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The Red Hot Typewriter: The Life and Times of John D. MacDonald
Although John D. MacDonald published seventy novels and more than five hundred short stories in his lifetime, he is remembered best for his Travis McGee series. He introduced McGee in 1964 with The Deep Blue Goodbye . With Travis McGee, MacDonald changed the pattern of the hardboiled private detectives who preceded him. McGee has a social conscience, holds thoughtful conversations with his retired economist buddy Meyer, and worries about corporate greed, racism and the Florida ecology in a long series whose brand recognition for the series the author cleverly advanced by inserting a color in every title. Merrill carefully builds a picture of a man who in unexpected ways epitomized the Horatio Alger sagas that comprised his strict father's secular bible. From a financially struggling childhood and a succession of drab nine-to-five occupations, MacDonald settled down to writing for a living (a lifestyle that would have horrified his father). He worked very hard and was rewarded with a more than decent livelihood. But unlike Alger's heroes, MacDonald had a lot of fun doing it.
- GenresBiography
272 pages, Hardcover
First published August 12, 2000
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February 28, 2025
“He’s a good vehicle for relieving my own frustrations and irritations about the current scene…Travis is my mouthpiece, depending on what areas we’re talking about. Every writer is going to put into the mouths of the people he wants you to respect opinions that he thinks are respectable. It’s that simple…As long as I’m making him a hero, it would be grotesque for me to give him an opinion at which I was at odds.” — John D. MacDonald.
That comment is one of the very few insightful or illuminating things in this lackluster quasi-bio of the writer best known and remembered for the beloved Travis McGee series, a landmark in the genre. In some ways MacDonald was like a machine, cranking out stories in businesslike manner; at least until he was challenged by a bet, and another world opened up to him. But there’s far too little good spots in this book.
On only the second page of this thing Hugh Merrill shows me a level of obliviousness and bias that deflated me, because I knew from the second I read it that this was not going to go well. He states:
“The hardboiled style continued with Raymond Chandler in the 1940s and redefined itself in the 1950s and 1960s with the novels of Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald.” …. a couple of sentences later … “John D. MacDonald returned hardboiled writing to the realm of literature and pulled it from the sewer of sadism where Spillane had dragged it.”
Really? John D. and Ross Macdonald did elevate the form, that much is true. While I personally can’t stand the novels of Jim Thompson, and find them dreary and often disgusting, not even those who enjoy the fringe noir aspect of them would argue they aren’t filled with real brutality and sadism, grit stuff where he’s telling unpleasant tales from the head of psychotic sheriffs, beating men and beating women — and enjoying it in a very real — not comic book — way, and brutally raping women, who come back for more brutalization because, you know, they like it so much.
Yet according to this “journalist and academic”, a guy who has worked on political campaigns as press secretary, it’s Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, who began as a comic book idea, fighting Commies and the bad guys and nasty femme fatales who were luscious but deadly, in a pulp style taken to its zenith, never meant to be literature, who dragged the hardboiled genre into the sewer of sadism? Really? As John McEnroe might say, You cannot be serious. Biased much?
I knew from the second I read that that Merrill would at some point drag Richard Prather into this thing. His name was sure to come up, since he was, like Mickey, conservative, and there was a connection to MacDonald because it wasn’t until an overzealous editor ticked Prather off, so that Prather jumped to Pocket Books and took his wildly popular Shell Scott novels with him (think Mike Hammer with tongue in cheek), that said editor filled the void by signing John D. to write a series; something up to that point, MacDonald had been reluctant to do.
I knew all that already, and it got mentioned later. But what also got mentioned (of course) was that Richard Prather was a right-winger, and oh yeah, not a very good writer. A guy whose hardboiled Shell Scott novels were so funny and so popular that Prather was only outsold in his day by Mickey Spillane, who at one time had 7 out of 10 of the all time mystery/detective bestsellers. Yet Prather wasn’t much of a writer. Really?
Merrill shoots himself in the foot when he quotes a lengthy paragraph from Richard Prather’s Shell Scott novel, The Case of the Vanishing Beauty, in order to show what a crap writer he was, and turns out, it’ll make most people who’ve never heard of Shell Scott run out and pick up one, it’s so fun to read!
In an attempt to make his point, Merrill sounds like a typical elitist lefty snob. He points out that Prather didn’t go to an Ivy League school (the horror!), or Harvard Business School (gadzooks!) as John D. had. Merrill points out that John D. was a liberal Democrat (la-de-da). Of course, this was liberal Democrat when it was Kennedy and ask not what your country can do for you, and a rising tide lifting all boats and such, not let’s have transgender reading hour for the kiddies, and if you’re holding onto traditional values, or your money, you’re evil, so being a liberal Democrat at the time was hardly the same thing.
