John Dann MacDonald (July 24, 1916 - December 28, 1986) is an American novelist and short story, known for his various thrillers.
MacDonald is a prolific writer of criminal and suspense novels, many of which were adopted in Florida. One of the most successful American novelists of his time, MacDonald sold about 70 million books in his career. His most famous works include the critically acclaimed and popular Travis McGee series, and his novel The Executioners, which was filmed as Cape Fear (1962) and remade in 1991 During 1972, MacDonald was named the grandmaster of the Mystery Writers of America, and he won the 1980 US National Book Award in the Mystery category one year. Stephen King praised MacDonald as "the great entertainer of our times, and a stunning storyteller." Kingsley Amis said, MacDonald's "by any standard, a better writer than Saul Bellow, only MacDonald who wrote the thriller and Bellow is a human heart, so guess who's wearing a top class victory."
Early life
MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, where his father worked for Savage Arms Corporation. The family moved to Utica, New York, in 1926, where her father was treasurer of Utica's office in the Savage Arms. During 1934, MacDonald was sent to Europe for several weeks, which began the desire to travel and for photography.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, but he quit in the second year. MacDonald worked in harsh jobs in New York City for a short time, then accepted at Syracuse University, where he met his future wife, Dorothy Prentiss. They married during 1937, and he graduated from Syracuse University the following year.
During 1939, MacDonald received an MBA from Harvard University. He was then able to utilize his education in business and economics by incorporating elaborate business fraud into his multiple novel plots.
In 1940, MacDonald received a direct commission as a lieutenant of the Army Corps of Army. During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services at the China-Burma-Indian Operation Theater; the region is featured in many short stories and novels before. He was dismissed in September 1945 as a lieutenant colonel.
Video John D. MacDonald
Writing career
Early pulp stories
MacDonald's literary career started almost by chance. During 1945, while still in the Army, he wrote short stories and sent them to his wife. He handed it to the Esquire magazine, which rejected it. He then sent it to the Story magazine, which was received for $ 25. He learned this as soon as his ship arrived in the United States.
After the debit, MacDonald spent four months writing short stories, generating around 800,000 words and losing 20 pounds (typing) 14 hours a day, seven days a week. He received hundreds of rejection slips, but ended up making $ 40 sales to the Dime Detective magazine magazine. He eventually sold nearly 500 short stories to detective magazines, mysteries, adventures, sports, Western, and science fiction. Several times, MacDonald's stories are the only ones in magazine editions, but these are hidden under a pseudonym. Between 1946 and 1951, in addition to publishing more than 200 short stories by name alone, MacDonald published stories as Peter Reed, John Farrell (sometimes John Wade Farrell), Scott O'Hara, Robert Henry, Harry Reiser, and John Lane. These pseudonyms were all retired by the end of 1951, and MacDonald then published all of his works under his real name.
Thriller hardboiled
When the boom in paperback novels expanded, MacDonald succeeded in making changes to longer fiction with his first novel, The Brass Cupcake, published in 1950, by Fawcett Publications' Gold Medal Books.
His science fiction included the story "Cosmetics" at Astonishing (1948) and "Common denominator" in the Galaxy Science Fiction (1951), and three novels, Wine of the Dreamers (1951), Ballroom of the Skies (1952), and The Girl, the Gold Watch, & amp; Everything (1962), collected as an omnibus edition called Time and Tomorrow (1980).
Between 1953 and 1964, MacDonald specializes in criminal thrillers, especially the so-called "hardboiled" genres. Most of these novels were published as original novels, though some were later reissued as harddown editions. Many, such as the Dead Low Tide (1953) and Murder in the Wind (1956), set at his adopted home from Florida. Novels such as The Executioners (1957) (which were twice filmed as Cape Fear , first during 1962 and again during 1991) and One Monday We Killed Them All (1962) psychopathic killer in question.
MacDonald is credited with being one of the earliest to write about the effects of real estate boom on the environment, and his novel A Flash Of Green (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962) is a good example of this. Many later Florida crimes, detectives and mystery writers, such as Paul Levine, Randy Wayne White, James Hall and Jonathon King, have followed suit.
Travis McGee
MacDonald's protagonists are often intelligent and introspective people, sometimes also very cynical. Travis McGee, "rescue consultant" and "knight-knight," are all that. McGee made a living by recovering the spoils of theft and fraud, saving half to finance his "retirement", which he took in the segment as he left. He first appeared in the 1964 novel The Deep Blue Good-by and starred in 21 novels until the final release of 1985's The Lonely Silver Rain series. All titles in the series include colors, mnemonic devices suggested by the publisher so that when frightened travelers at the airport are looking to buy a book, they can immediately see the titles of MacDonalds that they have not read.
