Editing MacKinlay Kantor (section)

===Stories, journalism, and novels===
From 1928 to 1934, Kantor wrote numerous stories for [[Pulp magazine|pulp fiction]] magazines, to earn a living and support his family; these works included crime stories and mysteries. He sold his first pulp stories, "Delivery Not Received" and "A Bad Night for Benny", to Edwin Baird, editor of ''Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories''. He also wrote for ''Detective Fiction Weekly''.<ref name=Apostolou /> In 1928, Kantor published his first novel, ''Diversey'', set in [[Chicago, Illinois]].

In 1932, Kantor moved with his family from the Midwest to [[New Jersey]], in the New York metropolitan area.<ref name=Apostolou/> He was an early resident of [[Free Acres, New Jersey|Free Acres]], a social experimental community developed by activist [[Bolton Hall (activist)|Bolton Hall]] in [[Berkeley Heights, New Jersey]].<ref>{{cite news|author=Buchan, Perdita|url=http://njmonthly.com/articles/towns_and_schools/bestplacestolive/utopia-nj.html |title=Utopia, NJ|work=[[New Jersey Monthly]]|date= February 7, 2008|access-date= February 27, 2011}} "Free Acres had some famous residents in those heady early days: actors [[James Cagney]] and Jersey City–born [[Victor Kilian]], writers [[Thorne Smith]] (Topper) and MacKinlay Kantor (Andersonville), and anarchist [[Harry Kelly (anarchist)|Harry Kelly]], who helped found the Ferrer Modern School, centerpiece of the anarchist colony at Stelton in present-day Piscataway."</ref> In two years, he sold 16 short stories and a serialized novel to Howard Bloomfield, editor of ''Detective Fiction Weekly''. He also acquired a professional agent, Sydney Sanders.

Achieving some success by 1934, Kantor began to submit short stories to the "slick magazines" ([[magazine|glossies]]).  His "Rogue's Gallery", published in ''[[Collier's Weekly|Collier]]'' on August 24, 1935, became his most frequently reprinted story.{{citation needed|date=November 2015}}

It was during this decade that Kantor first wrote about the [[American Civil War]], beginning with his novel ''Long Remember'' (1934), set at the [[Battle of Gettysburg]].  As a boy and teenager in Iowa, Kantor had spent hours listening to the stories of Civil War veterans, and he was an avid collector of first-hand narratives. His work was also part of the [[Art competitions at the 1936 Summer Olympics#Literature|literature event]] in the [[Art competitions at the 1936 Summer Olympics|art competition]] at the [[1936 Summer Olympics]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/921544 |title=MacKinlay Kantor |work=Olympedia |access-date=12 August 2020}}</ref>

During [[World War II]], Kantor reported from [[London]] as a [[war correspondent]] for a Los Angeles newspaper. After flying with some bombing missions, he asked for and received training to operate the bomber's turret machine guns, although he was not in service and this violated regulations.{{citation needed|date=July 2017}} Kantor interviewed numerous wounded troops, whose thoughts and ideas inspired a later novel of his.{{which|date=November 2015}}

When Kantor interviewed U.S. troops, many told him the only goal was to get home alive.  He was reminded of the [[Glory Song|Protestant hymn]]: "When all my labors and trials are o'er / And I am safe on that beautiful shore [Heaven], O that will be / Glory for me!" Kantor returned from the European theater of war on military air transport (MAT). After the war, the producer [[Samuel Goldwyn]] commissioned him to write a [[screenplay]] about veterans returning home.<ref>{{cite book |last=Orriss |first=Bruce |title=When Hollywood Ruled the Skies: The Aviation Film Classics of World War II |location= Hawthorn, California |publisher= Aero Associates Inc. |date=1984 |page= 119 |isbn=9780961308803 |oclc=11709474}} No online access.</ref> Kantor wrote a novel in [[blank verse]], which was published as ''[[Glory for Me]]'' (1945).<ref>{{cite book |title=The Search for Sam Goldwyn |first=Carol |last=Easton |others=Carl Rollyson (contributor) |publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi |date=2014 |isbn=9781626741324 |chapter=The Best Years |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AfkaBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT158 |quote=Andrews looked at the onionskin pages and asked, 'Mac, why did you write this in blank verse?' 'Dana', said Kantor with a wry smile, 'I can't afford to write in blank verse, because nobody buys anything written in blank verse. But when Sam asked me to write this story, he didn't tell me not to write it in blank verse!'}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://emanuellevy.com/review/oscar-history-best-picture-best-years-of-our-lives-1946/ |title=Oscar History: Best Picture–Best Years of Our Lives (1946) |last=Levy |first=Emanuel |author-link=Emanuel Levy |date=April 4, 2015 |format=review |work=Emanuel Levy: Cinema 24/7 |access-date=2017-01-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170118050301/http://emanuellevy.com/review/oscar-history-best-picture-best-years-of-our-lives-1946/ |archive-date=January 18, 2017 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref>  After selling the movie rights to his novel, Kantor was disappointed that the film was released under the title ''[[The Best Years of Our Lives]]'' (1946), and that details of the story had been changed by the screenwriter [[Robert E. Sherwood|Robert Sherwood]]. Kantor was said to have lost his temper with Goldwyn and walked off the Hollywood lot.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}} The first 15 seconds of the movie note that it is "based upon a novel by MacKinlay Kantor", but the novel's title is not given. The film was a commercial and critical success, winning seven [[Academy Awards]].

