A new collection of the correspondence between

Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald chronicles

the platonic love affair between two gifted,

caring, and profoundly decent people.26 MYSTERY SCENE

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Pen Palsby Jon L. Breen

On May 3, 1970, Macdonald wrote Weltya “fan letter” (his phrase) inspired by her fa-vorable reference to him in a New York Timesinterview. He observed that the Mississippi

characters in her recent novel Losing Bat-tles shared a “recognizable North Americanlanguage” with his Canadian aunts anduncles whose “words, imagery, jokes” were

very similar. She wrote back, delighted withthis fresh idea. They went on to exchangebooks and opinions, encouragements andcommiserations. In 1971, it was Welty who

E udora Welty, one of the most cele-brated American writers of her time,and Kenneth Millar, better known

to mystery readers as Ross Macdonald,first corresponded during one of the profes-sionally best and personally worst periods ofMillar’s life. On June 1, 1969, William Gold-man’s review of The Goodbye Look appearedon the front page of the New York Times BookReview, proclaiming the series about privateeye Lew Archer “the finest detective novelsever written by an American,” and an ac-companying profile by John Leonard pro-nounced Macdonald “a major Americannovelist.” In November of the following year,Millar’s daughter Linda, who seemed to haveachieved stability and contentment after atragic and tumultuous early life, died suddenly,leaving behind a husband and young son.

—Sydney Morning Herald

—Kirkus Reviews

—Publishers Weekly

—Toronto Star

A daring young British pilot is swept into the world of international intrigue in post-WWI Paris

in this brilliant historical thriller

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“Robert Goddard is the master of complex, tricky thrillers that dazzle with surprises . . . Stellar

—Sydney Morning Herald

“A sly—Kirkus Reviews

“Enjoyable . . . Goddard evokes time and place with

“Robert Goddard is the master of complex, tricky thrillers that dazzle with surprises . . . Stellar

—Sydney Morning Herald

, highbrow take on the espionage thriller“A sly—Kirkus Reviews

Enjoyable . . . Goddard evokes time and place with

illiant histin this br

“Robert Goddard is the master of complex, tricky .”thrillers that dazzle with surprises . . . Stellar

.”, highbrow take on the espionage thriller

Enjoyable . . . Goddard evokes time and place with

illerical throrilliant hist

Enjoyable . . . Goddard evokes time and place with an expert hand.”

“Dashed good yarn-spanning.”—T

Enjoyable . . . Goddard evokes time and place with an expert hand.”—Publishers W

“Dashed good yarn-spanning.”oronto StarTToronto Star

Enjoyable . . . Goddard evokes time and place with eeklyers W Weekly

“Dashed good yarn-spanning.”STHE MYSTERIOUS PRES

tlantican imprint of Grove A AtlanticestDistributed by Publishers Group W West

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would praise Ross Macdonald in a front-page New York Times Book Review essay onThe Underground Man. The Lew Archernovel that followed, Sleeping Beauty (1973),would be dedicated to Eudora Welty. Whatbegan as a dialogue based on common in-terests and mutual admiration graduallymorphed into a platonic love affair betweentwo gifted, caring, and profoundly decentpeople. The exchange of letters would betwo-sided until early in 1980 when Mac-donald’s advancing Alzheimer’s disease madeit impossible for him to write. Welty con-tinued to write to him and visited him inSanta Barbara one last time in 1982, the yearbefore his death.

Third party to this benign triangle wasMacdonald’s wife and fellow novelist Mar-garet Millar. She was surely aware of howclose the friendship of Macdonald and Weltywas, and how important to them. She is men-tioned frequently, always lovingly and re-spectfully, in the letters. The two womenwere friendly and admiring of each other’swork. Some of the editors’ connecting nar-rative, including a description by Welty ofMargaret’s cruel remarks to her husbandduring that final visit, show Margaret as amercurial and often difficult person, caus-

tic and temperamental, similar to her quietand gentle husband in many ways but com-pletely different in others. An odd match,perhaps, but there is little doubt that themarriage was solid and that the two Millarswere devoted to each other, and had manycommon interests apart from writing andfamily: exercise, ecology, birdwatching, courtwatching. During the time covered by theletters, Margaret had to deal with the deathof a daughter and her own severe healthproblems and writer’s block, as well as thediminishment of her husband. Viewing heras the villain of the piece would be unfair.

