Another in my infrequent series of posts on Ross Macdonald.
My dear friend Tom is leaving Leamington Spa soon, and I was very touched when he passed on this copy of The Ivory Grin to add to my collection.
Bantam Press, 1984
What a grotesque, lurid cover! I love it, and the picture of Macdonald in a fedora on the back. As you can see, it’s very battered about but I know that Tom brought this back from San Francisco, so that just adds value in my opinion.
Thanks Tom!
When I visited my parents last week, my mum gave me this copy of The Moving Target.
Fontana Books, 1966
As you can see, it’s in a pretty sorry state. The cover is badly scuffed and creased, some of the pages are falling out and the fragile spine is held together by Sellotape. Despite all of this, it’s the prize of my collection.
You see, this was the book that got me into Ross Macdonald. This was the book that I found on my parents’ bookshelf all those years ago, and the book that introduced me to the private eye genre. I hadn’t read Chandler or Hammett back then. This is where it started, with this battered old film tie-in.
I was surprised and pleased that it’s survived. My parents have moved house twice since then, and now it’s with me. I was really touched when my mum presented it to me – she must have been following this irregular series of posts!
I think it’s a great cover too, with that pop art target image so much more imaginative than the design for The Drowning Pool tie-in.
(Last year, Existential Ennui wrote a great blog about this edition of The Moving Target, and here’s the link to my other Ross Macdonald covers.)
It’s far too long since I posted one of these (July? Blimey!) but the truth is, I’ve been trying to be restrained in my book buying. The flat is full to bursting as it is, and money’s tight. Still, this was a pre-Christmas treat and since it was only 99p on Ebay, it didn’t break the bank!
Great Pan edition, 1959
As with my copy of The Way Some People Die, it’s nice to see Ken Millar’s original pseudonym “John Ross Macdonald” on this cover. I don’t think the illustration is quite so strong in this case though. The looming head-and-shoulders of Hester (the wannabe starlet around whom the mystery revolves) is nice enough, but the image of Archer discovering a body is rather clumsy. There’s something weird about the way Archer’s neck connects to his shoulders here, as though this was retouched by another artist.
I do love the description of this as “A tough Lew Archer thriller” – it’s the kind of thick-ear branding that Millar deplored! The back cover offers up similar pleasures…
I haven’t seen this little Lew Archer seal before. I assume it’s supposed to resemble a bloody thumbprint? If I ever lay my hands on the Pan printing of The Ivory Grin, it’ll be interesting to see whether it carries this too.
I’m currently re-reading the novel and, while it’s not one of the best Archer mysteries, it does deliver on many counts. As in other Archer novels, the characterization of Hollywood as a modern-day Gomorrah seems crude and unconvincing. Maybe Millar was too much of a literary man to ever really get his head around the movie business? But his detective Lew Archer is as brilliantly drawn as ever. Here he is going easy on a suspect:
“I caught myself doubting my premises, doubting that she could be any kind of hustler. Besides, there was just enough truth in her accusation, enough cruelty in my will to justice, enough desire in my pity, to make the room uncomfortable for me. I said goodnight and left.
The problem was to love people, try to serve them, without wanting anything from them. I was a long way from solving that one.”
See my other Archer covers here!
Here’s another in my irregular series on Ross Macdonald covers. Previous installments can be found here, here and here.
There’s a pleasing abstraction to this cover. I love the way that the book’s title seems to be sinking into the grave! The way that pick and shovel are leaning so casually against the earth is slightly sinister. We wonder who has dug this grave, and who it is for…
William Collins edition, 1972
Here’s another in my irregular series on Ross Macdonald covers. You can find the first two installments here and here.
Over at Killer Covers, there’s an insightful post by J. Kingston Pierce on pulp paperback art. Do go over and read it here.
Pierce interviews Charles Ardai, Max Allan Collins and David Saunders. Their consensus is that by the 1970s, the trend for cheaper photographic art had forced pulp cover artists toward Hollywood and advertising. This struck a chord with me. Time has passed. Living next to a cinema means I’m depressed daily by the Photoshopped eyesores that now pass for movie posters.
Since reading that post, I’ve been mulling the subject over. Do I find photographic covers inherently less interesting? Is this unwarranted prejudice or a simple matter of aesthetic preference?
With this in mind, let’s look at another Ross Macdonald cover. My first post in this series depicted two painted covers, partly because I thought they were unusual and visually more stimulating. However, my second post showed the movie tie-in for The Drowning Pool, a lazy job of design (publicity still reproduction) but meaningful to me because of the quality of Archer-ness in Paul Newman’s face.
My subject today is a different kettle of fish altogether. Yes, it’s a photographic cover, and it’s an eccentric image.
Fontana edition, 1967
I think my first response to this cover was amusement. The forced perspective makes the corpse’s feet seem comically enlarged. Ditto the baldness of that protruding dagger. However, the more I look at it, this image unsettles me. Its gallows humour, perhaps consciously, recalls this still from Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry.
The Trouble with Harry, 1955, Alfred Hitchcock
In each case, the corpse is dehumanized, a figure of fun. And perhaps this is why the cover seems so inappropriate for this novel. As Fred Zackel recalls here, Ross Macdonald was of the opinion that, “The detective isn’t your main character, and neither is your villain. The main character is the corpse. The detective’s job is to seek justice for the corpse. It’s the corpse’s story, first and foremost.”
Despite its incompatibility with the book’s contents, I’m happy to have kept this copy in my collection. That curious blend of macabre humour and genuine creepiness is very striking!
Although most of my Fontana Ross Macdonald editions went to the charity shop (as explained here), a few escaped the cull. I kept The Drowning Pool for its photographic cover, a tie-in with the Stuart Rosenberg-directed movie.
The Drowning Pool, Fontana edition, 1975
Harper was made in 1966, its sequel The Drowning Pool a long nine years later in 1975. Perhaps the studio realized that its rights to the character were due to expire?
As you can see, Newman has matured in a way that nicely visualizes the character’s worldliness. This is the face of a guy who’s been around the block so many times he’s running low on petrol. Reading Macdonald, this is the face I always see in my head. Hair slightly greying, skin slightly lined. Newman in the 70s embodies Lew Archer perfectly.
It’s a shame the film is so bad. Harper is flawed but fun, but The Drowning Pool is an endurance test. Uncharacteristically, Newman delivers a broad unlikeable performance. In Harper, his arrogance seemed like youthful hubris; here, he recycles schtick which ill befits an older man.
Inexplicably, the action of the book is moved from California to Louisiana. Perhaps this explains why much of the film looks like it was shot through a lens doused in swamp water.
The back cover
Newman’s co-star is his wife Joanne Woodward. The film invents a past romantic history for their two characters which (I don’t want to reveal a plot twist) plays out very unpleasantly. My guess is that Newman only agreed to play this character again if his wife could be involved – perhaps that explains his lacklustre performance. Happily, Newman would have another crack at the character (obliquely) in the 90s. But that’s for another blog entry…
So, a stinker of a movie. But I still treasure the cover. Because that’s what Lew Archer looks like.
As mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been trying to replace my collection of Ross Macdonald paperbacks. My watchword for buying has been ‘variety’, my objection to my previous 70s Fontana editions being their uniform ugliness.
So, here is the first installment of what I hope will be an ongoing series of posts, as my collection grows. That’s assuming I do continue to find editions with decent covers. If not, just be a pal and forget I mentioned it, OK?
The Way Some People Die, Pan editon, UK, 1956
The Zebra-Striped Hearse, Bantam edition, US, 1964
