{"id":1283,"date":"2011-12-29T17:40:11","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T17:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=1283"},"modified":"2012-09-29T21:41:23","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T21:41:23","slug":"elmore-leonard-part-4","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=1283","title":{"rendered":"The Elmore Leonard Interviews, Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crimeculture is delighted to be able to offer substantial extracts from a series of interviews that Professor Charles Rzepka conducted with Elmore Leonard in 2009-10. There were four separate interviews, arranged here in nine parts. Read the Introduction to the Elmore Leonard Interviews.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Parts: \u00a0Aug 2009<\/span>\u00a0\u00a01<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a02<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0 3<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 Sept 2009<\/span>\u00a0\u00a04<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0 5<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Jan<\/span>\u00a02010<\/span>\u00a0\u00a06<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a07<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0 June 2010<\/span>\u00a0\u00a08<\/a> \u00a0 \u00a0 9<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This is the second half of the interview that took place in Bloomfield Village, MI, 29th September 2009. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Get<\/a>CR:\u00a0 I jumped ahead here and I want to go back to the hanging from the roof.\u00a0 I was not only fascinated by Maurice Murray but also I realized that after The Big Bounce<\/em> hanging from heights, or dying from getting thrown off a building, or having a fear of looking down appears in nearly everything you’ve written.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Is that right?<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Have you ever noticed that?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Here, just off the top of my head, in Road Dogs<\/em> is the scene on the roof with Tico and Jack playing roof ball.\u00a0 That made me go back and look at your other work.\u00a0 There\u2019s Get Shorty<\/em>, where Bo Catlett falls off his own deck to his death.\u00a0 I think it’s in Stick<\/em> where Eddie Moke is being held off the balcony by Chuckie, who lets him go.\u00a0 There’s Glitz<\/em>, where there’s a cab driver who gets thrown off the cliff and this prostitute from Puerto Rico who goes to Atlantic City and gets thrown off a roof.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 Wow.<\/p>\n

\"Killshot\"<\/a>CR:\u00a0 That’s just for starters.\u00a0 And then in Killshot<\/em> Lionel the ironworker is injured falling from a beam, and you have all of these really high-up perspectives.\u00a0 Take that great scene where they think Wayne is frozen, they think he\u2019s scared.\u00a0 But he’s just in his head rehearsing these surprise scenarios, and he slides down the girder and walks away.\u00a0 But there\u2019s also that great shot in the opening chapter, where Armand goes to Detroit to hit Papa.\u00a0 He walks into the room, and before he says or does anything he sees the scene out the window of the panorama of the cityscape and Canada.\u00a0 It’s like he’s looking at his whole life through the window, like how he got here, not just the other day driving from Toronto, but it’s like Walpole Island and the river and Canada and everything. I bet you in nearly every book you’ve written since The Big Bounce<\/em> you have a scene where someone is fearful of heights or about to fall or falls to his death, or there’s something to do with great heights.\u00a0 And I don’t think it happens in any of your early westerns, for instance, where someone gets shoved off a mesa or a bluff?\u00a0 But even in an early crime novel like Mr. Majestyk<\/em>, the climactic scene is where he outwits Renda and the other thugs by getting them to drive off a cliff, off a road on a mesa.\u00a0 Can you think of any earlier books before Big Bounce<\/em> where that kind of thing happens?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, but when I was starting out writing I had a dream.\u00a0 I was always falling down these stairs.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 When you first started writing?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, and they were steep and narrow and I’d fall down and you wait for yourself to hit the bottom and that never came.\u00a0 But it was that tightening up on the way down.\u00a0 Then I started to sell and I never had the dream again.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But then it’s as though the dream comes back when you try your hand at your first crime novel.\u00a0 I mean Jack\u2019s hanging from the roof by his fingers.\u00a0 And, of course, it’s Jack who does this himself [earlier, as a kid] without his friends around, to see if he can do it.\u00a0 He\u2019s like rehearsing to show his friends, but once he does it he says he doesn’t have to show them.\u00a0 And that scene was written at the end of several years when you weren’t writing anything to be published.\u00a0 You were writing screenplays or advertising.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, for about four years I didn’t write.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Of course later [Jack] uses this new skill to rob people’s houses, when he steals their stuff and rolls down the roof and hangs from the eaves and gets away with breaking and entering.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, I guess I like the idea of his not having to prove anything to himself.\u00a0 He knows that and it gives him confidence and I think it’s in all of my characters that they don’t have to tell what they’ve done, but they know how to do it.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Have you ever felt yourself consciously having to resist writing for audience expectations or what your agent wants you to do? Not happy just hanging [from the roof] to show you can do it to yourself, but feeling \u201cnow I have to show others?\u201d<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I think enough people know what I can do and so I’m getting satisfaction that way\u2014for instance, when the New York Times<\/em> during the week does a very good review, and then in the book review section there’s another one by Robert Pinsky.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 And you had that radio interview with Robert as well–he’s my colleague at BU.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Oh, yeah, right, and he liked the book?<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Yeah, he’s a big fan of yours. So, I was wondering with the hanging from the roof business, you’re not afraid of heights yourself, particularly, are you?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Never have been or no more than is healthy, I suppose.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Exactly.\u00a0 I can go up on roofs now.\u00a0 I don’t know why because around my 40s I couldn’t go up on a roof.\u00a0 I was afraid to go up on a roof, and then I got over it.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do you know why?<\/p>\n

