Elmore Leonard? Get Real!

[Mark Kohut]

elmoreleonard Elmore Leonard 
#justifiedfx#books#novelsRead a great non-fiction piece that Elmore wrote in 1978, Squad 7 - Impressions of Murder 


From: Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> 
Cc: jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>; Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>; Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>; "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 8:06 PM
Subject: Re: Elmore Leonard? Get Real!


In this category of highly readable losers, Fred Exley's "A Fan's Notes" needs to be included. Reading it again now. 


On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

Well, if he ain't no genre writer, mostly "mysteries" , then I shoudda read more of him. 
> 
>I got to meet him once. At a book party for one of his books.  I compared his unpretentiousness
>as a writer--westerns, mysteries {some fer sure), script doctor--with Chekhov's. Chekhov is a 
>favorite of mine and I was reading him hard around then. He said nothing to this pretentious stupidity
>so I segued into the question I wanted to ask most. I had learned he was the major writer/rewriter on 
>"Tell Them Willie Boy is Here"...so I asked about the scene where Redford meets with Blake under
>a truce flag on a hill....the talk goes nowhere and then Blake says he has one more question........
> 
>"How you going to get back down that hill?".....he said it just came to him (and I think Redford's horse gets shot)  
>and then spoke engagingly that  watching westerns as a kid
>he always wondered why no horses were ever killed....(in the movie and evidently the book, the Blake
>character aims at horses to avoid killing men)...... 
> 
>
>
>From: jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>To: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> 
>Cc: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>; "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
>Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 2:54 PM 
>
>Subject: Re: Elmore Leonard? Get Real!
>
>
>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.
>
>
>
>2012/2/2 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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