Merrill points out that, like Mickey, Richard Prather was a blue-collar writer (gasp!), and pontificates on his blue-collar background (how earthy and disgusting!). Apparently in Merrill’s world, that’s a bad thing, you see, because the peons, they don’t know what’s good reading, those yokels with their knuckles dragging on the sidewalk as they walk. It never seems to occur to this “journalist” and teacher of such, that the same people who loved Prather and Mickey, were also capable of loving Travis McGee and the elevated pulp of John D.
That being said, and off my chest (see the opening quote by MacDonald), let me tell you, THAT isn’t even the real problem with this biography. The problem is that it’s written like an editorial on MacDonald’s life. It’s told in segments, and you never get psychological understanding or contextualization for events, things McDonald said or did at certain points, and without them, he comes off as a cranky, touchy, often arrogant and snobby jerk. Yet if you have read all the Travis McGee novels, you already have a sense of him that seems opposed to the impression given by the just-the-facts journalistic approach here. Maybe with writers (again, I refer you to the opening quote) the best sense you can get of them as a human being is from reading a lot of him, and then you’ll have an impression of them. It’s not perfect by any means in its method, but it’s better than what you get here.
According to this, MacDonald hated India and Indians after being stationed there in the military. Why? What’s given is certainly not enough to justify something that jerky. John D. was supposedly in love with his wife and she with him, but he never gave her due credit for being the one to encourage him to write. Why? Just ego, or something more? We’ll never know, because Merrill either doesn’t know, or more to the point, doesn’t want to say because of the approach he’s taken. There were rumors of at least one affair, and the story related of Babs is absolutely bizarre. Did they or didn’t they? Who’s telling the truth and who’s lying? Was she a head case, or did John D. give her reason to be in love with him?
There’s sure no way to know from the events as related by Merrill, who obviously, because of how he frames it, leans toward MacDonald’s version. Was there something in the response of the husband to a letter sent to him by MacDonald, in which he says his wife had already been telling him what was going on, and that MacDonald needed to stop acting like he was God’s gift to women, because he really wasn’t Travis McGee?
Merrill implies a review Babs wrote for a book later on might’ve been her way of telling the MacDonalds what had happened, but it is just as easy to interpret that review as her applying it to herself and MacDonald and what happened — or didn’t happen. It’s all really quite bizarre, and quite tawdry. Apparently the other members of the writing group that met every Friday and observed what was going on, believed something was going on between Babs and MacDonald.
Merrill states as some kind of sign-off on the subject that Babs and her husband were divorced nine years later. So? Nine years is a long time. If this didn’t break them up, it’s entirely possible within that nine years other roadblocks arose. It’s just another loose end with no resolution because of the way Merrill frames the prior events as he writes this quasi-overview of MacDonald’s life and times.
The reader gets an impression that Merrill is writing a brief synopsis of a long life and career, with no time to give us any psychological insight or dimension that might lend understanding to MacDonald’s statements and attitude. But he sure has time to stick it to Mickey and Prather. He also gets sidetracked by the death of the pulps and Ringling Brothers building Sarasota, and Mackinlay Kantor, and Flager and Florida, and Loretta Young, whom Merrill seems to like about as much as Mickey or Prather. Why did he hate Loretta Young films, even ones for which she won awards? Of all films to cite for bad dialog, those are the ones? As a real film buff, I can say with authority that this guy doesn’t have a clue, if those are his examples of bad dialog in film.
Maybe if Merrill had left out the asides of the main article, he could have fleshed out MacDonald and filled the chasm between the very positive impression we get of him from reading his books, and the quite negative one we get of him overall from this book. And if he had done that, maybe when we reach the end of this quasi-bio and get to the final sunset, we’d feel something poignant and personal when MacDonald passes, and his wife shortly after. Instead what we feel is an overwhelming despair about growing old, and death itself, unfocused specifically on John D. MacDonald, because at this point, we’re kind of cool to him, detached, not even sure if we like him as a real human being, because in Merrill’s hands, he hasn’t been given that status.
Though highly readable, The Red Hot Typewriter is just a very long, superficial overview of a life. And because of that it fails miserably. Is the writer’s group out there still meeting, and is the late Lesley McFarlane still buying the first round every Friday, as per his will? I don’t know, and thanks to this guy, I don’t even care.