EL: Uh-uh.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Are you physically afraid of anything?\u00a0 More than would be normal.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 What’s there to be afraid of that could happen to you?<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 People are afraid of spiders, or elevators, or heights.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, no.<\/p>\n

CR: I forgot to ask, the Jack Ryan\/Maurice Murray character, you said that Maurice and your friends and you would hitchhike to go produce picking in the Thumb?\u00a0 When did that start, do you remember?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I was thinking we were probably in the 8th grade, 7th-8th grade.\u00a0 We probably weren’t going very far.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But that’s a good way, even to get to Geneva Beach.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 We weren’t way up there.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Where is Geneva Beach?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well it’s on the tip, but that’s made up.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Is it based on a real place?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do you remember the name of it?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I think you mentioned Bad Axe is up there somewhere.\u00a0 So you guys would go and your parents would let you just do this.\u00a0 They would let you go hitchhiking up there?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 You were 12, or 13, or 14.\u00a0 Wow, I would never let my kids do that.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 It was a kinder world.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 That’s true, less to be afraid of.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 We didn’t do it a lot.\u00a0 We probably did it two or three times.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Was this like summer work?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 And how did you find out about it?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I don’t know.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Just maybe in an ad in the newspaper or something.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 We were probably going maybe no farther than Pontiac.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So you know that area up on the lake from later experiences?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, our group, we used to go up, this is when I’m married now with children.\u00a0 We would go up to Joe Buffa’s Bayside Villa, which was up on the Thumb, but it was like $60 a week for a cement block, with water and bits, and all that, and I had a Corvair and I would just take all of our clothes and throw them on a blanket in the trunk, which is in the front.\u00a0 Then we’d get there and I’d pick the blanket up and bring it inside.\u00a0 We drank a lot of beer and went fishing, and all that.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 And you did that pretty regularly.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 We did it for several years in a row, yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So you got to know the area.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Uhm hm, decided to use it in The Big Bounce<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So when you went up there to pick vegetables you had to live there too?\u00a0 Did you stay in a bunkhouse?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I don’t think we stayed.\u00a0 I think it was just always a day job.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Really, even Pontiac would be a long way to hitchhike.\u00a0 You’d have to be out pretty early in the morning wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

EL: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 We\u2019ve talked about bullies and bullying.\u00a0 Many of your plots seem to turn on this kind of schoolyard behavior where the parents or the teachers\u2014the law enforcers\u2014aren’t around on the playground and the law of the jungle or the frontier begins to take hold.\u00a0 But you didn’t witness any bullying when you were a kid particularly?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Why is that subject so interesting to you, I wonder?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, it’s a good idea.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But it’s not an idea that would occur to everybody.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, I don’t know.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 There’s a recurrent theme that comes up in your writing, the mentor\/mentee kind of relationship, the pro and the punk, and Jack Ryan doesn’t seem to have that.\u00a0 [. . .]\u00a0 We do learn about his father, a bus driver, and that his parents\u2019 marriage wasn’t a happy one.\u00a0 You write at one point, \u201cJack asked himself would he have started breaking and entering if his father hadn’t died.\u201d\u00a0 And I’m wondering where you got this material for Jack’s father.\u00a0 Was this based on an adult male that you knew, one of your friend’s fathers?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I think so.\u00a0 I’m trying to remember who that was.\u00a0 His dad was a bus driver.\u00a0 I’m not sure.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 It wasn’t Maurice’s father was it?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I didn’t know his parents.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But it seems to ring a bell that you knew of a marriage like this?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I have a friend named Jack Ryan.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But this is a later friend, right?\u00a0 The one that you got the name from?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 This is an old friend, Jack Ryan.\u00a0 And he would go up to Joe Buffet’s Bayside Villa as part of the group, after I was married. And it seems to me he lived in Highland Park and his dad was a bus driver.\u00a0 And that might have been it.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 [. . .]\u00a0 We talked about your study of literature and philosophy last time. You said that Plato never appealed to you at all, but I didn’t ask you why not, what you didn’t like about Plato.\u00a0 Can you remember?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I’m surprised I said that.\u00a0 I don’t know, maybe of the three, Aristotle was the guy.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Who was the third?<\/p>\n

