#5 Elmore Leonard...(Top 10 Crime Fiction Writer Series)

Elmore Leonard invented a whole new kind of cool.  Before Leonard cool guys didn’t know they were cool. In fact, they couldn’t know they were cool.  The tough guys, the hombres, the gunslingers were what they were…unafraid, laconic, slow talking. 

There was absolutely nothing posed, nothing practiced, nothing self-aware.  You couldn’t try and be cool…it had to happen like a river flowing or you missed it. But not Elmore’s guys. They were always watching themselves in the mirror, listening to themselves, imagining themselves. The hat wasn’t cocked over one eye by chance – it had been set to just the right angle before stepping out of the car.   That throwaway line may have sounded improvised but they were ready - you don’t turn on that pitch if you aren’t waiting for it.

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As soon as Jack turned onto Camp Street he saw the white Cadillac stretch limo in front of the soup kitchen.
Right away he tried to think of a clever a line, a quick offhand comment. He would have said to Helene the first thing that came to mind: “Boy, you must really look good.” For Lucy he’d try a little harder.

This was a whole new cool and put the lie to all that had come before – once you saw it, it was obvious - there was no way to be that cool without trying.  The best you could do was not look like you were trying.  Cool Hand Luke?  That grin ain’t born, it’s learned.  Dirty Harry? Please. Nobody comes up with those lines when they’re in the middle of it.  The Man With No Name?  You don’t wear that poncho unless you’re sure it hangs right.  Humphry Bogart – you learn to hotbox a smoke like that watching yourself in the rearview.  You think Steve McQueen didn’t know what he was doing – that fucker was in the mirror every step of his life.  James Brown, the young Jacko, Prince?  Those moves may start in the heart and gut but they finish shiv-sharp and stovepipe-tight in reflection.  Cool is learned and earned not born and bred.  I haven’t kept track of who’s cool this century but all I know for sure, and I learned it from Leonard, is…they’re practicing.

Yeah, Leonard was a master of all the things that get talked about – dialogue, memorable characters, feral dog-thin prose but I’ll remember him for changing cool.

The other thing that stands out for me is that his characters are trapped in the swirl of the world just like the rest of us- random chance has free rein. Unexpected events happen in Leonard’s books and they don’t feel like plot devices…they feel like life - things never go quite as planned and you have to roll with it. Winning or losing, catching or eluding love, scott-free or hung-up, and yeah, dead or alive can depend on when the light changes.  For most writers events drive the plot but for Leonard shit just happens.
He also wrote some great opening lines.

The night Vincent was shot he saw it coming.
Not quite as good but not bad.

Every time they got a call from the leper hospital to pick up a body Jack Delaney would feel himself coming down with the flu or something.

But there’s a piece missing in Leonard. The problem with cool is that it’s a little bit superficial - sparkle and blam. There just isn’t enough at stake.  Not for the characters – I’m sure the body count in Leonard’s books is way higher than for Burke, Bruen or Pelecanos – but for Leonard.  It feels at times like this is shtick…great shtick, a Bourbon Street, Snake Canyon, Iggy Pop kind of shtick but shtick just the same.  For Burke and Bruen and Pelecanos, every book’s a prayer, a plea, a whispered supplication that their scribbled words can save or bless or transcend their lives.  These men are priests even if they don’t believe in God. Leonard’s a nightclub entertainer, a blackjack dealer, a slick, charming, sleight-of-hand artist.  When I read Burke and Bruen and Pelecanos it feels like something of themselves has been exposed by the words on the page…that their books reveal them.  I have read almost every book that Elmore Leonard has written and he remains a stranger.

Elmore Leonard is always smirking.  That sets him apart from many crime fiction writers.  I don’t mean that crime fiction is never funny but it’s usually gallows humour – Ken Bruen’s characters say their funniest things just before they get shot, stabbed or take the drink that will grease their skids.  Elmore just isn’t that heavy.  Leonard’s guys and gals are almost always finding the whole thing just a little bit funny – not funny enough to laugh out loud but funny enough that it’s hard to keep a straight face.  Even when they know they should. 

Do I get a car?”
“Of course.”
“I have to wear a regular suit?”
“I’ll help you pick some out.” Giving him a nice smile.
“Where do I live?”
‘Wherever you want. Longpoint’s nice.  We’ll find you something nice.”
“You’re not going to keep me in an apartment?”
She wasn’t smiling now. “That’s uncalled for.”
“How many times a week do I have to go to bed with you?”
He thought she was going to throw her cognac at him, or try; but she didn’t.  …As she started to leave he said, “Nancy?”
“What?”
“Do I still get comped for the suite?”

The strange thing is that I think this works against Leonard a little bit.  Because what’s the opposite of heavy?  The smirking often makes it feel like there’s not that much at stake…that we’re all here for a short while and gone for a long time and the fat man taking one between the eyes just before he gets to dig into his linguini with clams is one in a long string of cosmic punch lines.  And maybe Leonard’s right, maybe it’s what we do - try to impose substance on our featherweight lives and assuming that there’s more than a lost moment at stake, that anything we do or say can be profound,  reverberate through time, be anything more than infinitely transient, is just hubris.  But the writers who serve that conceit feed me in a way that Leonard doesn’t.

Leonard’s books rarely move me – they thrill me, entertain me, amuse me – but they rarely move me. Elmore Leonard was writing Last Train To Clarksville, Cruel to Be Kind, Blitzkrieg Bop – pop gems that gleam, sparkle, shine, summer tunes from the open window of a ‘67 Mustang, in the wind, touching down for a slow blink, skin deep and gone.  Burke is writing Thunder Road, Pelecanos - A Change is Gonna Come and Bruen – Positively 4th Street…they’re writing game changers, tunes that burrow in bone-deep and body-wide, stories that leave a mark and sometimes a scar.  It’s hard to imagine a writer this good could be overrated but…

And one last thing, Leonard wrote “if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”  This is the kind of bullshit his own characters would sneer at if they overheard it.  If they caught themselves saying it they would be a little embarrassed.   It’s pretension disguised as pithy.  It sounds wise but it means nothing.   Books are writing.  In fact, they’re only writing. There's only one thing they can sound like...writing. If he meant that ’If the writing sounds fake, I rewrite it.”  OK.  But if that’s what he meant, it’s either trivial or close enough to be caddying for it.   This sounds like what a guy says as he watches himself being interviewed.  So, even when he’s full of shit he’s still Leonard.
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