Books in Brief: Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly into the Past, by Ross Macdonald, edited by Ralph B. Sipper (Capra Press, 129 pp., $15). Kenneth Millar—who, writing as “Ross Macdonald,” is the author of the best and most remarkable series of crime novels in the English language, the Lew Archer saga— has now allowed rare-book dealer Ralph B. Sipper to gather 21 of his fugitive essays together and publish them in a longoverdue collection called Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly into the Past. Most of these pieces began life as prefaces to the various Archer omnibuses and other books by or about Mr. Macdonald; the best of them deal more or less directly with the autobiographical experiences that lie just back of the Archer novels, those “fables of modern identity” (Hugh Kenner’s words) that for more than three decades have been opening up new horizons in the crime fiction field. Also of interest are appreciations of Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Eudora Welty, the last of whom has also contributed a graceful and acute foreword; a newly published interview with Ralph Sipper; and an assortment of perceptive pieces dealing with the mystery genre itself. More than just a well-meant tribute to a popular author, Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly into the Past is also a valuable and fascinating addition to the output of one of this country’s most consistently undervalued literary artists.