Elmore Leonard? Get Real!

[Charles Albert]

Would second the Dog rec, which I recently read in tribute to plist portis
enthusiast, malignd.......its meta-narrative became easier to discern after
reading the fanboy notes included with the most recent edition.

For memorable renderings of losers I recommend Iceberg Slim's PIMP......for
a guy not likely steeped in the classics, he has a way with simile.

love,
cfa
On Feb 2, 2012 4:47 PM, "jochen stremmel" <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Thriller type genre novels are too full of male cliches. Strong men,
> protectors of the weak, which often means vulnerable women, gallant
> followers of the code, self sacrificing, winners."
>
> That's not true in Leonard's case as well. Perhaps you have seen
> Tarantino's Jackie Brown (his best movie in my eyes) after Leonard's
> Rum Punch. But perhaps you should begin with The Switch, surely
> available on Kindle.
>
> And if you like losers I recommend, not for the first time here, The
> Dog of the South.
>
>
> 2012/2/2 Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>:
> > On 2/2/2012 2:54 PM, jochen stremmel wrote:
> >>
> >> Leonard ain't no mystery writer!
> >>
> >> And only half Simenon's output are mysteries. Not the better half. And
> >> whoever wants to put Simenon down should read La Marie du Port.
> >
> >
> > Thriller type genre novels are too full of male cliches. Strong men,
> > protectors of the weak, which often means vulnerable women, gallant
> > followers of the code, self sacrificing, winners.
> >
> > I prefer to read about "losers," guys (or women)  who may feel locked in
> by,
> > say,  marriage, family, relationships,  parenthood--people generally
> without
> > much ambition or energy but still very worthwhile.
> >
> > There's a continuous flow of literary novels--some a lot better than
> > others--that satisfy my fussy reading preferences, which is why I can't
> take
> > much interest in singling out America' greatest novelists. For me a
> novelist
> > is great if he or she has a book out that I haven't read yet.
> >
> > Also it has to be available on Kindle.
> >
> > P
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> 12/2/2 Ian Livingston<igrlivingston at gmail.com>:
> >>>>
> >>>> P.S. If someone said I could take the collected works of only one
> >>>> mystery
> >>>> genre writer when I was abandoned on a desert island, I think I would
> >>>> choose Simenon.
> >>>
> >>> I think I'd rather drown. Mysteries are nice, light reading, in which
> >>> the unknown becomes somehow known according to minimalist rules. The
> >>> real complexities at work in the daily lives, much more the lives of
> >>> adventure, get reduced to the meanest of actions complicated merely by
> >>> deception, whereas the human mind seeks constantly to reconstruct a
> >>> working model of a world in such rapid transition knowledge of fact
> >>> becomes nigh impossible. THAT mystery will not be solved by linear
> >>> progress, certainly, if it can ever be satisfactorily rectified by any
> >>> means at all.
> >>>
> >>> And it is the wallow of that intellectual swale that puts Pynchon,
> >>> occasionally McCarthy, Murakami, and a sampling of others out ahead of
> >>> Leonard and other mystery writers.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com>
>  wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Jochen,
> >>>>
> >>>> Grass came to mind in the early morning because he won a Nobel and his
> >>>> books
> >>>> were published well in America.
> >>>> I want to read more of him, but I threw him out as a placeholding
> >>>> question
> >>>> mark for WHOEVER international
> >>>> writers our plisters might rate top of the pops...fill it in....
> >>>>
> >>>> And, as I indicated, I am lightly read in Leonard for no better reason
> >>>> than
> >>>> that there are so many good writers, so many
> >>>> good books and I am a slow, albeit voracious, reader.
> >>>>
> >>>> So, refute away. No one has yet argued against my seeing a bit of a
> >>>> shell
> >>>> game at work in the essay-writer,m not Leonard
> >>>>
> >>>> P.S. If someone said I could take the collected works of only one
> >>>> mystery
> >>>> genre writer when I was abandoned on a desert island, I think I would
> >>>> choose Simenon. I'd get a whole society, ala Balzac in the 20th
> Century.
> >>>> (Unless I was allowed Proust too as non-genre. Then I don't know
> >>>> who I'd choose.)
> >>>>
> >>>> From: jochen stremmel<jstremmel at gmail.com>
> >>>> To: Carvill John<johncarvill at hotmail.com>
> >>>> Cc:igrlivingston at gmail.com;pynchon-l at waste.org
> >>>> Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 10:03 AM
> >>>> Subject: Re: Elmore Leonard? Get Real!
> >>>>
> >>>> What do you think is Chandler's best novel? The Long Goodbye? Compare
> >>>> it with the Maltese Falcon. It reconfirms a lot of important things
> >>>> about life in the USA: The business of USAmerica is business; romance
> >>>> is a worthwile delusion; it's hazardous to sleep with your partner's
> >>>> wife; women who engage in serial relationships will lie to you when
> >>>> the truth would do them more good; existentialism is a practical
> >>>> philosophy for urban males to follow; and if a man develops a
> >>>> professional attitude towards his work, he will probably succeed where
> >>>> others fail.
> >>>>
> >>>> And try to find the point of view in The Maltese Falcon and The Glass
> >>>> Key.
> >>>>
> >>>> And Mark, would you be so kind and tell me what you have read from
> >>>> Leonard? And what from Grass?
> >>>>
> >>>> J
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> 2012/2/2 Carvill John<johncarvill at hotmail.com>:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> That piece about Leonard is great, thanks John. He's better than
> >>>>> Chandler, leaner, not as sentimental. Perhaps not better than
> Hammett.
> >>>>> (Leonard himself said, Willeford wrote the best crime novels.)Yeah,
> >>>>> I've
> >>>>> ecnountered this line of thinking before - that Hammett is better
> than
> >>>>> Chandler. Never could understand it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> >>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> >>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> >>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> >>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
> >
> >
> >
>
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