Maybe the best bio of all, is those Travis McGee books, the greatest part of his literary legacy. They were written because MacDonald had scarlet fever as a youth, and during his time immobile, he began devouring books, and for that, we can be grateful. Grateful, because he was wrong:
“I always had the secret wish that I had been born a writer…But it was on the order of wishing I had been born a seal, or an otter. I thought writers were a separate race, so marked at birth and totally aware of their gift from the beginning. I thought they were marked in some way. I worshipped writers but knew I could never be one.”
That comment is one of the very few insightful or illuminating things in this lackluster quasi-bio of the writer best known and remembered for the beloved Travis McGee series, a landmark in the genre. In some ways MacDonald was like a machine, cranking out stories in businesslike manner; at least until he was challenged by a bet, and another world opened up to him. But there’s far too little good spots in this book.
On only the second page of this thing Hugh Merrill shows me a level of obliviousness and bias that deflated me, because I knew from the second I read it that this was not going to go well. He states:
“The hardboiled style continued with Raymond Chandler in the 1940s and redefined itself in the 1950s and 1960s with the novels of Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald.” …. a couple of sentences later … “John D. MacDonald returned hardboiled writing to the realm of literature and pulled it from the sewer of sadism where Spillane had dragged it.”
Really? John D. and Ross Macdonald did elevate the form, that much is true. While I personally can’t stand the novels of Jim Thompson, and find them dreary and often disgusting, not even those who enjoy the fringe noir aspect of them would argue they aren’t filled with real brutality and sadism, grit stuff where he’s telling unpleasant tales from the head of psychotic sheriffs, beating men and beating women — and enjoying it in a very real — not comic book — way, and brutally raping women, who come back for more brutalization because, you know, they like it so much.
Yet according to this “journalist and academic”, a guy who has worked on political campaigns as press secretary, it’s Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, who began as a comic book idea, fighting Commies and the bad guys and nasty femme fatales who were luscious but deadly, in a pulp style taken to its zenith, never meant to be literature, who dragged the hardboiled genre into the sewer of sadism? Really? As John McEnroe might say, You cannot be serious. Biased much?
I knew from the second I read that that Merrill would at some point drag Richard Prather into this thing. His name was sure to come up, since he was, like Mickey, conservative, and there was a connection to MacDonald because it wasn’t until an overzealous editor ticked Prather off, so that Prather jumped to Pocket Books and took his wildly popular Shell Scott novels with him (think Mike Hammer with tongue in cheek), that said editor filled the void by signing John D. to write a series; something up to that point, MacDonald had been reluctant to do.
I knew all that already, and it got mentioned later. But what also got mentioned (of course) was that Richard Prather was a right-winger, and oh yeah, not a very good writer. A guy whose hardboiled Shell Scott novels were so funny and so popular that Prather was only outsold in his day by Mickey Spillane, who at one time had 7 out of 10 of the all time mystery/detective bestsellers. Yet Prather wasn’t much of a writer. Really?
Merrill shoots himself in the foot when he quotes a lengthy paragraph from Richard Prather’s Shell Scott novel, The Case of the Vanishing Beauty, in order to show what a crap writer he was, and turns out, it’ll make most people who’ve never heard of Shell Scott run out and pick up one, it’s so fun to read!
In an attempt to make his point, Merrill sounds like a typical elitist lefty snob. He points out that Prather didn’t go to an Ivy League school (the horror!), or Harvard Business School (gadzooks!) as John D. had. Merrill points out that John D. was a liberal Democrat (la-de-da). Of course, this was liberal Democrat when it was Kennedy and ask not what your country can do for you, and a rising tide lifting all boats and such, not let’s have transgender reading hour for the kiddies, and if you’re holding onto traditional values, or your money, you’re evil, so being a liberal Democrat at the time was hardly the same thing.
Merrill points out that, like Mickey, Richard Prather was a blue-collar writer (gasp!), and pontificates on his blue-collar background (how earthy and disgusting!). Apparently in Merrill’s world, that’s a bad thing, you see, because the peons, they don’t know what’s good reading, those yokels with their knuckles dragging on the sidewalk as they walk. It never seems to occur to this “journalist” and teacher of such, that the same people who loved Prather and Mickey, were also capable of loving Travis McGee and the elevated pulp of John D.
