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Elmore Leonard Reading List

Web Links to 26 Articles, Essays, Interviews, Speeches, Reviews and Videos by and about Elmore Leonard

Overview Elmore Leonard died on August 20, 2013. Like many of you I read the obits and the tributes in various newspapers and magazines and was reminded what a great writer and great personality we had lost. I was particularly struck by Mr. Leonard himself - his career, his charisma and his character. I wanted more information than the obits provided so I spent some time searching internet archives for journalism by and about Mr. Leonard. The pieces Ive selected include a link that will take the reader to the original articles as published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, Salon, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other publications and websites. The earliest articles I could find went back to 1983 and 1984. There are several pieces from the 1990s and from the early and mid-2000s. All of the articles are listed in chronological order. While all of the links make for interesting and insightful reading my favorites are Mr. Leonards famous 10 rules of writing as published in the NYT in 2001, a 3700 word review by Margaret Atwood in The New York Review of Books, a short story in The Atlantic, a 5,500 word interview at vice.com, and published at thestacks.deadspin.com is the opening line of every novel that Elmore Leonard wrote. Especially interesting I thought was Mr. Leonards acceptance speech for the 2012 Medal For Distinguished Contribution To American Letters from The National Book Foundation. Included is the video of the speech plus a pdf transcript of the speech. In these articles youll read Mr. Leonards comments about drinking, why he writes in long hand and his thought about the movies made from his books. In the videos youll enjoy his deadpan speaking style infused with humility and gentle humor. For each entry Ive listed the following information: title of the article, the author, the publication, date published, word count, the article lead and the link to the original article on the web. Simply click the link or copy and paste. In total there are over 55,000 words to read and 46 minutes of video to watch. William Escoubas williamescoubas@aol.com

Contents
Novelist Discovered After 23 Books .............................................................................................................. 4 Elmore Leonard's Rogues' Gallery ................................................................................................................ 4 AT HOME WITH: Elmore Leonard; It's No Crime To Talk Softly .................................................................... 5 Novels Are Nice, but Oh, to Be a Rock Star................................................................................................... 5 The worlds coolest crime writer has an uncanny ear for wry dialogue....................................................... 6 Keep your computer. Give me a Montblanc pen and a pad of paper. The words will follow ...................... 6 Writers On Writing; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle..................... 7 Cops and Robbers: Tishomingo Blues ........................................................................................................... 7 Elmore Leonard: high priest of low-life America - Film - The Observer ....................................................... 8 Leaving Out What Will Be Skipped ............................................................................................................... 8 Beneath Elmore Leonards Cool Exterior Lurks a Crime-Novel Mastermind ................................................ 9 Elmore Leonard Is the Man - A Nice Long Talk with the Best Crime Novelist Ever ...................................... 9 Elmore Leonard: In Rememberance ........................................................................................................... 10 Elmore Leonard: The secrets of my success ............................................................................................... 10 The Hit Man: A Profile of Elmore Leonard .................................................................................................. 11 Elmore Leonard: To have a clear head in the morning was a new feeling for me ................................... 12 Why He Writes, at 86: I Might as Well ...................................................................................................... 12 Grit on wry: A dinner with Elmore and Peter Leonard ............................................................................... 13 Ice Man ....................................................................................................................................................... 13 Elmore Leonard Acceptance Speech........................................................................................................... 14 A Novelist Who Made Crime an Art, and His Bad Guys Fun ..................................................................... 14 Michael Connelly on being under the influence of Elmore Leonard .......................................................... 15 Elmore Leonard Wrote Great Opening Lines. Here Are All Of Them.......................................................... 15 Elmore Leonard: A Man of Few, Yet Perfect, Words .................................................................................. 16 The Dutch Accent: Elmore Leonards Talk : The New Yorker ..................................................................... 16 Elmore Leonard on The Writer ................................................................................................................... 16

Novelist Discovered After 23 Books

By Herbert Mitgang New York Times October 29, 1983 991 words http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/29/books/novelist-discovered-after-23books.html?ref=elmoreleonard After writing 23 novels, Elmore Leonard has been discovered. The critics are recognizing his work - including ''LaBrava,'' his latest book - as something special, moving him out of the category of mystery-suspense writer into that of novelist. It doesn't happen too often in times such as these, when a genre classification can brand a writer for life. Hollywood, the paperback houses and book clubs are also recognizing Mr. Leonard. And the reading public is finally catching up, too. Mr. Leonard has been compared to Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald but disclaims any literary kinship. ''There's no similarity in style or subject matter,'' he says. ''I was more influenced by Hemingway, Steinbeck, John O'Hara and James Cain.''

