More Ross Macdonald: The Moving Target & Harper

Book: The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald

published 1949 

Film: Harper  starring Paul Newman

released 1966

 

 

 

I’ve been reading and re-reading a lot of Ross Macdonald, as I recently took part in a podcast with an old friend: Sergio Angelini of Tipping my Fedora – originally a blog, now a podcast empire.

Tipping My Fedora | Sergio Angelini

 

We are both big fans of Macdonald, so really enjoyed the chance to chat....

Tipping my Fedora – Ross Macdonald

 

There are already a handful of his books on the blog, and I am taking the chance to fill some of the gaps. This post does go over the same ground as parts of the podcast, but has added value!

The Moving Target was Macdonald's first novel to feature Lew Archer, the private eye who became his main character. For me it is too complicated and brutal, and really is an early work – though that doesn’t make it a bad book.  Macdonald, and Archer, turned into something gentler as the years and the books rolled by, even though the plots, which are usually about secrets, get darker and darker. What I mean is, you wouldn’t trust the Archer of this book with your daughter: later you totally would.

There are too many characters, it is hard to keep them all straight, and they are not necessary. Archer loses consciousness 3 times at key points – you feel Macdonald is saying 'oh we'd better have a fight now, time Archer is knocked out.'

It's a good complex plot, with features that will recur again and again – rich man with dysfunctional family, including a second wife. This time it’s the patriarch who has gone missing, and Archer goes looking – via Hollywood, bars, a woman who is keen on astrology, a mystic on a mountain, and some unexpected plot points. Value for money in terms of content, even if it is a bit confused at times.

And hints of the more philosophical, serious moments to come in later books -  here we get a description of a character:

"You don't know the type like I do," Graves said. "I've seen this same thing happen to other boys, not to such an extreme degree, of course, but the same thing. They went out of high school Into the Army or the Air Corps and made good In a big way. They were officers and gentlemen with high pay, an even higher opinion of themselves, and all the success they needed to keep it blown up. War was their element, and when the war was finished, they were finished. They had to go back to boys' jobs and take orders from middle-aged civilians. Handling pens and adding machines instead of flight sticks and machine guns. Some of them couldn't take it and went bad. They thought the world was their oyster and couldn't understand why It had been snatched away from them. They wanted to snatch It back. They wanted to be free and happy and successful without laying a|ly foundation for freedom or happiness or success. And there's the hangover."

 

Not much in the way of clothes – Miranda, the missing man’s daughter enters ‘wearing a black-striped dress, narrow in the right places, full in the others.’ Later she dresses casually to accompany Harper on a road trip to the mystic mountain….

Many years later, 1966, this was turned into a film, starring Paul Newman – and a cast including Lauren Bacall & Janet Leigh (both sadly underused), Julie Harris and Robert Wagner, Shelley Winters chewing the scenery. It was very much set in the 1960s, and  the whole film works well and was very successful. Is Newman too good-looking to be Archer? There is a story about why he is called Harper, not Archer, to do with rights to the books and character.

The film was written by William Goldman who (as ever) has interesting things to say about it: there is an audio commentary which I found fascinating.  For example, Newman/Harper chews gum in every single scene which is horrible – according to Goldman, it was Newman who thought it was right for the character, and it caused tremendous continuity problems.

He says that a vital scene in the film is played under the opening credits – Lew Harper wakes up in his office, getting ready to go to work, goes to make coffee but finds there is none, pulls yesterday's dead filter out of the bin. Goldman reckons this amused and entertained the audience, got them on Harper’s side, and made them like him.

Goldman is the ultimate anecdotalist – you know you’re being manoeuvred and manipulated, and he may well be making half of it up, or at least smoothing the corners of his stories. He repeats versions of the same story. But he is also full of charisma and just hugely entertaining. In this post – could not be further from Hollywood, Goldman etc - I tell the story of how I came to read one of his memoir books,

Goldman does a good job of turning the book into a script – smoothing the transitions, not bothering too much with how people get into or out of scenes unless it is important. Goldman has written about this before now - he has a very funny schtick on the end of the Hitchcock film North By Northwest – and Macdonald got better at it as the years rolled on.

There is one awful scene in the movie where Harper goads another character by being vile about his girlfriend: I did not understand the point of that, and found it objectionable.

In this post – about a book set in a NY hotel in the 1940s – I outlined how I became fascinated by the idea of the lift starter, and investigated it. Here in this book we have a taxi starter at the airport, in a similar line.

There is more Ross Macdonald to come.