Ross Macdonald by Matthew J. Bruccoli

Abstract

Reviews 263 He laments the proliferation of literary theories away from a central set of critical and pedagogical concerns. Mindless or political acceptance of radical methodologies and critical slogans does not for Cain a “discipline” make. Rather, he tries to bridge the chasm between old-fashioned “close reading” and new-fangled “pure theory.” Hirsch, Miller, and Fish claim the author’s attention because of the discernible connection in their work between critical theory and classroom practice. Cain’s “history” of the institutionalization of New Criticism provides continuities and perspective, while his account of key books, trends, and issues of the past fifteen years makes for amplitude and point. Unlike many au courant theoreticians, Cain writes lucidly. Unfortu­ nately, his excessive reiterations—about a dozen portions of his book first appeared in journals—dilute his force. For all its logical arrangement, exten­ sive revisions, and elaborate transitions, The Crisis in Criticism has the look and feel of préfabrication. The parts loom larger than the whole. Still, Cain’s concentration on theory in relation to practice will appeal to English profes­ sors, at least to some. Cain’s adroit unveiling of ambiguities, contradictions, and errors in Hirsch, Miller, and Fish is valuable. Quite sensibly, too, Cain demonstrates that the New Criticism is alive and well—so well, in fact, that most academic critics simply take it for granted, though minority reports keep coming in announcing that close reading is “dead.” Cain’s “intellectual worker,” however, seems to me an unhappy substi­ tute for “critic” or “literary critic.” In his quest for critical-pedagogical centrality, Cain is free to dispute the line between the literary and the nonliterary for his special purposes, but some distinction, though elusive at times, seems to me indispensable. The introduction of “culturally-oriented” texts into English studies (no longer a novelty) will not do away with our need for a traditional canon, for classics of the imagination, for cherishing the aesthetic nature of literature, and for critical judgment. Even in western American literature we note the good, the bad, the mediocre. More likely than not, Cain’s time-honored endeavor here to make English a “coherent discipline” will inspire the production of more books on the order of, say, Richard Slotkin’s Regeneration Through Violence (1973). More certainly, however, Cain’s theory of reform will inspire the production of more books on—the theory of reform ! MARTIN BUCCO Colorado State University Ross Macdonald. By Matthew J. Bruccoli. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. 147 pages, $14.50.) Because the detective fiction of Ross Macdonald has serious literary ambitions, it is not surprising that it has attracted, during his life and now after his death in 1983, critical and scholarly attention. Matthew Bruccoli’sbook is the first attempt to provide both a comprehensive biography of the Canadian- 264 Western American Literature Californian Kenneth Millar and an introductory critical study to the work of his pseudonym, Ross Macdonald. Bruccoli's book is valuable as an assemblage of texts and photographs that will remain a useful introduction to Millar-Macdonald. What is particu­ larly helpful about Bruccoli’s book is the documentation from unpublished material it provides, such as letters to Bruccoli from Macdonald intimates Donald Davie, Robert Easton, and Herbert Harker, as well as from letters and manuscripts among the Knopf papers at the University of Texas. Through the latter, Bruccoli illuminates Macdonald’s relationship with his Knopf editors, who, early in his career, did not encourage his self-consciously literary approach to a popular form. Bruccoli also reprints the abstract for Millar’s 1952 Michigan doctoral dissertation, The Inward Eye, on Coleridge’s literary criticism. Bruccoli’s book has both the virtues and limitations of an introduction. Its biographical data are conveniently assembled, although one feels that Bruccoli may be too close to and, consequently, too protective of his subject. For example, Millar-Macdonald constructed a public myth about himself, giving particular emphasis, in interviews and introductions, to his abandon­ ment as a child by his Canadian father and to his experience of psychotherapy in 1956-57. According to Bruccoli, Macdonald “healed himself” by writing The Galton Case (1959), his first novel involving a son’s search for...