EL: Socrates.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 He was Plato’s hero.\u00a0 All of Plato’s dialogues basically feature Socrates.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Socrates.\u00a0 I guess, Aristotle though, seemed to me to be the hero of the bunch, smarter than the rest.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Socrates didn’t appeal to you particularly?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I liked the idea that he did take poison and that [he] had to, and that he would seem to ask questions of all, in answering the question would ask one back, which was kind of a Jesuit feat.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Answer a question with another question.\u00a0 He was always ironic too.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Once I realized that that’s what the Jesuits are doing, when they get you to answer your own question.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So you think they got that from Socrates?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I think so, the Socratic Method.<\/p>\n

CR: But you preferred Aristotle.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, I can’t say why.\u00a0 I didn’t read that much of them.\u00a0 This was in one class.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Was this in high school or in college?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, in college.<\/p>\n

CR: Do you remember anything?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR: You mentioned Sartre, I think.\u00a0 We had a discussion of existentialism a little bit.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 I only read Camus.\u00a0 I think I’ve only read one of his books.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Was it The Stranger<\/em>?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 It might have been.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>CR:\u00a0 That’s the one that he said was inspired by Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice<\/em>.\u00a0 He was so struck by the bleakness of that book.\u00a0 I don’t see the relationship plot-wise but apparently he thought the outlook on life was similar in both of them.[1]<\/a> \u00a0So, back to high school, if you don\u2019t mind. And Latin: was Virgil and The Aeneid<\/em> at all an important influence on you in high school?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Certainly not his Aeneid<\/em>.\u00a0 No, it was just something that we had to learn. I didn\u2019t have my heart in Latin for any reason, because I never thought of myself as a scholar.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 The reason I ask is I\u2019ve noticed several moments in your writing that remind me of scenes or events in The<\/em> Aeneid<\/em>.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Really?<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 There\u2019s a story you wrote when you were writing westerns called \u201cRed Hell Hits Canyon Diablo,\u201d originally called \u201cTizwin,\u201d and in it Lt. Towner and his guide Matt Cline go to rescue this deserter, Byerlein, who was captured by Apaches, and Lt. Towner outdrinks the Apaches and they all pass out.\u00a0 And he\u2019s [walking] among them and the leader is wearing the issue belt he took from Byerlein, and when Towner sees it, he starts clubbing [the man] . . . like he flies into a rage.\u00a0 It reminds me of the very end of The<\/em> Aeneid<\/em>, when Aeneas kills Turnus: he\u2019s about to decide to let him live, and he sees the belt of Pallas that he\u2019s wearing, and he flies into a rage.\u00a0 That\u2019s not there?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No. [. . .] I had no interest in [Latin].\u00a0 We were reading it and I’m not even sure how far we got into it in the fourth year of Latin.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 This was in high school?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 High school.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Could I just ask you a related question?\u00a0 Is it possible to be influenced by things that you don’t like?\u00a0 Because I find in my own life I have been in my own writing.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well certainly things that you can use in writing, but I don’t think in a positive way, as it would apply to yourself.\u00a0 In Greek we read Xenophon\u2019s Anabasis<\/em> but I don’t remember anything about it.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do you remember any of your Greek?\u00a0 Can you read Greek now, at all?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 [Recites the sign of the cross in Greek.] It\u2019s the sign of the cross.\u00a0 That’s about the only thing I remember.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 It’s just from repetition?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I’m trying to remember.\u00a0 Let’s see [begins \u201cOur Father\u201d in Greek] Our Father.\u00a0 No, that sounds like Latin.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I just keep harping on the Aeneid <\/em>because this father\/son, mentor\/mentee stuff is so important there.\u00a0 Anchises and Aeneas, they’re fleeing Troy, and then Aeneas becomes a kind of foster dad to Pallas, who’s the son of Evander, Aeneas\u2019s ally, whom Aeneas promises to watch over in his fight with the Latins.\u00a0 But Pallas gets killed and Aeneas flies off the handle.\u00a0 Then there’s a character called Mezentius who’s just the worst, most despicable guy: he would make a great Elmore Leonard psychopathic villain.\u00a0 He’s sacrilegious, he insults the gods, but he has a son he cares about and Aeneas kills his<\/em> son.\u00a0 He feels fury and anger, but also it’s the first time he shows any feeling of tenderness.\u00a0 He receives a terrible wound and can barely sit up, but he gets up into the saddle and goes up against Aeneas.\u00a0 Inevitably he’s defeated and at the very end he dies defying the gods and spitting insults. He\u2019s the toughest bastard you’ve ever seen.\u00a0 And he looks like a pattern for so many of your characters.\u00a0 And<\/em> Donna Mulry is Circe!<\/p>\n

