -- and occasionally detour into its king-size bed -- he is, however, fundamentally a decent man, a fit role model for a time starved for heroes.

Despite his weaknesses (and there are many), McGee is unquestionably one of the good guys. The people he chooses to help are usually the poor and the put-upon. Invariably Travis tries to help good people recover from injuries inflicted on them by bad people. He usually succeeds, though often at considerable and grievous cost to himself in the form of injuries, insults and other indignities.

Unlike the ordinary hero, who is usually a strong, silent type, Travis talks a lot. Actually, he is MacDonald's mouthpiece, expressing the author's opinions on a host of social issues. After his fourth McGee book, MacDonald brought in a sounding board for Travis because the author felt that his character was indulging in too many interior monologues. Meyer, a garrulous, hirsute economist, highly intelligent, with whom Travis can discuss the things that are bothering him, suddenly appears in A Deadly Shade of Gold and plays a vital part in the rest of the series. MacDonald once remarked that he felt he had every right to move his suspense novels in the direction of the so-called "legitimate" novels “of manners and morals, despair and failure, love and joy.... I shall continue with my sociological asides, with McGee's and Meyer's dissertations on the condition of medicine, retirement, face-lifting, earmites, road construction, white-collar theft, apartment architecture, magazine editing, acid rain, billyrock, low fidelity, and public service in America today."

Wide-ranging and all-embracing as Travis' interests are, his most persistent and passionate
opinions have to do with Florida's besieged environment. There are strong statements about what man's greed has done and is doing to despoil our state's natural resources - statements that are just as relevant today as they were when Travis or Meyer made them back in 1965. For example, in Bright Orange For The Shroud, the sixth book in the series, Travis speculates about the Everglades. Having failed to subdue it from frontal attack, "we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into the dragline canals that give him 'waterfront' lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying...”

*The John D MacDonald titles that were no longer in print in 1986 when MacDonald died were:

Title	Date of Last Edition
Ballroom of the Skies	February 1982
The Deceivers	January 1984
I Could Go On Singing	March 1963
Judge Me Not	June 1984
Nothing Can Go Wrong	March 1983
Other Times, Other Worlds	January 1980
Soft Touch	September 1982
Weep for Me	January 1959
Where is Janice Gantry?	December 1980
Wine of the Dreamers	February 1984
You Live Once	September 1981

From the Top of the Hill # 16: February 5, 1948

Here's the next installment of JDM's weekly newspaper column from 1947-48 when the family was living in Clinton, New York. The column ends with an interesting self-appraisal by the author.

Ten Years Ago This Month

All the juke boxes were beginning to drive people out into the cold with aging versions of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen".

The Leviathan was hauled out into the New York channel for the last time, headed for Rosyth, Scotland, and the scrap pile.

Gandhi, very ill with high blood pressure and heart disease, suffered a relapse in Bombay and went inland to the Berar cotton country to "mend or end there."

Joe Goebbels, through the Reich propaganda machine, told the joyous Nazis that 65,000 people were starving and freezing in Cleveland.

There was snow in Clinton.

* * *

Program Note:

Our friend, Dick Cantino, the kid who got us into that radio argument, is still top man on the H. Heidt show, in spite of rugged competition. We're even learning to like the accordion. Note to Sykes. We still don't like the commercials.

* * *

Visitor in Clinton:

Forgive us if this sounds almost incredible, but we have a Martian in Clinton. He escaped from Orson and has spent the last few years practicing to look like people.

Look for him on the street. He is dressed as a middle-aged, middle-sized man in a grey overcoat, grey hat, overshoes, pigskin gloves.

Once a week he writes us a report on his findings. You see, he's investigating our civilization. He slips his reports under our door, laughs wildly and runs like anything.

Here's the one we found this week:

"Over the tan stone building where you creatures get green paper and metal disks there is a big room where once every seven days many men gather and sit in groups of four and do odd things with colored oblongs of stiff paper. These bits of paper carry odd designs in black and red. Then men hold the bits of paper and stare at them. Then each man throws a single piece into the middle of the table and one man picks up all four bits of paper and places them carefully in front of himself and smiles. I have watched them often. On one night I took away from that place some of the paper they make marks on while they are engaged in this odd activity. On the paper I took is said, "Chip Walker -- minus 6000 points."

We couldn't give him an answer on this. In fact, we couldn't understand it either. Instead , we distracted him by leaving instructions for another assignment. The instructions told how to get to a hockey game. We're waiting for his next report.

* * *

Advertisement:

Strange things happen in this business of putting words on paper, and in the interests of breaking a wrist, slapping our own back, and in order to bolster the sagging newstand sales of our major masterworks, we herewith record this one.

This is the month in which we became the composite author, the cross section of American scribblers. All at the same time, and all on the same newstand we were shocked to find ourselves published as follows:

One gentle little love story in Cosmopolitan entitled "Pickup."

One humorous story in Blue Book entitled "The Pastel Production Line."

One sports story in Sports Fiction entitled "Punch Your Way Home".

One story of politics and murder in New Detective entitled "One Vote for Murder."

One psychological crime story in Dime Detective entitled "High Walls of Hate."

One worlds-of-the-future story in [Astounding] Science Fiction entitled "Cosmetics".