That being said, and off my chest (see the opening quote by MacDonald), let me tell you, THAT isn’t even the real problem with this biography. The problem is that it’s written like an editorial on MacDonald’s life. It’s told in segments, and you never get psychological understanding or contextualization for events, things McDonald said or did at certain points, and without them, he comes off as a cranky, touchy, often arrogant and snobby jerk. Yet if you have read all the Travis McGee novels, you already have a sense of him that seems opposed to the impression given by the just-the-facts journalistic approach here. Maybe with writers (again, I refer you to the opening quote) the best sense you can get of them as a human being is from reading a lot of him, and then you’ll have an impression of them. It’s not perfect by any means in its method, but it’s better than what you get here.
According to this, MacDonald hated India and Indians after being stationed there in the military. Why? What’s given is certainly not enough to justify something that jerky. John D. was supposedly in love with his wife and she with him, but he never gave her due credit for being the one to encourage him to write. Why? Just ego, or something more? We’ll never know, because Merrill either doesn’t know, or more to the point, doesn’t want to say because of the approach he’s taken. There were rumors of at least one affair, and the story related of Babs is absolutely bizarre. Did they or didn’t they? Who’s telling the truth and who’s lying? Was she a head case, or did John D. give her reason to be in love with him?
There’s sure no way to know from the events as related by Merrill, who obviously, because of how he frames it, leans toward MacDonald’s version. Was there something in the response of the husband to a letter sent to him by MacDonald, in which he says his wife had already been telling him what was going on, and that MacDonald needed to stop acting like he was God’s gift to women, because he really wasn’t Travis McGee?
Merrill implies a review Babs wrote for a book later on might’ve been her way of telling the MacDonalds what had happened, but it is just as easy to interpret that review as her applying it to herself and MacDonald and what happened — or didn’t happen. It’s all really quite bizarre, and quite tawdry. Apparently the other members of the writing group that met every Friday and observed what was going on, believed something was going on between Babs and MacDonald.
Merrill states as some kind of sign-off on the subject that Babs and her husband were divorced nine years later. So? Nine years is a long time. If this didn’t break them up, it’s entirely possible within that nine years other roadblocks arose. It’s just another loose end with no resolution because of the way Merrill frames the prior events as he writes this quasi-overview of MacDonald’s life and times.
The reader gets an impression that Merrill is writing a brief synopsis of a long life and career, with no time to give us any psychological insight or dimension that might lend understanding to MacDonald’s statements and attitude. But he sure has time to stick it to Mickey and Prather. He also gets sidetracked by the death of the pulps and Ringling Brothers building Sarasota, and Mackinlay Kantor, and Flager and Florida, and Loretta Young, whom Merrill seems to like about as much as Mickey or Prather. Why did he hate Loretta Young films, even ones for which she won awards? Of all films to cite for bad dialog, those are the ones? As a real film buff, I can say with authority that this guy doesn’t have a clue, if those are his examples of bad dialog in film.
Maybe if Merrill had left out the asides of the main article, he could have fleshed out MacDonald and filled the chasm between the very positive impression we get of him from reading his books, and the quite negative one we get of him overall from this book. And if he had done that, maybe when we reach the end of this quasi-bio and get to the final sunset, we’d feel something poignant and personal when MacDonald passes, and his wife shortly after. Instead what we feel is an overwhelming despair about growing old, and death itself, unfocused specifically on John D. MacDonald, because at this point, we’re kind of cool to him, detached, not even sure if we like him as a real human being, because in Merrill’s hands, he hasn’t been given that status.
Though highly readable, The Red Hot Typewriter is just a very long, superficial overview of a life. And because of that it fails miserably. Is the writer’s group out there still meeting, and is the late Lesley McFarlane still buying the first round every Friday, as per his will? I don’t know, and thanks to this guy, I don’t even care.
Maybe the best bio of all, is those Travis McGee books, the greatest part of his literary legacy. They were written because MacDonald had scarlet fever as a youth, and during his time immobile, he began devouring books, and for that, we can be grateful. Grateful, because he was wrong:
“I always had the secret wish that I had been born a writer…But it was on the order of wishing I had been born a seal, or an otter. I thought writers were a separate race, so marked at birth and totally aware of their gift from the beginning. I thought they were marked in some way. I worshipped writers but knew I could never be one.”
December 17, 2021
John D. MacDonald kept real business hours always, that's how he wrote so much (I mean, he had gone to Harvard Business School before the war). All of his writing career was between the end of WWII and his death in 1986. So, however you explain it, he wrote an extreme amount in 40 years.