EL: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR: All the transformations in your books seem to be controlled by women and in Killshot<\/em> especially.\u00a0 Carmen controls her own transformation by transforming her handwriting. Armand Degas\u2019 grandmother’s the one who is going to turn him into an owl and he wants to be a blackbird, and he ends up shacking up with Donna Mulry, who’s got all those little animals.<\/p>\n

EL: [Laughter] Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR: It’s just like Circe, with all her men turned to swine, and Armand eats like a pig when he’s there too, just like Odysseus.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Swanson’s dinners.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I think that’s a great touch, where Wayne respects the code that demands that you eat what you kill and so forth, and Armand the Native American, the Ojibway, just eats TV dinners and gets fat.\u00a0 But I mean these are only a couple of examples and I said to myself, \u201cWell, he took four years of Latin.\u201d<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 The Latin went nowhere.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do you mind if I offer it at some point when I’m writing about you, as a speculation.\u00a0 I’d say that you deny it.<\/p>\n

\"Road<\/a>EL:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Because I think there\u2019s some really important stuff going on there that shows you’re working at a very high level.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Did you see the reviews of Road Dogs<\/em>?<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I saw a couple of them.\u00a0 I read Pinsky’s review.\u00a0 No one panned it did they?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, the Detroit Free Press<\/em>.\u00a0 They hired a woman who was married to a former priest who wrote mystery stories, William Kienzle.\u00a0 I don’t know why they gave it to her because she sort of had it in for me.\u00a0 I wrote the screenplay of Kienzle\u2019s first book, The Rosary Murders<\/em>.\u00a0 I had a tough time because you don’t even discover the antagonist until the very end, or at least, what’s going on outside of a bunch of people dying.\u00a0 And then the director rewrote my script.\u00a0 So I don’t know why she had it in for me.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 She doesn’t understand how these things work, I guess.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, but she said my book is just full of “F” words.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 They are writing that?\u00a0 This was in the Free Press<\/em>?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I would expect they’d have a bit more sophistication.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 They should be ashamed of themselves. She said she knew everything that was going to happen, it was very trite and the same old thing.\u00a0 I thought it was a little different.\u00a0 As adults we don’t even know what happened to Dawn [Navarro].<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 There are just a couple other things I want to talk about before returning to Road Dogs<\/em>.\u00a0 One thing I learned from Paul Challen’s biography is that you’re an opera buff?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Okay, cross that off.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I’ll say.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 He says you like to attend the opera.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 We signed up for it and we went with a group and we would meet at one person’s house before and have a party, and then we’d go to the opera.\u00a0 Sometimes we would last through the opera and sometimes we wouldn’t.\u00a0 It doesn’t make sense to me at all.\u00a0 The stories are so bad, they’re so trite, and thank God they show up above the stage what the words mean.\u00a0 But there’ll be two lines there and they’ll go on and on forever.\u00a0 It doesn’t make any sense to me, opera.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But you went along with this group.\u00a0 Was this like a charity related thing?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, we were having fun.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Does Christine like opera?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Why didn’t you guys sign up to go hear Bruce Springsteen or something?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, I don’t care for him, but we do go to the jazz service.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do you have anyone out there that you really like right now?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 They’re all new.\u00a0 Brubeck keeps coming along.\u00a0 He’s still doing Take Five<\/em>, and that always works.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do you like small group improvisation or do you like big band stuff?<\/p>\n