Elmore Leonard's Rogues' Gallery

By Ben Yagoda New York Times Magazine December 30, 1984 4209 words http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/08/home/leonard-rogue.html Something odd has happened to Birmingham, Mich. Once an unprepossessing satellite 15 miles north of Detroit, Birmingham has become an upscale suburban nexus - its broad main street a collection of trendy boutiques and gourmet takeout places that would be out of place in Detroit, its outlying highways a repository for ad agencies and financial service firms. All of a sudden, it is chic. ''But,'' says Elmore Leonard as he gets out of his Saab turbo after finally finding a parking space on Woodward Avenue, ''there's not one drugstore downtown anymore.''

AT HOME WITH: Elmore Leonard; It's No Crime To Talk Softly

By Frank J. Prial New York Times February 15, 1996 1696 words http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/15/garden/at-home-with-elmore-leonard-it-s-no-crimeto-talk-softly.html?ref=elmoreleonard&pagewanted=all There's a tendency in this country to confuse appearance with reality. It's like that when you meet Elmore Leonard. He writes these tough-guy books like "Get Shorty," "Riding the Rap," "LaBrava" and "Stick." They are loaded with taut dialogue, violence and marvelous characters, inept lowlifes out to score big. But Mr. Leonard himself? A pussycat. With his innocent-looking eyes and scraggly beard, he comes down somewhere between an El Greco saint and a saintly George Carlin. An Elmore Leonard character he's not. He doesn't lurk in Miami bars or prowl Detroit's meaner streets. He doesn't consort with confidence men, retired strippers or people who deal in controlled substances.

Novels Are Nice, but Oh, to Be a Rock Star

By Fletcher Roberts New York Times March 14, 1999 1922 words http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/031499leonard-music.html Fletcher Roberts. Martin Amis says you have perfect pitch. In the opening scene of the book a character describes a band called Road Kill to Chili: "It used to be a hair band. Now they do post-metal funk with a ska kick." Whether you're talking about Alanis Morissette or Dick Dale and surf music, you really seem to know pop music. How did you immerse yourself in that world? Elmore Leonard. The first thing my researcher, Greg Sutter, and I did was visit the Rockand-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Then on to Los Angeles to talk to record company executives like Guy Oseary of Maverick, Madonna's label, and record producers like Rick Rubin and Don Was. We sat in on Don and Richie Sambora fine-tuning Richie's latest CD. We spoke to artists' managers, the artists themselves, like Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We spent a whole day with record promoters. For two hours

straight I listened to a promoter talking on the phone to his guys in the field and radio stations' program directors.

The worlds coolest crime writer has an uncanny ear for wry dialogue
By Sean Elder Salon.com Sep 28, 1999 3439 words http://www.salon.com/1999/09/28/leonard/ Everyone in Hollywood loves Elmore Leonard, at least thats what they all say. Ever since the critical and commercial success of Barry Sonnenfelds 1995 adaptation of Leonards bestseller Get Shorty, and the critical success, at least, of two other Leonard films (1997s Jackie Brown and 1998s Out of Sight), actors, producers and directors have all been taking the stand. I love Dutch, they say, using the nickname his friends all use. Read all his books all 35 of them. And given the addictive quality of Leonards tight, seamless prose and the page-turning pull of his crime stories (he wrote westerns early in his career), some of them may even be telling the truth.

