In a message dated 12/16/02 4:03:41 AM Eastern Standard Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<<
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 19:28:17 -0500 (EST)
From: William Denton <
buff@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Macdonald vs. MacDonald
Thanks for the final answer on the name dispute. Why
did Millar decide to
use a pseudonym in the first place? Does Nolan's bio
say why he picked
Macdonald, when he must have known of JDM?
Bill >>
Kenneth Millar had published a couple of reasonably
well-received mysteries before he wrote THE MOVING TARGET as
an attempt to create a series like Chandler's Philip Marlowe.
To his dismay, his publisher Knopf wrote that he was bitterly
disappointed in the new novel and rejected it. Millar at some
point suggested trying to sell it elsewhere under another
name and he suggested John Macdonald, using the first and
middle name of his father John Macdonald Millar. Knopf later
accepted the novel after revisions were made but he paid a
$500 advance instead of the $1000 Millar had earned for his
previous two novels.
Millar had not heard of John D. MacDonald. According to
Nolan, he privately
(and correctly in my view) blamed his agent for not checking
the name out carefully.
I found another reference to the dispute with John D.
MacDonald in Nolan's biography ROSS MACDONALD. The first
novel to carry the byline Ross Macdonald was THE BARBAROUS
COAST in 1956. Millar wanted to transition further from the
then current John Ross Macdonald by using "J. Ross Macdonald"
but Knopf said it was time to go all the way and they did.
Millar wrote his agent to
"celebrate the dissolution of my marriage of inconvenience to
John D., whose writing fails to improve with time, I'm
afraid."
Richard Moore
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