Although John D. MacDonald published seventy novels and more than five hundred short stories in his lifetime, he is remembered best for his Travis McGee series. He introduced McGee in 1964 with The Deep Blue Goodbye. With Travis McGee, MacDonald changed the pattern of the hardboiled private detectives who preceeded him. McGee has a social conscience, holds thoughtful conversations with his retired economist buddy Meyer, and worries about corporate greed, racism and the Florida ecolgoy in a long series whose brand recognition for the series the author cleverly advanced by inserting a color in every title. Merrill carefully builds a picture of a man who in unexpected ways epitomized the Horatio Alger sagas that comprised his strict father's secular bible. From a financially struggling childhood and a succession of drab nine-to-five occupations, MacDonald settled down to writing for a living (a lifestyle that would have horrified his father). He worked very hard and was rewarded with a more than decent livelihood. But unlike Alger's heroes, MacDonald had a lot of fun doing it.

The Red Hot Typewriter: The Life and Times of John D. MacDonald

Biographies & Memoirs

Merrill, Hugh

Arts & Literature

Minotaur Books

A columnist describes his cross-country odyssey in search of America's indigenous blues music, in a chronicle of the history of blues music, its legendary musicians, and its promoters, disc jockeys, and record producers

The Blues Route

Arts & Photography

Music

William Morrow & Co.

Hugh Merrill has been a prominent activist in community art, and a respected artist and teacher at the cutting edge of Printmaking for many years. This book, written in conjunction with Adelia Ganson, brings together his writings and thoughts about printmaking, and its place in the contemporary visual arts, since the mid-1960s. It includes references to the most important developments in Printmaking in the USA as it has evolved into a major force in the visual arts and community activism. Although titled Preaching to the Choir it is also an open invitation to any artists seeking to redefine their position in the arts world to join that choir and to sing out loud and clear through the making of art that refuses to toe the line. Provocative, tantalising and encouraging by turns, this important book opens out a crucially important dialogue between artists and the community as we emerge into the dangerous light of the 21st century. For anyone wary of the machinations of the art establishment that has sold its soul to big money, the book will be a clarion call to work for and to believe in the wider values of making and sharing art. Richard Noyce Writer, artist and traveller

Preaching to the Choir: Thoughts on Contemporary Printmaking

Ganson, Adelia

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Chameleon Arts & Youth Development

From its modest beginnings in the form of a 1933 pamphlet on men's tailoring, Esquire magazine has gone on to achieve incredible publishing success and cultural power. Its editors offered readers for the first time an "unholy combination" of highbrow literature by writers such as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Erskine Caldwell, the bawdy cartoons of E. Simms Campbell and Varga, and articles on upper-class men's fashion. As Hugh Merrill points out, Esquire has since not only revolutionized the magazine industry, but also become part and parcel of substantial changes in American society: attitudes about sex, men's needs, pop and "high" culture, and the exploitation of an unexplored mass market - menswear. This book chronicles the first two decades of this publishing phenomenon with a keen eye on the American cultural landscape: the stories of the men who created Esquire - Arnold Gingrich, the founding editor, and David Smart, the first publisher - their battles with censorship, the history of a now-forgotten magazine empire that included Coronet and Ken, and how Esquire's formula for success became the basis for Playboy in the 1950s and even today's New Yorker.

Esky: The Early Years at Esquire

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Rutgers Univ Pr

Hugh Merrill, the printmaker, has a dirty little secret: for many years, he has been covertly writing ... poetry. His debut book of poems, Nomadic? Rover by Days Singing These Gang Plank Songs of the Ambler, reflects the intense and unguarded energy of a vital artist and natural storyteller who has deep connections to both historic and current movements. His subject matter ranges from childhood memories of racial inequality to contemporary ideas of gender fluidity, and his absurd ditties tickle the what the fuck bone in all of us. Littered amongst the poems are moments of prose and snippets of email exchanges between Merrill and his editor. But perhaps the most dynamic aspect of this book is the inclusion of Merrill's original drawings and handwritten notes, which occupy the space around the poems: visual expansions from the poet's haptic nonce of a squirrelly soul.

Nomadic? Rover by Days Singing These Gang Plank Songs of the Ambler

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

39 West Press

Journey through a lifetime in the work of printmaker Hugh Merrill, in his words
...My work and approaches to make art have significantly changed, and yet in many ways, they have remained the same. In the past 30 years, I have worked as a community artist, producing complex arts actions both locally and internationally. I have also continued my studio work, including working on sequential etchings each year. 
The two seemingly separate modes of creativity, studio art and socially engaged art, feed and provide freedom and validity for each other. These consistent and varied interests in my life as an artist have always led me to return to that "first" etching. The advice provided by teachers and other artists, and the process I have developed over this time still seems new, deeply valid and refreshes my imagination and desire to engage in a continuing dialogue of creative discovery.
Each new generation defines the values of a discipline. When I started my work in 1968, there were two main currents in contemporary art, pop art and abstract expressionism. These two movements strongly influenced the direction a generation of print artists was taking. Always tilting the present conceptual views were artists such as: Peter Milton, Warrington Colescott, Lynne Allen, Ruth Weisberg and June Wayne. All of these people approached print from the depths of their own unique studio narrative. 
Today we hear of the Outlaws of printmaking: Tom Huck, Bill Fick, Sean Starwars, Michael Krueger, Jenny Schmid and other rambunctious print artists. To a great degree, printmakers have always followed a different drummer, filling the role of outlaws and expressing their own eccentric visions. Where will that vision go next? What new artist and discoveries will grow out of this magic discipline?

Preaching to the Choir: thoughts on contemporary printmaking

Chameleon Arts

This book is a survey of the studio and community work of Hugh Merrill from 1968 to 2011. Merrill's mantra is "I draw everyday," and he balances his role as an activist to work with amazing consistency in the privacy of his studio. His works have received numerous accolades and high recognition, including pieces in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A thread runs through his 50-year career of creating prints, drawings and paintings: his abstract and landscape forms seem to exist in a world of weightlessness, dislocation, and are inhabited by partly deteriorating structures of wood and stone.
He learned well the geometry of his mentors Al Held and Gabor Peterdi. Merrill sees mark making as the interplay of space and form shifting on the surface of the paper.

Consistent Divergencies: The Studio and Community Art of Hugh Merrill, 1969-2011

Hugh Merrill tells the story of his family's participation in the Jim Crow south, including the legal lynching of Edgar Caldwell.

Whiteout: a family of privilege

Politics & Government

Noted printmaker, activist and educator Hugh Merrill presents this volume on theories and activities for teaching Foundation at a university level in the arts. The journal presents assignments, discussions, directives, grading rubrics, and correlations to the greater art world and is accessible to both students and teachers. Full color photographs of students in studio, student work and more are included.

A Learning Journal

Study & Teaching

“The text is peppered with quotes from MacDonald on the subjects he cared most about: the environment and how to make money from the writing game. For anyone interested in the history of publishing in the paperback era, the life of John D. MacDonald is the ultimate primary source.” —Bill Ott, Booklist.

Red Hot Typewriter: The Life and Tiimes of John D. MacDonald

Stark House Press

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Books by Merrill, Hugh