\"City<\/a>EL:\u00a0 Well there aren’t any big bands anymore but Basie was my favorite, always.\u00a0 I love Basie and in the late ’40s I would go to clubs here in Detroit, on John R.\u00a0 I’ve forgotten the names of them now.\u00a0 There were two or three clubs we’d go to.\u00a0 One was Sportree\u2019s.\u00a0 Sportree\u2019s became part of I-75 and Sportree\u2019s is a really good place.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Which appears in City Primeval<\/em>.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So you\u2019d like to go down there and listen?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, and we were the only white people there.\u00a0 Always my date was afraid, she didn’t want to go.\u00a0 There was never any trouble.\u00a0 We’d leave the club and we’d go to an afterhours place and I think we paid 50 cents for a beer and thought that was outrageous.<\/p>\n

CR: Do you play yourself?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 In the very early ’50s I met Wild Bill Davison with his cornet.\u00a0 And he came to our table for a drink and I asked him why do you play the cornet, and he says, “If I play the horn [the trumpet] I’d blow the fucking people right out of this place.”\u00a0 He says I can teach you how to play the horn in ten minutes.\u00a0 Came home and I bought a used cornet; never learned to play.<\/p>\n

I listen to jazz and it inspires me to write.\u00a0 Some years ago we were watching Dizzy Gillespie outside and he was playing and having a good time, and I wanted to go home and write.\u00a0 I get into the mood of it, the beat of it. <\/strong>\u00a0Several times a reviewer has assumed that I like jazz, that he can see it in the writing.\u00a0 I don’t know how.<\/p>\n

CR: But I would think the reviewers would automatically assume that you were into rock and roll.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Oh, no.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Well, Nine Inch Nails comes up frequently.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I know, and Aerosmith played a club in Boston and I went there to watch them because this group that I used in my book, the Stone Coyotes, played first.\u00a0 And then I’d get up and read the scene where I meet the Stone Coyotes and so on.\u00a0 They’re from around there, Aerosmith, I think.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Yeah, they’re a local band in Boston.\u00a0 They’re very popular.\u00a0 I think their lead singer was sick lately so they had to cancel a tour.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 He fell off the stage.<\/p>\n

CR: Yeah, that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Steve Tyler.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 He’s always swinging around the mic stand.\u00a0 I think it got him in trouble.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 He looks like Mick Jagger.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I don’t know that much about the Stones.\u00a0 They came here one day and they were sitting around in the back.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Here at the house?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 They were all drinking.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Were they invited for dinner or a cocktail party?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, they had to have some non-alcohol beer.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Because you’re not going to have that real stuff in the house.<\/p>\n

EL: \u00a0Well I have beer, I have everything in the house, but I don’t drink it.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 That’s funny, the Rolling Stones drinking non-alcohol beer.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well they claimed that they weren’t drinking at the time.\u00a0 So I got a case of non-alcohol.<\/p>\n

CR: So you don’t keep up with rock and roll, or that kind of punk rock, or rap?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I’ve never cared for punk.\u00a0 It was just so repetitive.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 But you do find out enough about this stuff to put it in your books.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Oh yeah.\u00a0 I ask my researcher, Gregg Sutter.\u00a0 He knows all the bands.\u00a0 He can list them from the time he was in high school all the way up, who was doing what.<\/p>\n

CR: And I think I read [that he played] in a band himself?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, he did play in a band but this was more recently, like 10, 15 years ago.\u00a0 I forget what they were playing, but it’s basically rock.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 What about painting.\u00a0 You said that your dad painted.\u00a0 Do you like to go to the Detroit Art Museum?\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to avoid noticing this big mural on your wall.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 [This artist] is out in San Francisco . . . nearby.\u00a0 He’s right across the bay, Sausalito, and he was coming here for something, I forgot what. I got a letter from a woman who represents him here who said he’s coming to town and “wants to meet you.”\u00a0 And I met him.\u00a0 He bought at least two books from me when I was signing out there.\u00a0 And he knew, of course, that I had a couple of his paintings.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 What’s his name?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Deloss McGraw.\u00a0 That’s just \u201cDeloss\u201d there [pointing to the signature on the painting].<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 This is his first name.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR: So you have several of his paintings.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 We have that and then we have this one in the hall.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Can I take the recorder with us?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Of course.<\/p>\n