The thing which gives us pause is the fact that not yet have we ever written a story of which we are completely proud. We are serving an apprenticeship to the Angry Gods of the Typewriter, but we can't bury our lesser efforts. We have to sell them for grocery money. It's a good thing they don't let doctors practice this way.

* * *

See you next week.

Mystery Scene Interview

Mystery Scene Magazine began life in 1985 as a four-page insert to Mystery and Detective Monthly, a fanzine produced by Cap’n Bob Napier of Tacoma, Washington. The brainchild of authors Ed Gorman and Robert Randisi, Mystery Scene was created to be to the Mystery Fiction industry what Locus was to science fiction: a focus on the authors and publishing business of all things mystery. It eventually grew to a 50-60 page magazine and was, by the third issue, published and distributed on its own. Gorman -- who, if I may brag for a moment, was a great fan and supporter of this blog -- and Randisi and, later, Martin H Greenberg, ran the operation until 2002, when the magazine was sold to others. It is still published to this day.

In issue Number 16, published sometime in 1988 -- two years after the death of John D MacDonald -- Mystery Scene published an interview with JDM, conducted via mail by fellow author George Vasallo. There was no introduction, no explanation as to why this interview had never been published before, or even a mention of when the interview took place. Based on the books mentioned by MacDonald, one can place the time as close to late 1983-early 1984. The answers provided are to a specific list of questions sent to the subject, and one can tell when JDM is impatient or even exasperated by the banality of the subjects he is asked to comment on. Still, when his interest is piqued, he rambles on. His observations on the fragmentation of culture in the United States was downright prescient.

INTERVIEW: JOHN D. MACDONALD
George Vassallo

What is the significance of the use of colors in each Travis McGee title?

Years ago I sat in The Red Devil, a New York restaurant and saloon, now long gone, with friends and agent and writers and we tried to think of some way to clue the reader that he could have read the book before. Didn't want to number them, because I wanted the McGee series to be readable in any order. We discussed musical terms, months of the year, finally all agreed that colors would be the best and easiest to remember.

Have you contemplated having McGee die?

No, not really. I have threatened it, but it would be too unfair to readers who are just now discovering the fellow.

What observations do you have on all of the other detective fiction authors who have followed you? Do any really impress?

I do not read all of them, so there may well be some I would like as well as I like Ross Thomas, Robert Parker and Elmore Leonard. Their work has immediacy, strong sensory images and a wry view of the world which pleases me.

How do you feel about the current state of publishing in America?

Very tough for the new writer. Hard cover costs are high, but people forget that dinner for two at a decent restaurant is going to run a lot more than a good book. Which taste is going to linger the longest -- the porterhouse you ate, or The Little Drummer Girl. Publishers intent on bottom line, and too intent on having every book make money. Paperbacks getting too expensive. But these things correct themselves. There are lots of good regional publishers who are into modern methods -- like typesetting from the information on the 5 1/4 inch disk out of the writer's word processor. Nothing can replace written word. It is the only way that complex and subtle ideas can get from one skull into the next.

Where do you and McGee differ? Where are you and Meyer alike?

Too difficult a question to answer. I took the MMPI as myself and McGee and Meyer. Here is a psychologist's interpretation (enclosed). I cannot give permission for you to use any direct quote.

Is it particularly difficult to be the villain in your stories?

Or in life? Come on!

What makes the better villain .. a businessman gone bad or a pure psychopath?

The very best villain would be a little of both.

Is McGee's lifestyle attainable?

According to the mail I get, it is not only attainable, some of the readers have added flourishes McGee never contemplated.

When was the time that you made your "breakthrough" to become one of the best known and best-selling authors in America? Was any one event of primary importance?

When the McGees began to pop up on the New York Times list, Knox Burger who had edited many of them when he was at Fawcett, called me up to congratulate me, and told me I had achieved fame the same way the Chinese devised the ancient water torture. I had dropped books on the head of the public, one at a time, until they finally noticed.

Where do you perceive the U.S. heading culturally?

Into a further fragmentation. Contemporary education is depriving many of the richness of any cultural experience. The elite go kiting off after fads and fancies, and the professors in the art areas so subdivide their specialties, that, as has been said, each year they know more and more about less and less until finally they know everything about nothing.

What is your favorite leisure pursuit?

Varies from year to year. Have no favorites. Photography, music, collecting, backgammon, chess, conversation, travel.

As a world traveler, what observations do you have on other countries that you have visited?

One basic observation. It is ridiculous to go trotting about the world and come back with the idea that people in all places are just like us and want the same things. There is no common humanity, no gauge that fits us all. The Kashmiri Hindu and the Kenya tribesman and the Amsterdam merchant, were they miraculously given a common language would find their concepts of life and time and destiny so variant, meaningful discussion of ideas would be impossible. Only when you clearly understand this can you begin to comprehend, for example, a group of schoolteachers in Iran setting fire to a theatre and burning hundreds of their young pupils to death. Or a fakir who has sat in the public square all day all his adult life, following the passage of the sun that has burned out his eyes, by the feel of the heat on his face. My best observation about other countries and cultures is that the more you learn about them, the less you comprehend them. The instant tourist has no doubts.