August 23, 2022
Hadn't expected to blaze through this in an afternoon but it was compelling. Because MacDonald's writing career began in the pulp magazines - when starting out he wrote 800,000 words in the first four months and received over 1,000 rejections! - and continued until is death in the mid-1980s, there is a fair amount of history about the publishing industry as we follow his writing trajectory. There is some interesting back story on many of his novels - he was one to put his personal concerns into his fiction, and it kind of reminds me of something Thom Jones said, to paraphrase, you do me wrong, and I'm going pop your ass into a story. Condominium being a prime example. The Executioners (Cape Fear) was the result of a $50 bet. Challenged to write something more than a cheap mystery MacDonald said that in 30 days he would write a book that would be a book club selection and made into a movie. It was. And, of course, there is plenty of discussion abut the origination and evolution of the Travis McGee series, including a lot about the whys and why-nots of its film and TV treat- and non-treatment. Merrill quotes from a lot of MacDonald's letters and they sparkle with the same charismatic prose as his novels. A natural wordsmith to be sure. Great biography of a writer and of interest not just to fans of MacDonald or his Travis McGee series. Extensive bibliography as well.
August 21, 2012
A thorough and entertaining biography that should be a must-read for JDM fans. Little critical insight, and it felt a little like a graduate thesis (the writing is not strong), but the book provides some wonderful background on the life of one of the great "mystery" writers of the 20th Century (including his vexed relationship with Hollywood and his evolving views on social issues) who also happened to be a great writer full stop.
September 9, 2025
This was great! There is a comprehensive bibliography at the back that covers everything John D MacDonald has written.
Read
August 22, 2017Just finished the book and thinking how I want to rate it.
On the plus side, I don't totally hate John MacDonald after reading it, which is more than I can say for some other biographies (Arthur Conan Doyle, for example).
After WWII, John MacD and his wife settled for a while in Clinton, New York. Like many outsides, John MacD. had a false impression of academic life and didn't find the kind of camaraderie he was looking for in Clinton. And it's winter in upstate New York for about 8 months of the year. After that false start, the MacDonald's made their primary home in Sarasota, Florida, with shorter stays in Mexico, at their camp in the Adirondacks, and later on a number of cruises.
Considering that John McD. was a writer, not a 9 to 5 type, he seemed to have led a life that was remarkably regimented, in a way that was typical of that time period. He had gone to business school and he made writing into his business during the week and, on Friday night, he went out drinking with the boys. Readers are told that John MacD. couldn't live without his wife but there really isn't that much in the book about her. The first mention of the private school their son attended did not say where the school was located but it is revealed some pages later that his boarding school was actually 1400 miles away from their home in Florida. John MacD's cats obviously meant a lot to him since he wrote a whole book about them. He was quoted as saying that he felt worse when his cats died than he did when human members of his family died. But that's all the ink the cats got here.
The author tries very hard to make a case for John MacD. the Environmentalist but gives the reader almost no evidence that he pursued any environmental problems that didn't have a direct effect on his own comfort. He put particular time, money, and angst into opposing the condos that a developer wanted to build next door to his house. But, ultimately, he also benefited from it with a best selling book, Condominium.
The author also tries very hard to make a case for John MacD. the Ladies Man but again gives the reader no evidence that he actively pursued or had sex with any of his friends' wives. In the one case recounted in the book, he was pursued and responded by writing an 11 page letter of marital advice to the woman's husband. The husband responded with a much shorter letter telling him what he could do with his advice. Apparently that's how writer's handle these things.
I like a lot of family information in a biography, which is here, but I also like a few photos and there are none at all.
Looking for book about John D. MacDonald I had found and rejected The House Guests, and John D. MacDonald (Twayne's United States Authors Series). Reviews for The House Guests indicated that it contained a very unpleasant incident and books published by Twayne are bio-bibliographies which might be of more interest to a student or a collector of John MacD's books. So it was interesting that the author of this biography thought in necessary to discredit the Twayne book because the author of that book gave John MacD the right to approve the final manuscript.
This book ended abruptly after John MacD's death in 1986 although the book wasn't published until 2000. The author didn't hang around for any chit chat about John MacD's lasting legacy. Or what happened to his netsuki collection.
Nit picking: There are a large number of typos in the book.
On the plus side, I don't totally hate John MacDonald after reading it, which is more than I can say for some other biographies (Arthur Conan Doyle, for example).
After WWII, John MacD and his wife settled for a while in Clinton, New York. Like many outsides, John MacD. had a false impression of academic life and didn't find the kind of camaraderie he was looking for in Clinton. And it's winter in upstate New York for about 8 months of the year. After that false start, the MacDonald's made their primary home in Sarasota, Florida, with shorter stays in Mexico, at their camp in the Adirondacks, and later on a number of cruises.