Beginning in 1948, Kantor arranged an intensive period of research with the [[New York City Police Department]] (NYCPD). He was the only civilian other than reporters allowed to ride with police on their beat. He often rode on night shifts, working with the 23rd Precinct, whose territory ranged from upper [[Park Avenue]] to [[East Harlem]], comprising a wide range of residents and incomes. These experiences informed most of his short crime novels, as well as his major work ''Signal Thirty-Two'', published in 1950 with jacket art by his wife Irene Layne Kantor.<ref name=Apostolou />

Also in 1950 Kantor took up research into the post-war life of a war widow.  In discussions with the chaplain at Mitchel Field, Kantor was referred to Margaret Stavish of Bellmore, New York, who had lost her [[Consolidated B-24 Liberator|B-24]] pilot husband, Edward Dobson, killed in action on November 18, 1943, and in 1947 married John Stavish, a veteran of the Pacific theater.  Kantor then published their story, "V-J Day Plus Five Years," in the August 1950 issue of Redbook Magazine. 

Kantor was noted for his limited use of punctuation within his literary compositions. He was known for a lack of quotation marks and was influential in this regard on [[Cormac McCarthy]], who said that Kantor was the first writer he encountered who left them out.<ref>{{Cite web|title = Cormac McCarthy's Three Punctuation Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce|url = http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/cormac-mccarthys-punctuation-rules.html|access-date = 2015-09-29}}</ref> Kantor was one of three primary influences on McCarthy's adopting his unique style.<ref>{{cite web |year=2007 |title=interview |url=http://www.oprah.com/index |work=[[The Oprah Winfrey Show]] |first=Cormac |last=McCarthy |access-date=2008-11-13}}</ref>

During his assignment with the U.S. troops in World War II, Kantor entered the [[Buchenwald concentration camp]] as they liberated it on April 14, 1945. During the next decade, that experience informed his research for and writing of ''[[Andersonville (novel)|Andersonville]]'' (1955), his novel about the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] [[prisoner of war]] [[Andersonville National Historic Site|camp]]. One of the problems he struggled with in Germany and afterward was how to think of the civilians who lived near Buchenwald. As he struggled to understand, he developed ideas which he expressed in his novel, where he portrayed some civilian Southerners sympathetically, in contrast to officers at the camp.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04142005-121818/unrestricted/Smithpeters_dis.pdf|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060219083726/http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04142005-121818/unrestricted/Smithpeters_dis.pdf|url-status= dead|archive-date= February 19, 2006|title= "To the Latest Generation": Cold War and Post Cold War U.S. Civil War Novels in Their Social Context|author= Smithpeters, Jeffrey Neal|year= 2005|format= PhD. Dissertation, Louisiana State University|pages= 14–15|access-date= June 27, 2010}}</ref> He won the [[Pulitzer Prize]] in 1956 for ''Andersonville''.

In writing more than 30 novels, Kantor often returned to the theme of the American Civil War. He wrote two works for young readers set in the Civil War years: ''Lee and Grant at Appomattox'' (1950) and ''Gettysburg'' (1952).

In the November 22, 1960, issue of ''[[Look (American magazine)|Look]]'' magazine, Kantor published a fictional account set as a history text, titled ''[[If the South Had Won the Civil War]]''. This generated such a response that it was published in 1961 as a book. It is one of many [[alternate history|alternate histories]] [[American Civil War alternate histories|of that war]].

Kantor's last novel was ''Valley Forge'' (1975).<ref name=DML />