[We pass the Deloss in the foyer and climb the stairs to the second floor]\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Wister<\/a>CR: This is your second office?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, it’s just business.\u00a0 I don’t write here at all.\u00a0 [pointing] I got the Owen Wister award.<\/p>\n

CR: Congratulations.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I should have gotten more awards than the Owen Wister.\u00a0 [laughter]\u00a0 I could barely write. This is “A Coyote\u2019s in the House,” original manuscript.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I liked that by the way. I think you use the Howling Diablos in one of your other books don’t you?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CR: It was a little bit like a \u201cprince and the peasant\u201d kind of story where the dog trades places with the coyote and has adventures.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 They objected to one thing that I said.\u00a0 I forgot what it was that was crude.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Who objected?<\/p>\n

\"Up<\/a>EL:\u00a0 The New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0 But they leave in the part where they\u2019re sitting around smoking grass.\u00a0 [pointing to tran;sations] This is in Italy, this is in Spanish, but also in Italy it’s \u201cHitler’s Birthday\u201d because they liked that as a title, which was going to be my title originally.\u00a0 This is Up in Honey’s Room<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 The sequel to the Comfort to the Enemy<\/em>.\u00a0 I really liked that book for so many reasons, and one of them was it just reminded me so much of the Detroit I remember even in the ’50s.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 The guy who looked like Himmler.<\/p>\n

CR: Walter Schoen I think.<\/p>\n

EL: He was trading in on that [likeness].\u00a0 I was going to call it Hitler’s Birthday<\/em> because he was going to do something on Hitler’s birthday, but then his role became less important and I thought I can’t call it Hitler’s Birthday, so, Up in Honey’s Room<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Nice cover. I read somewhere that you make suggestions for covers.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Oh, yeah, definitely.\u00a0 This was my idea.\u00a0 And this one [for Road Dogs<\/em>], Greg and I made up.\u00a0 We just couldn’t think of anything else and the publisher was putting a road in all of their versions.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So you said that you had some paintings by your dad.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Oh yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 While we’re up and about.<\/p>\n

[We go into an upstairs hallway.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 That\u2019s the only one I have.\u00a0 There are two of them.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 That’s your dad’s?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah. That’s the entrance to, I think it goes into Lake Pontchartrain.<\/p>\n

CR: Did he have lessons?<\/p>\n

EL: I don’t think so.\u00a0 He may have.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Did he paint this when he was a kid?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, he was 12 or 13 years old.\u00a0 And then he became, of all things, an accountant.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 At that age was he interested in these kinds of sea scenes?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I guess he was, yeah.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 I mean that’s so precocious.<\/p>\n

[We go back downstairs to Leonard\u2019s study.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

This makes me wonder if you see any styles in painting, or photography, or music that remind you of your own style, which I think Martin Amis says is planed smooth, that there’s nothing sticking out.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve got an awful lot of art books upstairs, well photography books.\u00a0 Not how to shoot but by photographers.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Art photography.\u00a0 And you have favorite photographers, I assume.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 I don’t think I have any favorites anymore, really, as it’s harder for me to remember names.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Were you particularly interested in photography when you were writing La Brava<\/em>?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, I was never interested in photography, only in photographs.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Do we still have time to return to Road Dogs<\/em>, and Dawn Navarro?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

CR: With her clairvoyance and \u201cchanneling\u201d Dawn reminds me of Leanne Gibbs in Maximum Bob<\/em>, who’s also into past lives.\u00a0 She has Wanda Grace, the little black girl she channels, and Dawn is into former lives too.\u00a0 She tells Tico about his former lives.\u00a0 And it occurs to me that all of the main characters in Road Dogs<\/em> had former lives in your books.\u00a0 They’re all characters who appeared in earlier books, they had another life. And often your characters will get another life, and you’ll bring them back, like Bo Catlett, whose grandfather was a cavalryman in the Civil War, in one of your westerns.\u00a0 And now his grandson appears, as if reincarnated with exactly the same name.\u00a0 Do you want to talk more about Dawn?\u00a0 She seemed to appeal to you as a character.<\/p>\n