Considering that John McD. was a writer, not a 9 to 5 type, he seemed to have led a life that was remarkably regimented, in a way that was typical of that time period. He had gone to business school and he made writing into his business during the week and, on Friday night, he went out drinking with the boys. Readers are told that John MacD. couldn't live without his wife but there really isn't that much in the book about her. The first mention of the private school their son attended did not say where the school was located but it is revealed some pages later that his boarding school was actually 1400 miles away from their home in Florida. John MacD's cats obviously meant a lot to him since he wrote a whole book about them. He was quoted as saying that he felt worse when his cats died than he did when human members of his family died. But that's all the ink the cats got here.
The author tries very hard to make a case for John MacD. the Environmentalist but gives the reader almost no evidence that he pursued any environmental problems that didn't have a direct effect on his own comfort. He put particular time, money, and angst into opposing the condos that a developer wanted to build next door to his house. But, ultimately, he also benefited from it with a best selling book, Condominium.
The author also tries very hard to make a case for John MacD. the Ladies Man but again gives the reader no evidence that he actively pursued or had sex with any of his friends' wives. In the one case recounted in the book, he was pursued and responded by writing an 11 page letter of marital advice to the woman's husband. The husband responded with a much shorter letter telling him what he could do with his advice. Apparently that's how writer's handle these things.
I like a lot of family information in a biography, which is here, but I also like a few photos and there are none at all.
Looking for book about John D. MacDonald I had found and rejected The House Guests, and John D. MacDonald (Twayne's United States Authors Series). Reviews for The House Guests indicated that it contained a very unpleasant incident and books published by Twayne are bio-bibliographies which might be of more interest to a student or a collector of John MacD's books. So it was interesting that the author of this biography thought in necessary to discredit the Twayne book because the author of that book gave John MacD the right to approve the final manuscript.
This book ended abruptly after John MacD's death in 1986 although the book wasn't published until 2000. The author didn't hang around for any chit chat about John MacD's lasting legacy. Or what happened to his netsuki collection.
Nit picking: There are a large number of typos in the book.
July 22, 2025
Merrill has done a deep dive into MacDonald's collected papers and constructed the outline of a life liberally sprinkled with quotes from books, letters, and journal entries. Unfortunately, the sources go unspecified, at least in the electronic edition. (There is a comprehensive bibliography in the back, which partially makes up for the lack.)
Merrill does not seem to have talked in person with anybody who knew MacDonald, so the supporting cast of friends and family are little more than shadows in the background. We know little more about them, and even about MacDonald himself, than he happened to mention in his letters and notes. This makes for a dry read.
Merrill also seems to assume that all his readers have already read all of MacDonald's books (a tall order). For example, he comments in an aside that "The Green Ripper was the postwar combat novel he was unable to write in the 1940s." You have to have read The Green Ripper to know what this means; no more is said about it, and the book is not described. (The book includes a vivid section where McGee penetrates a paramilitary compound alone.) He goes on to quote a letter in which MacDonald says "Green Ripper was, in retrospect, a mistake." Why would he say this? We don't know. The quote is just dropped in without so much as speculation.
Ultimately, this short biography is for those who need to know the facts and figures of this writer's life, and perhaps as a springboard to further research.
Merrill does not seem to have talked in person with anybody who knew MacDonald, so the supporting cast of friends and family are little more than shadows in the background. We know little more about them, and even about MacDonald himself, than he happened to mention in his letters and notes. This makes for a dry read.
Merrill also seems to assume that all his readers have already read all of MacDonald's books (a tall order). For example, he comments in an aside that "The Green Ripper was the postwar combat novel he was unable to write in the 1940s." You have to have read The Green Ripper to know what this means; no more is said about it, and the book is not described. (The book includes a vivid section where McGee penetrates a paramilitary compound alone.) He goes on to quote a letter in which MacDonald says "Green Ripper was, in retrospect, a mistake." Why would he say this? We don't know. The quote is just dropped in without so much as speculation.
Ultimately, this short biography is for those who need to know the facts and figures of this writer's life, and perhaps as a springboard to further research.
July 19, 2018
I feel I got to know MacDonald
I'm glad I found this book. I first encountered MacDonald's books in the late 70s when I read Condominium at the time I moved to Fort Myers. I recall when MacDonald died. I had been living in fort Myers 10 years and doing heart surgery there and have always been curious why he died. While that had academic interest to me, more importantly there is enough detail about his life I feel I almost knew him. His books have certainly enriched my life.