Keep your computer. Give me a Montblanc pen and a pad of paper. The words will follow
By Elmore Leonard GQ.com September 2000 1632 words http://www.gq.com/entertainment/profiles/200009/elmore-leonard-how-to-write I can write anywhere. But I dont use a computer, and I could never write on a laptop. I hate the sound of computers; its too dull, like its not doing anything for you. I write longhand, then I put whatever Ive writtena few pages at a timeon the type writer as I go along. Or maybe just a single paragraph, to see what it looks like. Thats essentially why I type it up, to see what it looks like, because you cant tell what it looks like when its written down. When I started out writing Westerns, I was also working as a copywriter, doing ads for Chevrolet. I had a growing family, so I would get up at 5 A.M. and work for two hours before going to work. I did five books and thirty short stories that way. Back then I

composed on a portable typewriter, and all I was doing was x-ing out what I wrote, and it was taking forever. So I thought, Why not do it in longhand? You can cross it out on the page as you go along, keep going, and then when you finally have something you like, type it up. Ive been doing it that way since 1951.

Writers On Writing; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle
By ELMORE LEONARD New York Times July 16, 2001 1048 words http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-easy-adverbs-exclamationpoints-especially-hooptedoodle.html These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

Cops and Robbers: Tishomingo Blues

The New York Review of Books May 23, 2002 By Margaret Atwood 3700 words http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/may/23/cops-androbbers/?pagination=false Tishomingo Blues is Elmore Leonards thirty-seventh novel. At that number youd think hed be flagging, but no, the maestro is in top form. If, like Graham Greene, he were in the habit of dividing his books into novels and entertainmentswith, for instance, Pagan Babies and Cuba Libre in the former list, and Glitz, Get Shorty, and Be Cool in the latterthis one might fall on the entertainment side; but, as with Greene, those that might be consigned to the entertainment section are not necessarily of poorer quality. Those offended by what my grandmother called language, and by what used to be termed, in adventure stories, fearful oaths, and by the derogatory epithets and salacious jokes that used to pass from mouth to ear in the smoking cars of trains and now whiz to

and fro over the Internet, should avoid Tishomingo Blues. But Leonard is often and justly praised for his mastery of the demotic, and the demotic would not be itself without this kind of thing. Anyway its pretty much always apt: each character speaks in character. Heres one of the more villainous heavies:

Elmore Leonard: high priest of low-life America - Film - The Observer

theguardian.com By Tim Adams January 25, 2003 2257 words http://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/jan/26/crime.elmoreleonard Elmore Leonard is Detroits original white rapper; hes been talking the talk for 50 years. He lives some way beyond Eminems 8 Mile, in a suburban neo-Georgian mansion. Before Ive sat down in his study, from which he looks out on his snow-covered tennis court and his swimming pool, hes telling me the opening to his thirty-eighth novel. Two women, he says. Chloe is a call girl, very expensive. Shes persuaded Kelly, a Victorias Secret model, to come with her to visit this 84-year-old guy, an ex-lawyer who is paying her $5,000 a week to be his girlfriend. Chloe usually gets more, but this is a kind of sabbatical. When the old guy dies, he is going to leave her a lot of money, not in his will, but through this middle man, Montez Taylor. Montez is his walking around guy. Montez and Kelly go upstairs to watch a porno movie and two guys burst in to the house and shoot dead the old man and Chloe. So Montez is in a fix to get his share of the money; he hits on the idea of Kelly pretending she is her dead friend.

Leaving Out What Will Be Skipped

By David Carr New York Times May 12, 2005 1278 words http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/books/12leon.html?ref=elmoreleonard&pagewanted =all DETROIT, May 9 - Elmore Leonard is about talked out. The stories about the craft of America's premier crime novelist have become clichs waiting their turn. So why not get the hooptedoodle, as Mr. Leonard calls "the part that readers tend to skip," out of the way? He writes seven days a week in the living room of a nice house in

the suburbs here with a No. 5 Pilot Pen on unlined yellow paper. He does not use e-mail or a computer. He types the handwritten pages on an I.B.M. Selectric, which occasionally breaks down from daily exertion. "There's one name in the phonebook who repairs typewriters," Mr. Leonard said, adding, "he says he can live on $6,000 a year. He lives in a trailer park."