Is there a working title for the new McGee? What type of situation will we find him in?

Not yet. He will be tracking down a pirated cruiser in the Bahamas, manned by the drug merchants who slew the owners.

The McGee novels contain violent encounters which appear quite genuine. Have you ever found yourself in as tough a situation as you put McGee in?

I have been hit in the face. It makes me throw up.

How much time goes into writing a McGee novel? What are your working habits?

For a McGee, from three to seven months.

Does any one of the McGee novels stand out in your memory? Why?

Cinnamon Skin. It got both me and McGee over a mutual malaise which had dimmed the prior three novels.

Publishing today shows little venture capital and shrinking publishing lists. What does this mean to the experienced writer? What does it mean to the novice trying to break into the field?

Shrinking publishing lists, but expanding numbers of titles per year. To the experienced writer this means a sensitivity to new technologies in printing and publishing is essential. To the novice breaking in, it means look to the small local houses.

Your books paint such beautiful pictures of harbor life and sailing? Is it really that idyllic?

At times it is as idyllic as trying to comb your hair while falling downstairs.

There have been numerous love interests for McGee throughout the series. Has McGee's tastes changed over the years? What changes has he noted in women?

They are, by and large, a bit older, more independent, less prone to believe the usual bullshit.

What are some of the pitfalls of fame? Do you enjoy being recognized?

My old friend, now dead, Maximiliano Truzzi, used to be billed by Ringling as the world's greatest juggler. When he was cornered by fans who loved his work, he could always grab the nearest tableware and juggle. What can I do? Write for them? I just have to stand there looking like a kindly real estate salesman. I have gone out of my way to avoid being recognized. My contact with the reader should be through the books, nothing else. Not even this.

If you were to move to another country which one would you choose? Why?

Mexico, because we have lived there before and we like the countryside and the people, and speak broken Spanish.

Millions of us thoroughly enjoy detective fiction. Why does the literary elite always try to belittle it?

For probably the same reasons that the literary elite proclaimed Crime And Punishment a hack job by a hack writer.

Are there plans to put McGee in a new environment in the future?

Not that I know of.

Are hardback books on the way out? Do you foresee format changes in the way your books reach the public?

No. Not when 25-35,000 copies of coffee table art books can be sold at prices from $35 to $65 a pop. When the hard cover folk get off their dead behinds and can take my disks and set type directly from them, after copy editing them on a screen, we can do hard cover books more quickly and more cheaply.

What, if any, responsibility do you have to your readers?

My responsibility to the readers is, once I have recognized the limitations of whatever format I am writing in, to do the best damn job I am capable of within those limits, and, while doing that job, to reflect my own visions of the truth as I saw it at the time of the writing. As I grow and change, my concept of what is real changes as well.

Self-defense is a central theme in detective fiction. Does this also include avenging the lives of those one holds dear?

When there is a direct, demonstrable, emotional involvement on the part of the protagonist, the writer has an easier task keeping tension high.

Quite often someone disappears in a detective story and the entire story revolves around finding him or her. How far would McGee go in probing a client's personal background?

As far as he feels necessary, and as far as is consistent with the character he has acquired in 20 books.

Are you proficient in firearms? Boxing?

I am a respectable marksman with pistol, rifle, longbow and throwing knife. As to boxing, I have lost the edge. No wind and slow reflexes. My mind remembers the moves, but the body won't comply.

What contemporary Americans do you hold in high esteem?

Chuck Yeager, Vonnegut, Updike, Paul Volcker, Syd Solomon, Bobby Fischer, LeRoy Collins, Paul Newman, Joan Didion and Harry Reasoner.

Meyer feels that the world economy is doomed. Do you agree? What can alleviate the situation?

Yep. Unless we dump Keynesian theory and embrace Schlumpeter's vision of the reward to the innovator.

You have spent much time in Mexico. Will Mexico become a "51st state"? Is Mexico a serious threat to the security of the U.S.?

Mexico will never become a 51st state. If we treat that country with the respect and consideration it deserves, and if we each exercise patience, then it can be a useful though frequently troubled relationship. If we keep on patronizing them as if they were some sort of inferior form of life, the whole thing may well blow up in our face.

What new writing projects are you looking at? Do you still enjoy writing as much now as you did earlier?

The more I learn, the more I enjoy it. I am rounding the clubhouse turn on a long novel about an electronic pulpit called One More Sunday.

If John D. MacDonald had not become a writer, what type of vocation do you feel we would now find him in?

Feeding the worms. 

What would McGee never do?

Inflict physical, mental or emotional pain for trivial reasons.

What literature do you most enjoy reading?

Almost every kind.

Does McGee have a world view?

He is willing to live in it without too much bitching.

How can we get children once more interested in reading?

Utilize family reading sessions, out loud. Everybody takes a turn. Old classics, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson. Or modern ones like Watership Down. Short sessions, one every night possible, and no cheating and reading ahead to find out what happens next.

Have you ever collaborated on a book?

Yes, the recent Nothing Can Go Wrong with Captain John Kilpack. It worked because his only presence was sixteen hours of cassette tape, all in the present tense, first person and most of it all one sentence.

Do you read reviews of your work?