McGee's novels feature an ever-changing array of female friends; some very evil villains; exotic locales in Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean; and an appearance by a sidekick known only as "Meyer," a famous international economist and Ph.D. As Sherlock Holmes has a famous address on Baker Street, McGee has his 52-foot (16m) house, Busted Flush, named for a poker hand that starts a fortune that allows him to win a boat. He docked at Slip F-18, marina Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Maps John D. MacDonald
Death
Following the complication of previous heart bypass surgery, MacDonald had a coma on December 10 and died at the age of 70, on December 28, 1986, at St. Hospital. Mary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.
Media customization
- MacDonald's Novel Soft Touch is the basis for the 1961 Man-Trap movie.
- The 1957 novel The Executioners was filmed in 1962 as Cape Fear featuring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Martin Scorsese directed a 1991 Cape Fear remake starring Robert DeNiro and Nick Nolte.
- The Cry Hard novel, Cry Fast was adapted as a two-part episode of the Run for Your Life television series during November 1967.
- The 1970 adaptation film of the Darker Than Amber novel was directed by Robert Clouse from a screenplay by MacDonald and Ed Waters. It features Rod Taylor as the character of the Travis McGee series.
- The novel Linda was filmed twice for television, in 1973 (with Stella Stevens in the title role) and in 1993 (with Virginia Madsen).
- Girls, Gold Watch & amp; Everything was adapted for a 1980 TV movie. It produced the 1981 sequel, Girls, Gold Watches and Dynamite .
- 1980's TV Movies Condominium , based on MacDonald's novel, featuring Dan Haggerty and Barbara Eden.
- Sam Elliott plays Travis McGee in The Empty Copper Sea TV adaptation, titled Travis McGee (1983). This moved McGee to California, eliminating local Florida grounds for the novel.
- The 1984 movie A Flash of Green featured Ed Harris. Victor NuÃÆ' Â ± ez, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival.
Influence
Various authors have acknowledged the work of MacDonald, including Carl Hiaasen in the introduction to the 1990s edition of The Deep Blue Good-by: "Most readers love MacDonald's work because it tells rip-roaring threads. he is the first modern writer to nail down the dead center of Florida, to capture all his sluggish folly, pride of promise, and fascinating beauty. "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., wrote another unforgettable tribute:" To dig a thousand years from now... the work of John D. MacDonald will be a treasure in the order of Tutankhamen's tomb. "
Most Florida-based mystery writers recognize debt to MacDonald, including Randy Wayne White, James Hall, Les Standiford, Jonathon King and Tim Dorsey. New York-based Lawrence New York fictional hero Matthew Scudder is a character who makes his life do what McGee does - helping friends who have no other way, then take part.
Tribute to MacDonald is proven in the TV-CBS series 1981-88 Simon & amp; Simon with a scene showing Rick Simon's boat anchored on the F-18 Slip in San Diego.
Stephen King stated in the book Faces of Fear: "John D. MacDonald has written a novel entitled The End of the Night that I will argue is one of the greatest American novels of the century twenty.It ranks with the Death of a Salesman , it ranks with An American Tragedy . "He also dedicates the novella to The Sun Dog to MacDonald, writes," I miss you, my friend old... and you're right about the tiger, "and started the Keeper Keeper novel with" Thinking of John D. Macdonald. "
The science fiction writer, Spider Robinson, has explained that he also includes a MacDonald admirer. The bartender at Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Mike Callahan, married Lady Sally McGee, whose last name is almost certainly a tribute to Travis. In the sequel to the Callahan series Callahan's Key, a fixed group of former salons decided they had enough of Long Island, so they moved to Key West, Florida, in a colorful caravan of modified school buses. On their way to Key West, they stop at a marina near Fort Lauderdale specifically to visit Slip F-18 (where The Busted Flush is usually moored) and meet locals who are prototypes for Meyer's sidekick. The slip is empty, with a small plaque that says The Busted Flush .
The famous mystery writer Dean Koontz has also admitted in an interview with Marlene Taylor from Bookreporter.com that MacDonald is "his favorite author of all time... I have read everything he wrote four or five times." His character Odd Thomas in Odd Apocalypse found himself in the 1920s, and worried about being trapped "in a world without penicillin, no polio vaccine, no Teflon cookware, no John D MacDonald novel".
In a May 2016 interview New York Times , Nathaniel Philbrick - author of Sea Heart and Mayflower - said: "I recently found the Travis series McGee by John D. MacDonald Every time I finish one of those thin books I say to myself it is time to rest and return to the pile at night but then find myself deep inside another McGee novel is Lee Child and Carl Hiaasen, there's MacDonald - as a precise prescient and verbal as written by anyone today that might be expected. "
Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett respectfully alluded to MacDonald in the song "Prince Of Tides" from the album Hot Water and Incommunicado at Coconut Telegraph.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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