Eudora Welty’s interest in mystery fic-tion long antedated her discovery of RossMacdonald. Some of her favorite writers inthe genre were Julian Symons, AgathaChristie, Elizabeth Daly, and Ngaio Marsh.

In one letter, she remarks on her pleasureat rereading Wilkie Collins’ The Woman inWhite after going through a mixed bag ofPulitzer Prize submissions. When Macdon-ald was compiling his anthology Great Sto-ries of Suspense, she was asked for sugges-tions and was happy to oblige. She wasespecially pleased Dick Francis would be in-cluded, and on the publishers’ insistence onhaving something by Macdonald himself,she wrote that not to do so “would be like

Gershwin having a party andhaving everybody else playbut not play himself….”  

Welty herself had at leastone venture as a mysterywriter: the comic novella ThePonder Heart (1954) is ar-guably a crime story and cer-tainly a mystery, structuredto withhold the solution tothe end. Over a quarter ofthe wordage is devoted to a

murder trial, one of the funniest in all liter-ature from its very first witness, a blind small-town coroner.

Both Welty and Macdonald are superbcorrespondents. Quotable passages abound.Macdonald on aging: “[Margaret] will meetage head-on, and refuses to grow old with-out a struggle. I am likely to grow old with-out knowing it.” Welty on an odd display ofpaintings in a Texas museum: “…[T]herewas a beautiful line of Mary Cassatts goingup the staircase wall, that you couldn’t re-ally look at, for being too close and for hav-ing to go on upstairs—the only way you couldhave seen them less well would be by slid-ing down the bannisters.” Many friends andcolleagues are mentioned, with rarely a badword to say about anybody, save some crit-ics and biographers who did wrong by lit-

erary heroes F. Scott Fitzgerald and FordMadox Ford. Apart from the literary, com-mon interests included nature, dogs, birds,jazz, and politics.

The first indications of Macdonald’s grad-ual memory loss come as early as 1974, whenhe seems to repeat information that he hasalready written in earlier letters. He first men-tions it explicitly in a letter of August 15, 1976:“a failure of the memory function which isprobably within normal limits for my age butwhich, because I had had a nearly perfectmemory, scared and depressed me.” Thediagnosis of Alzheimer’s did not come until1981, and it was first revealed publicly byMargaret Millar in a Los Angeles Times in-terview the following year. Welty’s unfinishedshort story “Henry,” which deals fictionallywith their relationship and his Alzheimer’s,appears as an appendix to the book.

Among its other virtues, the Welty-Mac-donald correspondence shows how much islost when people stop writing letters. Caneven the most scrupulously preserved emailsor blog posts equal the humanity and styleof great letters by great letter writers? Thisis one of the finest books in an unusually richyear for biographical and critical works inthe mystery field. The Edgar, should it winone, would presumably go to the editors,Welty biographer Suzanne Marrs and Mac-donald biographer Tom Nolan, who haveexpertly provided the necessary bridges andidentifications to shape the material into arewarding whole. In effect, Macdonald andWelty have collaborated on a posthumousepistolary novel, one that delivers throughreality the emotional power and truthful-ness of great fiction. I think they would en-joy that. l

Jon L. Breen is a two-time winner of the Mys-tery Writers of America’s Edgar Award forhis criticism. His most recent novel is Prob-able Clause (Five Star).

The Welty-Macdonald

correspondence shows how much

is lost when people stop

writing letters. Can even the

most scrupulously preserved

emails or blog posts equal the

humanity and style of great letters

by great letter writers?

28 MYSTERY SCENE

Margaret Millar