Elmore Leonard? Get Real!

[Paul Mackin]

On 2/2/2012 8:06 PM, Keith Davis wrote:
> In this category of highly readable losers, Fred Exley's "A Fan's 
> Notes" needs to be included. Reading it again now.

that for me was a perfect novel

P
>
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com 
> <mailto: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
>     <mailto:jstremmel at gmail.com>>
>     *To:* Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com
>     <mailto:igrlivingston at gmail.com>>
>     *Cc:* Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com
>     <mailto:markekohut at yahoo.com>>; Carvill John
>     <johncarvill at hotmail.com <mailto:johncarvill at hotmail.com>>;
>     "pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org>"
>     <pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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
>     <mailto:jstremmel at gmail.com>>
>     >> To: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com
>     <mailto:johncarvill at hotmail.com>>
>     >> Cc: igrlivingston at gmail.com <mailto:igrlivingston at gmail.com>;
>     pynchon-l at waste.org <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com>

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