\"Riding<\/a>EL:\u00a0 Well she does because you just don’t know what she’s going to do.\u00a0 She’s perfect.\u00a0 Yeah, I like Dawn and the first book she was in, Riding the Rap<\/em>. I didn’t think that I made full use of her, and that’s why I brought her back, because in the last scene of Riding the Rap<\/em> you don’t know if Raylan Givens is going to go to bed with her or not.\u00a0 That’s just left.\u00a0 And so I brought her back and she’s a lot quicker on her feet now, and she’s meaner.\u00a0 She’s obviously looking for a big score.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 And she’s so cold blooded.\u00a0 If you can’t help her, the hell with you, and if you get in the way she’ll kill you.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 And she’s willing to sit there for seven and a half years until Cundo gets out.\u00a0 That’s a long time for her.\u00a0 Of course, she’s got little what’s his name, the little gay guy.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 The Monk, you called him.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah, because that’s what Cundo called him.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 The one who handled all the finances.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So at this point, with a character like this that you really seem to have fallen in love with in a way, is there anything in your mind that gives you a feeling of what might eventually happen to her or what kind of a book she might eventually reappear in?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, I just assume she’s going to get caught and put away.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Well, we hope so.<\/p>\n

\"Out<\/a>EL:\u00a0 Well, yeah, but she wouldn’t have to if I wanted to use her.\u00a0 Take for instance the Out of Sight<\/em> marshal, Karen Cisco.\u00a0 I wrote the first chapter of a new book where she\u2019s now working for her dad–she left the marshal service, goes to work for her dad who has a big investigative service.\u00a0 He’s a private eye, but he doesn’t really go out anymore on cases.\u00a0 And she’s working for him and she’s in a bar waiting for somebody to drive up from Miami, because she spots a guy in the bar who she thinks is her fugitive felon.\u00a0 And the guy comes over and sits at her table.\u00a0\u00a0 So I sent this chapter to my agent in Hollywood, and he said, \u201cYou sure you want to do this?\u00a0 He said, \u201cI know it’ll be a good book, but why don’t you do something a little different?\u201d\u00a0 Then I started reading about the Somali pirates in November of last year.\u00a0 Now we’re approaching one year later, I\u2019ve finally put a book together and accumulated all this information.\u00a0 I’m going so fast on it that I haven’t even gotten anything in my notebook, and I always fill at least a third of my notebook.<\/p>\n

[He reaches for his notebook]<\/strong><\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Could I take a look as you go through?\u00a0 What are we looking at?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 My notebook of winning names.\u00a0 People who won–I haven’t used her yet, Ellie Sorafa, and Anne Bonfiglio, I’ve got to do a little bit more with her, because these people have paid a couple thousand anyway to get in the book.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 There was a contest for people who want to be in your books, or who pay to get their names in your books?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No, a fundraiser: U of D High, Holy Name, Traverse City Special Olympics.<\/p>\n

CR: So people contribute to these schools, or these events, or organizations and in return you agree to put their names in books.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Uhm hm.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 What if they have names you don’t like? You are so into names.<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, like Anne Bonfiglio, I’ve decided to make her the designer of Billy\u2019s yacht.\u00a0 Howard Goldman . . . I forgot about him.\u00a0 I don’t know what he’s going to be.\u00a0 He might be in the next book.\u00a0 Buck Betherds or Bethards<\/em>, I’m using him in a very small scene.\u00a0 But I don’t have much.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So at this point, as you’re getting near the end of this book, can you already get a feeling for what you want to do next?\u00a0 What the next book will be?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 Really, it just sort of comes out of the blue?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Well, usually at this point I’m thinking of the next book, but this one I’m really into and I want to really make it a winner.<\/p>\n

CR:\u00a0 So this one means a lot to you?<\/p>\n

EL:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

[1]<\/a> Material from this point until Elmore Leonard’s third response comes from my interview of 8\/12\/ 09, but I’ve transferred it here to provide better subject continuity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crimeculture is delighted to be able to offer substantial extracts from a series of interviews that Professor Charles Rzepka conducted<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Elmore Leonard Interviews, Part 5<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"parent":83,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1283"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1283\/revisions\/1291"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}