Great God Pan

I don't care much for anniversaries, and that's why I'm not embarrassed to be five years late in discovering January Magazine's 1999 commemoration the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ross Macdonald's first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target. The Santa Barbara based writer who died in 1993, having uttered, among many other things, the timeless snark, "Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure," sits with Raymond Chandler and John Fante and James M. Cain as the great hard-boiled chroniclers of mid-century Southern California.

There are all sorts of reasons to read Macdonald's books--and once you've read one you'll likely read ten more in quick, addicted succession--but what I always liked best was the way in his later books, by plunking down a Chandler-era private eye into Manson-era Southern California, he combined such clashing versions of the Golden State. The Archer books span from 1949 to 1979: Where else do the mean streets of graft and corruption run past a geodesic dome peddling nature-burgers, and past vacant-eyed runaways stoned on acid purchased by pawning mom's jewelery?

January hosts a slew of articles and essays about Macdonald, including Frederick Zackel's account of an chance invitation to the author's Santa Barbara in 1979. He describes sitting an invitation from Macdonald, his wife Margaret Millar, and Eudora Welty to show them some of his own writing:

Each writer took a swatch and read. Then they passed the papers around. I drank black coffee and watched them read. When they were done, all three gave me back my manuscripts, stared at the floor and frowned.

Finally, Ross Macdonald spoke.

"Have you ever thought about doing something serious, like detective fiction?"