Michael M. McDowell Papers

The Michael M. McDowell Papers record the life and career of a writer who excelled in academic performance at Harvard University and Brandeis University and discovered along the way a passion for creating popular fiction for mass audiences and dramatic productions for television and the movies.

The correspondence series offers a glimpse into McDowell's family background, his friendships, personal and professional life. Especially significant is his own correspondence in which he records his thoughts when writing to family, friends and colleagues. The correspondence with his immediate family - his father in particular - contains the most detail about McDowell's financial struggles, building a life for himself in Boston, his collecting interests and sharing his success via publicity and copies of his books sent home once he became a published author.

Another portion of the correspondence reflects McDowell's activism. A 1969 letter describing his attendance at an anti-Viet Nam War protest in Washington D.C. indicates a strong social conscience. Other letters, sent to such Massachusetts legislators as Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Paul E. Tsongas, and the Honorable Thomas "Tip" O'Neill Jr., contain his views on the 1970's energy crisis, sex discrimination, federal support for the arts and a variety of concerns. McDowell's letters written between 1994 and 1999 to medical providers and tax collectors are a vivid account of his life with AIDS.

Other correspondence can be found arranged by various names, subjects and by titles of his writing projects. These document the evolution of his writing and academic pursuits as well as his vast circle of professional associates, fellow authors and friends.

The manuscript series contain class files, dissertation, novel manuscripts, dramatic production manuscripts, synopses, notes, a journal, some shorter works and a few manuscripts by other authors who were working with him on projects. Researchers interested in McDowell's early writing and his evolution toward novelist and screenwriter might wish to examine the class files with their research papers, notes as well as other evidence of scholarly interests that may have shaped his future career. Also included are instructional materials and notes for classes which he taught later in life, most notably, script writing courses. The journal kept for about a year in 1985-1986 concentrates primarily on his writing regimen, social life and details of putting together the screenplay and production of the movie Beetlejuice.

The unpublished manuscripts include a 1978 novel called Blood and Glitter for which there is correspondence and some discussion of this early example of McDowell's gay-themed fiction. In the 1980's McDowell and Dennis Schuetz wrote a series of successful mysteries under the pseudonym, Nathan Aldyne, featuring gay detective, Daniel Valentine and his female sidekick, Clarisse Lovelace.

There are no novel manuscripts in the collection written by McDowell and John Preston under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray and Preston Macadam.

The collection includes 10 boxes of unprocessed additions that will be added to the inventory in the future.