It's All One Case: The Illustrated Ross Macdonald Archives

by Paul Nelson, Kevin Avery, Jeff Wong

This is a prose series of unpublished interviews with, and a visual retrospective of, the seminal mid- to late-20th century literary crime writer. In 1976, the critic Paul Nelson spent several weeks interviewing his literary hero, legendary detective writer Ross Macdonald. Beginning in the late 1940s with his shadowy creation, ruminating private eye Lew Archer, Macdonald had followed in the footsteps of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but ultimately elevated the form to a new level. “We talked about everything imaginable,” Nelson wrote―including Macdonald’s often meager beginnings; his dual citizenship; writers, painters, music, books, and movies he admired; how he used symbolism to change detective writing; his own novels and why Archer was not the most important character―“my God, everything.” It’s All One Case provides an open door to Macdonald at his most unguarded. The book is far more than a collection of never-before-published interviews, though. Published in a handsome, oversized format, it is a visual history of Macdonald’s professional career, illustrated with rare and select items from one of the world’s largest private archives of Macdonald collectibles. Featuring in full color the covers of the various editions of Macdonald’s more than two dozen books, facsimile reproductions of pages from his manuscripts, magazine spreads, and many never before seen photos of Macdonald and his friends (such as Kurt Vonnegut), including those by celebrated photojournalist Jill Krementz. It’s All One Case is an intellectual delight and a visual feast, a fitting tribute to Macdonald’s distinguished career. Full-color illustrations throughout

Genres: Biography, Reference, Nonfiction

303 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2015

About the author

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Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quotable:
I think religion is like a forest fire, which just simply has to be not put out but kept under control. I think a great many errors have been committed in the name of religion – but only in its name, not in the truth of it. I think we have to constantly try to bear in mind and act in terms of a religion that doesn’t exclude people or negate them but also teaches them some of the limits and controls.

[T]he Nazi experience is an illustration of what we’re teetering on the verge of all the time in one way or another: the potentiality of a criminal, antihuman government. It’s what the main danger is in all countries, I think.

My own literary education was long and drawn out, I spent too much time being educated and not enough time putting the education to use.

Evil wins in life, but it shouldn’t win in the ultimate sense in books. It should be contained by book rather than expressed by them.

The influences just of one person on another, any two people who know each other, are absolutely staggering if you trace them. It’s the essence of our lives, that interrelationship. We don’t really live full or even adequate lives without interrelationship.

Loneliness itself in real life is unplanned, too. It’s not unwilled, but it’s unplanned. You don’t consciously plan to be lonely.

I’m not afraid of pain, I’m just pointing out that it would occur. I really think we’re in this world to try to make sense out of the pains of it. It’s one of the things we’re here for.

It isn’t generally the truly disturbed people who go in for violence. They all tend to be fairly gentle… the obvious thing would be to examine who gets killed and who kills this and this. That would be one way of examining the violence and its sources. But most violence leading to death in this country is caused by people who just happen to have a gun. In other words, what causes violence is the gun. In most cases the people who commit murders are not disturbed.

A really good library can make all the difference to young people in a town.

[T]elevision has accelerated this process [influencing and changing life] at such a pace that we’re in danger of flying apart culturally. I mean the image itself changes so rapidly that we don’t know what’s what. I’m not thinking about people your age or mine. I’m thinking about young people whose main source of information about the world is television. They’re getting a pretty strange picture and it’s essentially artificial on the bad sense. They think they’re seeing people, but what they’re really seeing is quickly whipped up travesties of human experience in many cases… I know kids become quite sophisticated and they reject the false, but nevertheless they’re subjected to an awful lot of it: the false and the superficial and the insipid and the foolish.

[John Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice coffee table book devoted to an author I loved in my teens(did my 10th grade book report on The Zebra-Striped Hearse), but could not get into at all in my forties. After reading these interviews, want to give Lew Archer another shot.

[Lancelot Link · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I will have and read forever. Truly fascinating look at a great writer. Sad that when these interviews occurred he was in the beginning throes of dementia.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and interesting book. The backbone of the book is a series of never-before published interviews that renowned mystery author Ross Macdonald (pen name of Ken Millar) gave with Rolling Stone journalist Paul Nelson in the middle of 1976. Millar speaks extensively about his influences (Hammett, Chandler, Fitzgerald), his method of writing (in a red, faux leather chair with a board across the arms), and his conscious decision to obscure, rather than embellish, the profile his chief protagonist, detective Lew Archer. This perspective differentiates the Archer series from most detective fiction (e.g. Holmes, Marlowe, Bosch, Reacher and Davenport), in addition to the unrivaled quality of MacDonald's prose. I found the interviews mostly compelling, but at times, probably appealing most to literature academics. The book is also replete with images of Millar, his manuscripts and the books and publications that have featured his work.