I'm enjoying the opportunity to read his books in the now available electronic editions. I am grateful to the author for taking the time to put this book together. I hope many others will enjoy it as well.
I'm glad I found this book. I first encountered MacDonald's books in the late 70s when I read Condominium at the time I moved to Fort Myers. I recall when MacDonald died. I had been living in fort Myers 10 years and doing heart surgery there and have always been curious why he died. While that had academic interest to me, more importantly there is enough detail about his life I feel I almost knew him. His books have certainly enriched my life.
I'm enjoying the opportunity to read his books in the now available electronic editions. I am grateful to the author for taking the time to put this book together. I hope many others will enjoy it as well.
February 17, 2024
For fans of Travis McGee this gives one an idea of what went into the making of MacDonald. I read The House Guests, a tale of the two felines that the MacDonald family loved. I also read A Friendship; a sharing of letters between the author and Dan Rowan. Both books gave more insight into the writer that one would have thought possible. This book filled in some blanks and offered more on the way that MacDonald shuffled off this mortal coil. A must read for anyone who loved this man's stories. I got this book delivered earlier today and did not put it down until I'd finished it.
March 24, 2024
An Insight Into A Writer's Life
I was introduced to John D McDonald's fiction by my father-in-law, some forty years ago. This biography provides important life events along with some idea of the creative process. I would' be liked to have a bit more insight into some of my favorite non-McGee novels, but I did find a lot of information on some motivations for some of his later works. This is a wonderful book for MacDonald aficionados.
I was introduced to John D McDonald's fiction by my father-in-law, some forty years ago. This biography provides important life events along with some idea of the creative process. I would' be liked to have a bit more insight into some of my favorite non-McGee novels, but I did find a lot of information on some motivations for some of his later works. This is a wonderful book for MacDonald aficionados.
August 24, 2018
Interesting biography. I live near Sarasota, where Mid-Century Modern architecture flourished. MacDonald and Travis McGee belong there, too. Made me want to read all the Travis McGee.
March 24, 2024
Well crafted and researched.
Any JDM Bibilophile will enjoy.
Any JDM Bibilophile will enjoy.
December 28, 2012
Who knew that I liked biographies? I certainly didn't till I read this book. I loved it. I actually felt sad when the story was over because I wanted to keep reading. "The Red Hot Typewriter" is my all-time favorite biography.
I like John D. MacDonald, a prolific writer and composer of the Travis McGee series. John D. Is the great Florida crime writer, an artist who inspired other Florida greats such as Carl Hiaasen and James W. Hall. If you're interested in the history of Florida crime writing, MacDonald is a must read.
There are many aspects of "The Red Hot Typewriter" that I savored. First, the biography gave me insight into John D., the man. MacDonald's grandfather was a train wreck of a person who abused his wife and traumatized his children. He was a despicable man. That affected John D.'s father, instilling in him a pragmatic, pick-yourself-up-by-the bootstraps approach to life. That attitude got passed on to John D., who wrestled with it, caught between his father's encouragement for John to go into business and John's own desire to be a writer. This biography captures beautifully the emotional baggage that gets passed down in families from one generation to the next.
"The Red Hot Typewriter" also gave me insight into the novels of John D. For example, MacDonald and his wife lived for a year in Mexico early in their marriage. Later, they vacationed for several months at a time in Mexico. That explains why several MacDonald novels, a couple of them Travis McGee tales, are set in Mexico. The biography also captures the love-hate relationship that John D. carried on with the state of Florida. As a long-time resident of the state myself, I very much appreciate that love-hate relationship to the state. Florida is a beautiful place, and, because of that, it has its own set of problems. Those feelings of ambivalence for the state are very clearly seen in the Travis McGee series. McGee loves the natural beauty of the place but despises what the developers have done to it.
"The Red Hot Typewriter," moreover, gave me insight into the world of publishing. Say a writer has a successful series going such as Travis McGee. And let's say the author wants to take a break from the series and write something different. Now let's assume that the new book is not so great. In fact, the editor hates it a little. The publisher may still publish the book to keep the writer happy and to keep the series rolling, because the series is the cash cow.
In sum, I loved this book, the best biography I've ever read, and I recommend it to you highly.
Cap'n Bobby
I like John D. MacDonald, a prolific writer and composer of the Travis McGee series. John D. Is the great Florida crime writer, an artist who inspired other Florida greats such as Carl Hiaasen and James W. Hall. If you're interested in the history of Florida crime writing, MacDonald is a must read.