I read them, but I have no clipping service. Publishers and friends send them along. Once in a blue moon I find a valid criticism that makes sense to me and I use it in future work. Most of it is quite silly -- with the reviewer talking about his own prejudices and life experience rather than the book. The worst kind of review is when the reviewer criticizes the book he wishes you had written rather than the one you wrote.

What do you see in the future for the state of Florida?

An uncontrolled influx of residents who will use up the air, the water and the earth itself, turning the state into condominiums, asphalt, shopping malls and roadside rubbish.

How will the advent of word processing affect the writing profession?

It won't make the writing any better or any worse. It will have the same effect as when the typewriter took over from the quill pen. It merely speeds the process.

How have McGee's attitudes about sex changed over the years, if at all?

I would recommend a re-reading of the collected works.

What irritates McGee the most about people?

Pretension, gratuitous cruelty, self-deceit, inattention to the wonders of life itself.

What was the best piece of advice you were ever given?

Don't tell 'em, show 'em. Bad version: "Fred was a man with a very bad case of body odor." Better version: "As Fred came walking down the country road, a herd of goats looked at him in consternation, then all ran off into a field and began gagging and coughing.”

From the Top of the Hill # 15: January 29, 1948

Here's the next installment of John D MacDonald's 1947-1948 Clinton Courier newspaper column, From the Top of the Hill. Here he continues his rant on the low quality of commercial radio in the United States, obviously needing to get in the last word on the subject. His mention of the "race-destruction potentialities of the atomic bomb" is interesting, in that he had just seen his novella "And the World Will Die" published in the November-December issue of Doc Savage Magazine. It's very early JDM science fiction about nuclear proliferation in the early 1950's.

The Battle of the Airwaves

We've got another letter from that Friend of American Radio -- Bill Sykes. Sorry, Bill, but we can't use the letter. You see, in that conversational column we split the conversation between us. You had your say and we had ours.

In the latest letter of yours, you give both sides of a conversation, inserting a mythical Britisher in there to talk to you. Thus you put us on the side of being a Friend of the BBC. We're not. We think it's terrible.

You make the assumption that if we criticize American Radio, we must want government operation of radio. That's pretty fancy logic, Bill. We think it's up to American Radio, as free enterprise, to prove its right to lease the air waves by cleaning its own house.

So let's leave the BBC out of this. Neither of us like it. Okay?

Now to get to the additional points you bring up in your letter -- points which bear on our original argument.

You say that the British, or any foreign listener, is thrilled to hear J. Benny, F. Allen, Lux Radio Theatre. Agreed. So would anyone else be, if they were hearing it for the first time. It's novel, and, being novel, has a certain vitality.

But, on the basis of a decade, the same old formula gets a little tiring. Benny is right up there on top, but is his supremacy challenged by anything fresh, novel? No. The kids that try to steal from Benny's Hooper Rating do it by trying to copy Mr. Benny.

I gather that you want the dissatisfied listeners to gripe to the Federal Communications Division. Not with our complaint, Bill. That system is set up to handle gripes against individual stations and individual programs. We just feel that the broadcasting industry, as a whole, has too condescending an attitude toward the intelligence of the average listener, and could improve quality of programs. You can't send that sort of gripe to your Congressman or to the FCC. That kind of gripe has to be aired in something like the public press. The program quality will improve when listeners boycott the products of the companies who subsidize mediocrity.

You wonder, Bill, why we should complain when, as you say all we have to do is just "twist the dial". Twist it to what? Look back at our previous conversation.

You state that the broadcasting industry had sampled the public and found a strong preference for "Soap Operas" during the daytime hours.

We think that we could sample the third grade and find a strong preference for bubble gum chewing instead of arithmetic.

Not that we feel the public should be bound hand and foot and have "culture" fed to everyone with a tin spoon. No indeed!

But we do feel that the broadcasting industry should shoulder a small portion of our perpetual problem of adult education. Bill, a lot of the brightest men in this country are deeply concerned because the public cannot be awakened to the race-destruction potentialities of the atomic bomb. If, as a nation we are to survive, it must be through a constant, slow, steady increase in awareness and this awareness can only be achieved though education. All of us must become just a little smarter and a little better informed.

Radio can shoulder its share of the burden by raising its sights a trifle and making the average program of every variety a bit more mature.

It is so obvious that nothing will be gained by a perpetual maintenance of the insipid, flavorless and unrealistic antics of the soap operas.

Continue to have soap operas, Bill. But make them better, Make their little two dimensional pasteboard characters face honest and adult problems. This cannot be achieved by the mass-production writing methods used by the soap opera teams, It could be achieved by taking the strong, mature novels of the past and present, and presenting them in soap opera form, adapted for radio.

Take Ross Lockridge's recent novel, Raintree County. A soap opera on that could run two years five days a week.

Incidentally anyone who wants to inject their two bits in this little radio squabble is welcome to do so by writing us a letter.

* * *

See you next week.

