Obituary: Frank MacShane

Frank MacShane, who has died aged 72, wrote resurrectionist biographies of Ford Madox Ford, Raymond Chandler, John O'Hara and James Jones between 1965 and 1985. MacShane was seeking to reclaim the reputation of writers who had once enjoyed status or sales, but had either failed to be taken seriously, or whose later careers had gone awry.

Apart from Ford, his subjects were a trio of hard-drinking, self-destructive men, troubled and unhappy in their dealings with women. And it was the women who seemed to bring coherence to MacShane as a biographer. When he wrote of Cissy Chandler, desperately trying to hide the 20-year difference in age between herself and her husband Raymond, or of Gloria Mosolino, the gorgeous, tough-talking, brash blonde who met James Jones while she was working on The Seven Year Itch as a stand-in for Marilyn Monroe, MacShane's pages come alive.

There was never a hint of Kitty Kelleyism about his work. Always reasonable, competent, decent, and earnest, one regrets the absence of malice or edge. MacShane's work was criticised for its lack of "critical acuity" and for the simplistic and platitudinous quality of his critical judgments.

MacShane grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of a journalist who became the publisher of the New York Journal-American, flagship of the Hearst newspaper chain. He graduated from Harvard in 1949, received a master's degree at Yale, and was awarded a DPhil at Oxford in 1955. He taught at McGill University in Montreal for two years, was a visiting lecturer in English at Vassar College in 1958-59, and then was appointed an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

By that time MacShane had begun his Ford biography. Though he interviewed many people who had known Ford, his is essentially a story told from published sources. Though warmly received, subsequent biographies of Ford have a stronger claim on our attention.

"If you want to know what California is like, read Raymond Chandler." MacShane received this advice not long after he moved to Berkeley. When his Chandler biography appeared in 1976, the novelist had begun to receive enthusiastic critical attention. MacShane presented him as a major writer who "rose from the blank anonymity of America". Overcoming a "tortured and lonely life," Chandler became a writer whose vision of America has grown in persuasive power. The Life Of Raymond Chandler was MacShane's book most likely to endure.

His plea to take the life and perceptions of O'Hara seriously was a harder sell. By praising O'Hara's precinct cop who picks up a phone and asks "Wukkan I do fya?" MacShane put his finger on what was least authentic in the writer's documentation of American life.

MacShane taught at Williams College from 1965-67, then went to Columbia University. There he founded the graduate writing division and taught creative writing. He published translations of Miguel Serrano, co-edited Borges On Writing, and edited two volumes of American travel writing.

He remained an enthusiastic and dedicated teacher until Alzheimer's disease ended his academic career in 1992.

He is survived by his son Nicholas.

Frank MacShane, biographer, born October 19 1927; died November 15 1999

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJqfpLi0e5FpZ2lnmpa7cH6WaKaboaSqrrO1xKxlp52nqA%3D%3D