Beneath Elmore Leonards Cool Exterior Lurks a Crime-Novel Mastermind

By Neely Tucker Washington Post Tuesday, May 27, 2008 3146 words http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/05/26/AR2008052602219.html BLOOMFIELD VILLAGE, Mich. Dutch Leonard, standing over by the typewriter. Hes saying to Christine in this loud voice, Christine! Calling up the stairs. Theyre going to be late for dinner. Christine used to be the gardener. Now shes the missus. Dutch and Christine Lelich know a lot about life, which is one reason its good. Even when bad things happen they understand that its just the way it is sometimes; theyre at that stage. Like, they got cleaned out the other day, while they were down at the other house in Palm Beach, Fla. About $15,000 worth of stuff. It was no big mystery. The thieves used a key. Took jewelry, clothes, Christine's unmentionables. Left the electronics. Who are the cops going to think did it, two guys with a U-Haul and a panty fetish? It was the maids. They fired the maids.

Elmore Leonard Is the Man - A Nice Long Talk with the Best Crime Novelist Ever
By Jesse Pearson vice.com June 2, 2009 5509 words http://www.vice.com/read/elmore-leonard-is-the-man-894-v16n6

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We wont waste much time on an intro here because you should already know who this guy is. Lets just say this: Elmore Leonard, now going on 84 years old, is still cranking out perfectly detailed, thrilling, and hilarious stories of criminals at a pace thats hard to believe. He writes dialogue so well youd think its transcribed from real conversations, and he knows more about how to craft a living, breathing character out of thin air than God (or any other higher powermore on that later). We recently sat with him in his hotel room in midtown New York City, where he was taking a short break from the tour to promote Road Dogs, his new novel. It brings together three previously existing Leonard charactersJack Foley, Cundo Rey, and Dawn Navarroin typically powder-keg fashion in Venice Beach, California. As with everything hes done, its compulsively readable and 100 percent entertaining.

Elmore Leonard: In Rememberance

The Barnes & Noble Review Reprint of 2009 Interview with BNR Editor-in-Chief James Mustich 4963 words http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Interview/Elmore-Leonard-InRememberance/ba-p/11147 In tribute to a life of crafting superb books, we offer a look back at Leonards 2009 interview with BNR Editor-in-Chief James Mustich. What follows is a fascinating look at Leonards process, and the fondly remembered voice of a genre-defining author. The Editors On May 12, Leonards newest book, Road Dogs, was published, and I headed uptown to meet him in the Manhattan office of his publisher, William Morrow. I introduced myself when we bumped into each other at the security desk on the ground floor, and our acquaintance was well along by the time we got into the elevator and ascended to a conference room for an hour-long chat. Despite the fact that he had flown in from his home in Detroit the day before, spent the evening at a jazz club and the morning in the studio with Don Imus and company, the 83-year-old Leonard looked sharp he was dressed in crisp jeans and a well-cut beige blazer and exuded a merry alertness. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Elmore Leonard: The secrets of my success

dailymail.co.uk By Lina Das

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1 May 2010 1241 words http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1270004/Elmore-Leonard-Thesecrets-success.html Stick with it. Ive stayed with it for over 50 years and its paid off, said Elmore Leonard Dubbed the Dickens of Detroit by Martin Amis, Elmore Leonard is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest crime fiction writers of all time. After serving with the U.S. Navy during World War II and going on to become an ad agency copywriter, Leonard turned to writing full-time and at 84 has over 40 novels to his name. Many of his stories, such as Get Shorty, 3:10 To Yuma and Out Of Sight, have been turned into films and the latest offering to hit our screens is the TV series Justified, which has aired in the U.S. to rave reviews.

The Hit Man: A Profile of Elmore Leonard

publishersweekly.com By Jonathan Segura Nov 12, 2010 1346 words http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/45152-thehit-man-a-profile-of-elmore-leonard.html Elmore Leonard is the coolest man in America. He just turned 85, still smokes, likes Mad Men, thinks Stieg Larssons books are boring, and couldnt care less about social networking. Ask him about e-books and you cant finish the question before he answers: dont know, dont care. I did two interviews last week, both of them started with a digital question. I said, Wait. I write my books longhand. Long pause. I think I cut out two-thirds of their questions. Leonards been writing longhand for 60 years. Before his writing earned enough to keep him and his wife afloat, he worked in advertising in Detroit, pulling down $125 a month until Truman increased the minimum wage in 1949, giving Leonard a $10 bump. So it wasnt quite like Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce for young Leonard, banging out copy for Chevrolet ads.