Solution to Shades of John D MacDonald

Shades of John D MacDonald

The year 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Deep Blue Good-By and the introduction of Travis McGee. To help celebrate the event, the Washington Post included a John D MacDonald/Travis McGee-centered crossword puzzle in their Sunday magazine supplement, requiring knowledge of all of the colors in the Travis rainbow. To even the most casual reader of McGee, this was not much of a challenge, but it proved to be a lot of fun. If you feel like giving it a try I've created a download link to a PDF that you can print on standard 8½x11 paper. I'll post the solution tomorrow.

Shades of John D MacDonald Puzzle

From the Top of the Hill # 14: January 22, 1948

Here's another installment of John D MacDonald's weekly 1947-48 newspaper column From the Top of the Hill, published in the Clinton Courier.

Battle Royal

Sunday the Town Team carries the fight to Syracuse.

A healthy rivalry is a fine thing. The desire to win makes for good contests. But the payoff is in goals, not in Bandaids and iodine.

Last fall's football warfare between Columbia and Syracuse was a black eye for college football. A good, hard, clean, tough game is a wonderful thing. That game last fall drew penalties for everything except biting the ears off the opposition. It was on the same level of sportsmanship as a barroom brawl where a busted bottle is better than a chair leg.

The last Clinton - Syracuse hockey game had its free-for-all, too.

Seems odd, when you remember that the payoff is on the scoreboard, and it isn't measured in the size of the lump that can be put on somebody's head.

For our money, if the game degenerates into the sort of fracas that the last one did - nobody wins.

A little tangle between players is expected in the fine, wide-open game of hockey. But not a mob scene. Not a deal where a young kid with the flag is trounced for trying to do his job.

* * *

Cicero Makes a Movie

Once upon a time there was a joker named Cicero Bugwilder, who, between writing the comic book sequences for Doc Destruction, managed to get the novel done that his wife had been needling him about for lo these many years.

To Cicero's intense astonishment, the prominent publishing firm of Hardesty and Snood took the book and appropriated enough advertising so that Cicero's book, The Breeze Across the Woodwind, poked a cautious nose up over the bottom line of type in the best seller lists before sinking down into eventual oblivion.

Snood, being almost as smart as Hardesty, manages to put the bite on Magnifico Films to the extent of one hundred and ten thousand bucks for the movie rights to Bugwilder's novel, even getting them to agree to take Bugwilder on the Magnifico payroll to work on the screen treatment of The Breeze Across the Woodwind.

Cicero Bugwilder, wondering what Wilshire Boulevard would do for his asthma, packs a bag, kissed his wife and spent a long time on the Super-Chief watching small dark men play gin-rummy, before climbing down into the arms of the agent recommended by Snood.

Within an hour Bugwilder had been located in the small damp room in the small damp hotel on the small damp street, and had been dragged off to Magnifico and installed in a small, anemic office with a typewriter and three reams of paper.

His secretary was an amphibious looking little creature with a face like a child moose, and, within the hour she announced a Mr. Wenesly Gnud. Mr. Gnud, a solid man with hair, muscles and a cerise sports shirt came breezing in, contemptuously tossed a book onto Bugwilder's desk and said, "Weep for us, pal. Lookit the turkey they gave us to make a picha outa!"

Bugwilder fingered the book, looked carefully at Gnud, and said, "I... I wrote it."

Gnud looked at him with barely disguised contempt and said, "Cheer up. Mabe there's a picha in it. I doubt it. I had to read it last night... Got too much labor stuff. No music. No young love. No nothing. Anyway, we got a month to think it over. The producer is Ben Rustle, great guy. He wants Hillary Grainway as director. Great guyt. Grainway won't be off Spring Angels for maybe a month.

It turned out to be two months before Grainway was ready for The Breeze Across the Woodwind. During those two months Cicero Bugwilder gradually became accustomed to going about without a hat and necktie. He found that he enjoyed the circus excitement of watching pictures made, and he spent many happy hours roaming around the lot.

When Grainway was ready, Magnifico, distressed by the low gross of Grainway's last two pictures, let him go.

The day before the second director was selected, Bugwilder's three month option came up and wasn't renewed. His agent was, at the moment, re-marrying in Mexico, so Cicero Bugwilder, fit and tanned and reasonably affluent, went back to New York by train.

One year later, most of the money was gone, and two days after Hardesty and Snood sent back the manuscript of his second novel with sincere regrets, Cidero Bugwilder and his wife went to the movies.

Cicero was disturbed out of his usual sound sleep by the sound of a familiar name. One of the characters on the screen was being called Henry J. Thyme. Cicero stayed and saw the picture twice and then went to see his lawyer.

"Joe," he said, "They stole the name of a character out of my book and used it in another picture. I want to sue."

Joe sensed a certain nuisance value in the suit which, in contingency, might net his some small change, so he investigated.

Thus it was with considerable regret that he called up Cicero a week later and said, "Old man, I'm afraid we haven't got a leg to stand on. You see, that picture you went to -- the one called Love Dawning -- is the picture they made from your book. They didn't like your title, the plot, or the action -- but they did keep the name of one character. Hey! Bugwilder! Anything the matter?"

For, over the line he had heard a soft muffled thud. For several minutes Joe sat listening to the dense silence, frequently shaking the phone as though that would somehow help.

