Mark,
Your point about Archer not really being personally involved
in his own books raises an interesting point of comparison
between MacDonald's Archer and non-Archer books. I finished
"The Ferguson Affair" not too long ago and the main
character, William Gunnarson, was very much personally
invested in the outcome of the story. MacDonald actually
delved quite a bit into Gunnarson's personal life, including
his marriage and impending fatherhood. Although I mentioned
in my previous e-mail that MacDonald's non-Archer books are
in alot of ways similar to his Archer stories, here is at
least one point of notable departure.
Not having done a lot of reading on MacDonald himself (his
biography by Tom Nolan is sitting on my to read shelf at the
moment) I would be curious if anyone has any thoughts as to
what may have motivated MacDonald to make this particular
change.
Cheers, Harry
Quoting
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net:
> "Should I read Ross MacDonald's "Lew Archer" cases
in sequence, just
> like Lawrence Block's "Matthew Scudder"? Do the
personality of character
> varies as time goes on?"
>
> There really isn't much "personality of character"
in the Lew Archer
> books. This isn't meant as a criticism. In fact,
that's one of the
> things I find so fascinating about this series, how
Archer is kind of
> absent from his own books, observing and solving
without revealing much
> of himself.
>
> Now I'm anal about reading series in order, and I
went back and did this
> with the Archer novels at one point. However,
although he has periods,
> there's not much interdependence or plot development
between the
> inidividual books. And I'd agree with Brian on the
books he listed as
> Macdonald's best period.
>
> Makes me think. Isn't this idea of series having a
structure and plot
> beyond a single entry kind of new, just a few
decades old? Yes, there
> are slight changes over time with Wade Miller's Max
Thursday or Meyer
> may hae to get anew book at one point in the Travis
McGee series, but I
> really can't think of older series that seem to plot
in arcs. About the
> first I can think of is Stark's Parker series, whose
first four books
> seem to have been plotted as one, which is kind of
strange since the
> first was definitely written as a standalone, with
the ending havng to
> be changed to accomodate a series.
>
> Oh, and of course, there are the 57th Precinct
novels. Was it the first
> to do this seriously?
>
> Mark
>
>
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