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Elmore Leonard: To have a clear head in the morning was a new feeling for me
independent.co.uk Interview by Adam Jacques May 15, 2011 651 words http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/elmore-leonardto-have-a-clear-head-in-the-morning-was-a-new-feeling-for-me-2282491.html The biggest thrill of my life was selling my first novelette It was a Western for Argosy magazine in 1951, called Trail of the Apaches. Id done a lot of research about the Apache Indians in the 1880s and they seemed like ruthless individuals out to raise hell, which fascinated me. I got paid $1,000 for it and I thought, wow, Im going to quit my job in advertising, which I hated. The westerns on American TV in the 1960s were based on stuff that never happened There were 32 Westerns on in 1960, but they all had the same ending of two guys meeting in the street and shooting at each other. It was done over and over, and it was so dumb; it never even took place. I decided to switch over to writing about crime.

Why He Writes, at 86: I Might as Well

The Wall Street Journal By Alexandra Alter January 13, 2012 1079 words http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577155180069629066.htm l The writers for the TV show Justified have blue wristbands that say WWED: What Would Elmore Do? Its just one of the ways that veteran crime writer Elmore Leonard, 86, looms large on the set of Justified, the FX series starring his exceedingly courteous but trigger-happy character, U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. Writers for the show consult his novels to study their dialogue and tone. Mr. Leonard suggests plot developments. Elmore Leonard says Timothy Olyphant of Justified plays Raylan Givens, exactly the way I wrote himexcept for the hat.

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Grit on wry: A dinner with Elmore and Peter Leonard

CNN.com by Ann O'Neill April 6, 2012 2607 words http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/01/living/elmore-leonard-dinner Birmingham, Michigan (CNN) People who write about crime for a living have a curious appetite when it comes to dinner conversation. As they pass the potatoes, they dwell on the unsavory details of hookers and pimps, junkies and bookies, crime scenes and corpses. An invitation to dine with novelists Elmore and Peter Leonard promised healthy servings of grit on wry and a rare opportunity to learn how these masters of crime fiction spin it into gold. Oh, the stories they told. Peter talked about the first crime scene he witnessed while shadowing Detroits homicide cops: The death car shattered windshield, blood-spattered seats, scattered bullet casings was still there. But the driver was gone, already on the way to his maker. In his place, propped upright on the drivers seat, the cops left an empty down vest. When it was Elmores turn his tale had a twist, as most of his stories do. A photographer in Florida borrowed a wheelchair and headed to the beach to snap pictures. So a guy walks up and says Hey, you got a camera? Let me see it. He says, I think Ill take this, and walks away. And the guy gets out of the wheelchair, bangs him on the cement and thats that, see?

Ice Man
By Elmore Leonard Includes 5.16 minute video: Elmore Leonard talks with Atlantic contributing editor James Parker about bad movies and good writing. The Atlantic Fiction July/August 2012 2,268 words http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/ice-man/309005/ The day Victor turned twenty he rode three bulls, big ones, a good 1,800 pounds each Cyclone, Spanish Fly, and Bulldozerrode all their bucks and twists, Victors free hand waving the air until the buzzer honked at eight seconds for each ride, not one of the bulls able to throw him. He rolled off their rumps, stumbled, keeping his feet, and walked to the gate not bothering to look at the bulls, see if they still wanted to kill him. He won Top

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Bull Rider, 4,000 dollars and a new saddle at the All-Indian National Rodeo in Palm Springs. It came to Jesus, like 200 dollars a second. That afternoon Victorio Colorado, the name he went by in the program, was the man. He left the rodeo grounds as Victor to celebrate with two Mojave boys, Nachee and Billy Cosa, brought along from Arizona when the boss, Kyle McCoy, moved his business to Indio, near Palm Springs. The Mojave boys handled Kyles fighting bulls, bringing them from the pens to the chute where Victor, a Mimbreo Apache, would slip aboard from the fence, wrap his hand in the bull rope tight as he could get it, and believe he was ready to ride. Hed take a breath, say Let me out of here, and the gate would swing open and a ton of pissed-off bull would come flying out.