There are many aspects of "The Red Hot Typewriter" that I savored. First, the biography gave me insight into John D., the man. MacDonald's grandfather was a train wreck of a person who abused his wife and traumatized his children. He was a despicable man. That affected John D.'s father, instilling in him a pragmatic, pick-yourself-up-by-the bootstraps approach to life. That attitude got passed on to John D., who wrestled with it, caught between his father's encouragement for John to go into business and John's own desire to be a writer. This biography captures beautifully the emotional baggage that gets passed down in families from one generation to the next.
"The Red Hot Typewriter" also gave me insight into the novels of John D. For example, MacDonald and his wife lived for a year in Mexico early in their marriage. Later, they vacationed for several months at a time in Mexico. That explains why several MacDonald novels, a couple of them Travis McGee tales, are set in Mexico. The biography also captures the love-hate relationship that John D. carried on with the state of Florida. As a long-time resident of the state myself, I very much appreciate that love-hate relationship to the state. Florida is a beautiful place, and, because of that, it has its own set of problems. Those feelings of ambivalence for the state are very clearly seen in the Travis McGee series. McGee loves the natural beauty of the place but despises what the developers have done to it.
"The Red Hot Typewriter," moreover, gave me insight into the world of publishing. Say a writer has a successful series going such as Travis McGee. And let's say the author wants to take a break from the series and write something different. Now let's assume that the new book is not so great. In fact, the editor hates it a little. The publisher may still publish the book to keep the writer happy and to keep the series rolling, because the series is the cash cow.
In sum, I loved this book, the best biography I've ever read, and I recommend it to you highly.
Cap'n Bobby
March 18, 2016
This is an okay, if somewhat flat, biography. It might be hampered by its subject, who was cranky, maybe humorless, and basically wrote all of the time. MacDonald had adventures during WWII (including vaguely cloak and dagger stuff), but longed to get out of South Asia, and basically took no interest in India. Merrill details some of the conflicts of MacDonald's early life and tough times at the outset of MacDonald's marriage, but he barely connects this material to MacDonald's writing (more often he ties it to MacDonald's work ethic). Merrill also doesn't connect MacDonald's life or his writing too much to what else is happening in the world -- though there is some reference to consumerism and excessive, environmentally destructive development in Florida. I wasn't necessarily looking for Freudian readings of MacDonald's work, but I thought the book should've illuminated some of MacDonald's pre-Travis McGee work more. Incidentally, later this year will be the 100th anniversary of MacDonald's birth.
February 7, 2012
This was a biography of MacDonald, a prolific writer who created the character, Travis McGee (the subject of many novels in the Spenser variety). McGee lives on a houseboat in the Fort Lauderdale area, but he travels around solving crimes. He likes women, but he's not a womanizer. He also wants to right the wrongs of the world in the Sir Galahad manner of Spenser. MacDonald grew up in NY but lived for a year in Cuernovaca, Mexico (where I've spent most of my Mexican time), and lived many years in Sarasota, FL. He set the McGee books on the East Coast of Florida so that in case the books became a success it would not promote tourism in Sarasota where he lived. I thought that was rather far-sighted. I liked MacDonald. He was an opinionated, confident fellow, but he only had one wife -- and he liked her.
December 21, 2011
The story is told in incredible detail and takes you through MacDonald's entire career. He had a troubled relationship with Hollywood and was unable to let go of his scripts and have films based on them. He seemed to miss the point that movies were not verbatim recreations of novels; they are stories based on the original work. All in all a good read, and I'd recommend it to those interested in the genre.
December 11, 2013
The biography of John D. MacDonald was well written. My only drawback was that I was left with not much feel for John D., the man. I know what he did,in his life, just not the why. This may have been because John D. was very jealous of his privacy. John D. MacDonald was a prolific writer of detective/suspense novels in the 0's through the 80's. He influenced writers as varied as Stephen King and Carl Hiaasen.
September 30, 2007
MacDonald comes across almost exactly as I'd imagined him. I wouldn't have wanted to know him, but I do enjoy the Travis McGee series.
September 22, 2013
Eye opening history of John D. MacDonald. There were quite a few surprises. John D. definitely had strong opinions on a lot of subjects and he was not afraid of confrontation.
October 6, 2013
Fun to read a bio of John D. MacDonald, the author of the Travis McGee books. Lots of letters quoted which is great, but not much depth, no photos.
October 24, 2014
Love John D. MacDonald and this was a fascinating bio. Very inspiring for a writer.
April 25, 2016
Interesting because I love the subject, but the bio was pedestrian.
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