* * *

Post Script to the Radio Argument

In the Sunday, January 18th issue of the Herald Tribune, B.H. Haggin, in his column "Music on the Radio," points out that by virtue of the principles established by Congress, the people own title to the wave lengths of the air which private persons and commercial companies may use as leasees for a limited period, provided they operate in the public interest, convenience or necessity.

Then he said something which reminded me of the letter we got last week which spoke of the "kindness of sponsors in giving us these wonderful programs with their "modicum of advertising."

We quote Mr. Haggin: "That is something for radio listeners to keep in mind when they are asked to be grateful to the broadcasting industry for what they receive from it. It is the broadcasting industry that owes radio listeners something for the privilege of using their property to make a lot of money. And it can be held to account for its failure, out of sheer greed, to give music lovers what it owes them."

The letter we received last week was obviously the result of indignation that someone, who knows as little about radio as we do, would dare to criticize it.

We not only dare to criticize, but, in absolute fairness we fail to see how any of the data contained in that letter had much bearing on the point. Thus, it is only fair that we request of him an additional letter. Surely there must be more convincing arguments on the side of the broadcasting industry!

* * *

See you next week.

Welcome Back, John MacDonald

Back in 2009 when I first started writing The Trap of Solid Gold, the works of John D MacDonald seemed all but forgotten. Outside of The Executioners (Cape Fear) and the McGee titles none of his standalone novels were still in print. The Travis McGee books that were in print were mass market paperbacks with truly godawful covers featuring huge block lettering which probably did little to sell the things. And outside of a few websites like The Thrilling Detective and Cal Branche’s JDM Homepage, there was little to discover about the author. The year before I started, the late author Ed Gorman had written on his own blog, “From what I can see JDM's career is falling into shambles. Or already has fallen into shambles.”

Then, in early 2013, Random House -- the rights owner of nearly all of MacDonald’s novels thanks to its 1982 acquisition of Fawcett Books -- began a massive reissue campaign, reprinting the Travis McGee series in handsome trade paperback versions, and making most of the standalone titles available for the first time as ebooks. This happy event was celebrated in the pages of The Washington Post’s “Book World” section by Jonathan Yardley. I’ve transcribed his article below.

Yardley was one of the great JDM champions of his day, one of the few literary critics working in a major publication who truly “got” MacDonald. (I write “was,” as Yardley retired from the Post in 2014. Happily he is still with us.) His quote in the right hand column of this blog -- one I’ve had up since I began this project -- reveals his deep understanding of his subject. He wrote several long columns on JDM over the years -- both during his stint with the Post and his prior employment with crosstown rival The Washington Star -- that are well worth hunting down and which may appear here over time. I lived in the DC area most of my life and read Yardley every time he appeared in print. His tastes in literature were spot on and I discovered many great authors over the years -- especially through his “Second Reading” column -- thanks to his writings: John P Marquand, Isabel Colegate, Thornton Wilder, Irwin Shaw and Eudora Welty, to name but a few.

This column appeared in the January 13, 2013 edition of the Post. The headline, “Welcome Back John MacDonald” probably shows just how out of the mainstream JDM was at the time: the headline writer probably thought the middle initial extraneous and an editor didn’t pick up on it either.

Welcome Back John MacDonald

Nearly half a century ago, John Dann MacDonald, a successful writer of paperback mysteries little known within the larger reading public, quietly published "The Deep Blue Good-by," the first of what by MacDonald's death in 1986 had turned into a series of 21 novels featuring the cynical yet idealistic freelance salvage operator Travis McGee. The novel was yet another paperback original to which the literati paid absolutely no attention, but though no one could have guessed at the time, it marked a momentous change in MacDonald's career. Over the years McGee attracted what became a huge and ardently loyal following, and MacDonald not merely began to be published in hardcover but to appear on national bestseller lists.

But that was yesterday, a century ago in this radically altered new world of e-books and tablets. The McGee novels have remained in print in mass-market editions, but most of the other books by this prodigiously prolific writer long ago vanished. Among the non-McGee novels, only "Cape Fear" has remained more or less steadily in print, no doubt because of the deliciously terrifying 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum and the somewhat less successful 1991 remake with Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte. To be sure, some characters in suspense fiction have long outlived their creators - think Lord Peter Wimsey, Sam Spade, Miss Marple and Philip Marlowe - but mostly they just fade away, a fate that surely seemed in store for Travis McGee.

Perhaps that day will come in time, but that time is not now. With the publication of this handsome trade-paperback edition of the first of the McGee novels, Random House - a publishing Goliath not known for sentimentality in literary matters - is bringing not only McGee but almost the entire MacDonald oeuvre back to life with what can only be called a bang. Over the next couple of years, all the McGee novels will appear simultaneously as trade paperbacks and e-books, with "Nightmare in Pink" and "A Purple Place for Dying" arriving next month; a number of MacDonald's other novels - notable among them "Cape Fear" (originally published in 1958 as "The Executioners"), "The Brass Cupcake," "Dead Low Tide" and the 1977 blockbuster bestseller "Condominium" - will be published similarly; and some three dozen of MacDonald's forgotten novels will be issued as e-books.

Yes, Random House probably feels some loyalty to MacDonald. Its subsidiary Ballantine acquired his original publisher, Fawcett Books, in 1982, and presumably MacDonald titles have brought in some welcome income since then. But for a large and, for the most part, resolutely commercial publishing house to take a step such as this on behalf of an author who has been dead for more than a quarter-century is rare indeed. The only comparable example that comes readily to mind is the commitment made by Overlook Press, a self-described "eclectic independent publisher," to bring out a complete and uniform hardcover edition of the works of P.G. Wodehouse, an edition that is one of the glories of contemporary publishing. But Wodehouse is of course a perennial favorite, whereas MacDonald had seemed on the verge of disappearance.

Obviously the existence of e-publishing, with its flexibility and low overhead, is what makes this new MacDonald edition possible, but as one who still reads books only if they're printed on real paper, I welcome the trade-paperback MacDonalds with gratitude and enthusiasm; e-book readers doubtless will be happy to pay $11.99 apiece for the titles. For some years it has been my conviction that, even as MacDonald's reputation has risen considerably over the past few decades, he remains pigeonholed as a genre writer although there is far more to him than that: a fluid, economical prose stylist, a mordantly witty cultural and social critic, a sympathetic but clear-eyed observer of the human comedy - and a comedy, despite all the violence and human meanness that course through his work, is just what he knew it to be.
MacDonald, a purposeful and organized man, set the stage for Travis McGee in the opening pages of "The Deep Blue Good-by" and adhered to it throughout the series. Each of the books is similar (he color-coded the titles to help readers remember which they had and hadn't read) in much the way that each Jeeves and Wooster novel is similar: In the latter it's boy meets girl, girl chases boy, boy escapes by the skin of his teeth, while in the former it's Travis at ease, Travis visited by someone who desperately needs help, Travis takes on the case, Travis rides to the rescue. But beyond that each novel is different, with twists of plot - and usually with one or more twisted characters - that invariably are surprising and often border on the hilarious.

McGee lives aboard the Busted Flush, a "52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale," (3) and works only when he needs the money or can't resist a victim's pleas, the latter being the case in "The Deep Blue Good-by." As a salvage operator, he has a simple if often dangerous system, as described by a friend: "You said that if X has something valuable and Y comes along and takes it away from him, and there is absolutely no way in the world X can ever get it back, then you come along and make a deal with X to get it back, and keep half. Then you just . . . live on that until it starts to run out." Or, as McGee himself puts it: "I like to work on pretty good-sized ones. Expenses are heavy. And then I can take another piece of my retirement. Instead of retiring at sixty, I'm taking it in chunks as I go along."

As that makes plain, McGee is in tongue-in-cheek mode much of the time. He is (in his own words; he narrates all the novels) "that big brown loose-jointed beach bum, that pale-eyed, wire-haired girl- seeker, that slayer of small savage fish, that beach-walker, gin-drinker, quip-maker, peace-seeker, iconoclast, disbeliever, argufier, that knuckly, scar-tissued reject from a structured society," and his list of dislikes fills the fat part of a paragraph: "plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, check lists, time payments, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress, and manifest destiny."

Variations on that list appear in other McGee novels, but the sense of alienation from the worst of the modern world is a constant. As has been noted elsewhere, he is a knight errant, though somewhere along the line he remarks that his armor is on the rusty side. He isn't exactly a Don Quixote, since he wins more jousts than he loses, but there's more than a little that's quixotic about him, and it adds to his appeal, especially his appeal to the ladies, to whom he's catnip pure and simple, not least because he's "an incurable romantic who thinks the man-woman thing shouldn't be a contest on the rabbit level." (130-1) This is said to Lois Atkinson, a woman who has managed to get herself into a very large batch of trouble thanks to a creature named Junior Allen, a perpetually smiling monster, one of those "men in this world who are compelled to destroy the most fragile and valuable things they can find, the same way rowdy children will ravage a beautiful home." (67)Junior is a classic MacDonald twisted creep, and lives hang in the balance as McGee tries to bring him down.
So what a grand way to begin the new year: with a bit of the "Good Old Stuff," to borrow the title of a collection of early MacDonaldiana, a title soon to be available in an e-book, and with the promise of a great deal more of it in the months to come. Every once in a while, against all the odds, justice rears its lovely head in the world of books, and a publisher does itself proud. Thanks, Random House.

From the Top of the Hill # 13: January 15, 1948

Another edition of John D MacDonald's 1947-48 Clinton Courier newspaper column, From the Top of the Hill. In JDM's prior column he wrote about a radio show he was really enjoying in spite of himself. He prefaced his remarks with many of the reasons he did not like radio in general, characterizing it as a medium full of "oily commercials" and "a series of ragged puns which will curdle your day." This apparently upset one of his readers, who responded with a long, detailed letter full of facts and figures. Here MacDonald shares that letter, along with his responses. 

I think JDM is trying to be funny here, but his constant use of the terms "pal" and "son" when addressing the writer brings to mind a letter Dan Rowan wrote to MacDonald many years later. He, too, had gotten on JDM's wrong side and began his letter thusly: "When you ream someone, I can see that old Army background shining through... you do a fine job of it."


Look What We Found in the Mailbox!

We found a letter objecting to our unpremeditated and unprincipled attack last week on the great institution of American Radio. In fact, the guy sending us the letter also sent it to WIBX to be read over the Rural Editor Speaks Program next Saturday between 8:15 and 8:30 A.M.