Elmore Leonard Acceptance Speech

By Elmore Leonard The National Book Foundation - 2012 Medal For Distinguished Contribution To American Letters November 14, 2012 932 words 15.39 minute video http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters_2012_leonard_speech.pdf http://observer.com/2013/08/remembering-writer-elmore-leonard-video/ But the review I think of as the most stimulating, if not a realistic appraisal of my work, comes from New Musical Express, London who called me "the poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers."

A Novelist Who Made Crime an Art, and His Bad Guys Fun
By Marilyn Stasio New York Times August 20, 2013 1898 words http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/books/elmore-leonard-master-of-crime-fiction-diesat-87.html?ref=elmoreleonard
Elmore Leonard, the prolific crime novelist whose louche characters, deadpan dialogue and immaculate prose style in novels like Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky and Glitz

established him as a modern master of American genre writing, died on Tuesday at his home in Bloomfield Township, Mich. He was 87. His death was announced on his Web site.

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To his admiring peers, Mr. Leonard did more than merely validate the popular crime thriller; he stripped the form of its worn-out affectations, reinventing it for a new generation and lifting it to a higher literary shelf.

Michael Connelly on being under the influence of Elmore Leonard

By Michael Connelly Los Angeles Times August 21, 2013 817 words http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-elmore-leonard-appreciation20130821,0,1800522.story I never wanted to be Raymond Chandler. I wanted to be Philip Marlowe. I never wanted to be Ross Macdonald. I wanted to be Lew Archer. Elmore Leonard was the only author I ever wanted to be. Leonard outsized his characters with his easy charm, sardonic humor and seen-it-all-before eyes. When it came to books, Elmore Leonard was the king of cool. Who wouldnt want to be him?

Elmore Leonard Wrote Great Opening Lines. Here Are All Of Them
By Alex Belth thestacks.deadspin.com August 21, 2013 1601 words http://thestacks.deadspin.com/elmore-leonard-wrote-great-opening-lines-here-areall-1178066970 "Dave Flynn stretched his boots over the footrest and his body eased lower into the barber chair."The Bounty Hunters (1953) "At times during the morning, he would think of the man named Kirby Frye."The Law At Randado (1954) "Karla hesitated in the doorway of the adobe, then pushed open the screen door and came out into the sunlight as she heard again the faint, faraway sound of the wagon; and now she looked off toward the stand of willows that formed a windbreak along the north side of the yard, her eyes half closed in the sun glare and not moving from the motionless line of trees."Escape From Five Shadows (1956) "Paul Cable sat hunched forward at the edge of the pine shade, his boots crossed and his elbows supported on his knees."Last Stand At Saber River (1959)

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Elmore Leonard: A Man of Few, Yet Perfect, Words

By Janet Maslin New York Times August 21, 2013 879 words http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/books/elmore-leonard-a-man-of-few-yet-perfectwords.html?ref=elmoreleonard When Freaky Deaky came out in 1988, Elmore Leonards writing credo hadnt quite kicked in yet. Though he would later deliver 10 great rules for writing with streamlined tough-guy elegance, the dedication for Freaky Deaky thanked his wife for giving him a certain look when I write too many words.

The Dutch Accent: Elmore Leonards Talk : The New Yorker

The New Yorker By Anthony Lane August 22, 2013 2036 words http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/08/the-dutch-accent-elmoreleonards-talk.html Elmore Leonard, who died on Monday, at the age of eighty-seven, was hailed as one of the best crime writers in the land. High praise, but not quite high enough, and some way off the mark. He was one of the best writers, and he happened to write about crime. Even that is not entirely accurate. Its true that his novels (more than forty of them, with another left unfinished at his death) enjoyed the company of criminals and of those who tried to stop them in their tracks. This was seldom hard, since, as Leonard delighted in showing us, crimemore than anything, even politicsallows men of all ages to disport themselves across the full range of human ineptitude. Boy, do they screw up.

Elmore Leonard on The Writer

An episode of the New York State Writers Institute's TV program: The Writer featuring Elmore Leonard 26.55 minute video Published on Sep 4, 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOPDVQNmOMs