Two: Macdonald and Pound

Notes on a pair of luminaries:

Ross Macdonald

His hard-boiled alter-ego was Lew Archer, the sharpest detective on the West Coast for four decades. Ross Macdonald had a way with words, to be sure, but his biggest contribution to the private eye genre was his succinct appraisal of society throughout his creative life.

His characterizations are spot on, involving an array of humanity’s archetypes. His depth of psychological insight is vast. His descriptive powers and use of metaphor are strikingly original and give great pleasure, like a woman awakening to her sexual prowess.

I’ve read quite a bit of Macdonald and I’m currently reading an Archer novel published in 1969. If you haven’t tried this lately, pick up one of his books and rediscover gems such as these from The Goodbye Look:

The young pink-haired receptionist turned from the switchboard. The heavy dark lines accenting her eyes made her look like a prisoner peering out through bars.

His eyes and voice were faintly drowsy with the past.

Pacific Street rose like a slope in purgatory from the poor lower town to a hilltop section of fine old homes.

She laughed a little. Her whole body was dreaming of the past.

She was flushed and brilliant-eyed, as if she was terminating an assignation.

I waited for nearly an hour. The birds in the brush got used to me, and the insects became familiar.

The rectangle of sunlight on the linoleum was lengthening perceptibly, measuring out the afternoon and the movement of the earth.

The yelp of Betty’s horn brought me out of a half-sleep.

Her words touched a closed place in my mind.


What a great joy Ross Macdonald was. He died in 1983.


Ezra Pound

The highly influential modernist poet and literary gadfly Ezra Pound had a great sense of humor when he wasn't off on an anti-Semitic rant.

Pound lived a long life, from 1885 to 1972, most of it in Europe after losing his first teaching position in the U.S. due to scandalously inviting a young homeless woman to his room at Wabash College, where he lectured on classical literature.

Pound is known for befriending and helping many writers in their careers, including Joyce, Hemingway and T.S. Eliot, among others.

Pound is notoriously famous for his anti-Americanism, perhaps borne of a great love for America. Born in Hailey, Idaho and raised in Philadelphia, he was a child prodigy, starting college at age 15, when he announced his intention to become a great poet.

Pound believed credit would ruin economics and destroy nations. He may have been a visionary in that regard as well as in poetics.

Considering how judgments of obscenity in the early twentieth century were based on the extent of the supposed obscene material's circulation, Pound substitutes Classics for Pornography in this satirical poem:


Cantico del Sole


The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation

Troubles my sleep,

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation

Troubles my sleep.

Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,

Now lettest thou thy servant

Depart in peace.

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America,

The thought of what America would be like

If the Classics had a wide circulation...

Oh well!

It troubles my sleep.


TS