We reprint the letter in full, except for a poem, but set the letter up here as conversation, a discussion if you will. Because his viewpoint seems to be that of the radio business, we will call him Broadcaster, and call us Listener.

He starts off with the poem, which mentions a hill-top and for that we thank him dearly, then...

Broadcaster: I am sending this along to my friend the Timekeeper at WIBX who is also the fellow who tries his best to keep radio in the groove and enables us to listen to the medium thru the kindness of some sponsors, who, mind you, in the final analysis only get a modicum of advertising from a maximum of expenditure and I am asking that he reads this over his Rural Editor Speaks column next Saturday between 8:15 and 8:30 A.M.

Listener: Buried in that sentence somewhere, pal, are some pretty broad statements. In the final analysis, you say. Whose analysis? And I wonder about that word "kindness." Maybe the sponsors I have known have been exceptions. When they spend money for advertising, "Kindness" is furthest from their mind. They want sales. Pretty hard-headed cookies, believe me. And bless me, what's a modicum of advertising? My dictionary says it means a little, a small quantity of portion. What have you got to back this up?

Broadcaster: "I have been keeping a very close count on the amount of commercial chatter over WIBX for a typical day, and from my record which I have before me, I find that out of a total of broadcast hours, from 6:00 A.M. till 12:05 A.M., a total of 18 hours and 5 minutes -- there were exactly a total of 3 hours and nine minutes, counting what are called announcements between programs, and those included in quarter, half and full hour programs."

Listener: Look! He's going to beat me to death with statistics? Son, you say only three out of seventeen hours are filled with commercials. To me, that is like having a man beat you on the head with a hammer for three hours and then spend the next fourteen hours trying to tell you it doesn't hurt. I wasn't kicking about the quantity of the commercials. I was kicking about the flavor of same. Unctuous voices quoting phoney statistics about doctor's preferences. Flat little female voices whining nursery rhymes about where to buy what. Commercials that bleat the product name at you nineteen times in sixty seconds. "Love that Soap."

Broadcaster: "In other words, listeners heard 14 hours and 56 minutes of entertainment such as Lux Radio Theatre, My Friend Irma, Screen Guild, and while these programs paid the talent at no less than $61,000 and $28,895 for station time on complete network they only received a total of 3 hours and 9 minutes commercial chatter."

Listener: Three hours and nine minutes of severe test of the gag reflex, pal. And what makes you think the programs you get are so good once you have staggered through the ripe, juicy commercials? Let me refer you to the Saturday Evening Post of January 10th, 1948 in which Paul Schubert has an article titled "A Radio Man Looks at Radio." Paul is one of the people on the inside of radio. He says, and I quote, "I do say, however, that taken by and large, radio in the United States is dull, stereotyped, unimaginative and depressing, a mechanical mental narcotic which fills the hours of the day and night for countless people only for want of anything better. It is tolerated and accepted, but it is not really enjoyed." Last week's column was written and in the Courier office before Mr. Schubert's article hit the stands. I politely suggest you read it.

Broadcaster: "These figures may sound fantastic to you, John D., but when you consider that some of these programs attract in the neighborhood of 40,000,000 people, the cost per listener is much cheaper than the rate your estimable newspaper charges its individual reader for such stuff as you write."

Listener: You can get the Courier 40 years for what a $100 radio costs, son. I am not one to low-rate the American people. Okay, so 40,000,000 of us listen to a program. How does that make it good? Maybe it is the best program available at the time. Or shall we say the least bad. Look at our culture, pal. Books, radio and movies have for twenty years been finding a level of intelligence that is an insult to the capacities of the American People. There are more man hours of leisure today in this country than ever before. Maybe this mechanization and mass production of simple-minded amusements to fill the leisure hours marks the beginning of the decline of Western civilization. May I suggest you read, or re-read, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. There you will see the inevitable end of mass production of narcotic-type amusement which puts no strain on the listener's intelligence. And about the stuff I write, I am a free agent. I am protecting nobody's interests. I am uncensored. I can say what I think. Can radio?

Broadcaster: "Listeners to radio have the ability and responsibility of twisting their dials to find what they want, but when they buy your weekly, these either read it, or use for the garbage collector to pick up the remnants of a meal."

Listener: My goodness! It's far better to line bureau drawers with it. After it's read. But to get back to the radio audience. Sure, anybody can turn a dial. To what? To a very, very few acceptable programs. I recommend, rather than the tinsel splendor of the programs you suggested, Invitation to Learning, CBS is There, Suspense, Chicago Roundtable, and, a comedian as yet unspoiled by radio, Abe Burrows.

Broadcaster: "Perhaps John D might become a listener to the new science in radio: FM... YOU TRY IT. BUY A PILOTUNER for listening musical thrills: your friend John Farquhar will sell you one for $29.75 and then you'll get a real kick out of radio..."

Listener: Hey! You slipped a commercial in there, pal. Unfair! And by the way, I understand that one of the reasons for FM popularity is because sponsors' dollars haven't yet forced mediocrity on it -- and there is a delightful dearth of commercials. Don't tell me that too...!!

* * *

See you next week.