Diagraming Ross Macdonald

Last month I posted about Ross Macdonald’s art of description. Those observations fell out of Macdonald’s The Goodbye Look, which I read for enjoyment, but also to learn how Macdonald bolted his plots together.

A characteristic of noir is the story is as much or more about the detective as it is the crime they are trying to solve, and there inevitably comes a part in the story — for me, as a reader, at least — where nothing makes sense. The plot is too twisty. I can’t keep up. At that point, I hang on for the finish, confident the writer will wrap things up for me. In the meantime, I enjoy the characters and the storytelling.

But I can’t shake the sense I’m letting myself down. The writer is putting clues in front of me for a reason. I should be able to puzzle it out.

Maybe if I kept notes?

(I don’t want to keep notes, this is reading, not work).

Except in this case, it is also work.

So I kept notes:

Holy crap, Ross.

Ross Macdonald’s plots are more complex than they appear. Having done mind maps like before, I have a sense of what the “chemical formula” of a novel looks like. The molecule Macdonald constructed for The Goodbye Look is an order of magnitude more complex than others I’ve broken down. Macdonald makes it look easy and that’s part of what makes him a master.

Making notes kept me closer to the story, but overall it didn’t make for a more enjoyable read. I think I’ll be content to simply enjoy Macdonald in the future, without carving him up for parts.

The diagram is useful for study … I guess? Mostly I feel like I’ve disassembled the Mona Lisa, leaving me with a blank canvas and a bunch of paint.

Good luck putting that back together!