The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 2)
“Elmore Leonard: An Interview” and “Commentary on LaBrava” copyright © 1985 by Elmore Leonard. Excerpt from LaBrava by Elmore Leonard, copyright © 1983 by Elmore Leonard; published by Arbor House Publishing Co. All rights reserved. “George Smiley Goes Home,” by John le Carré, copyright © 1977 by Authors’ Workshop AG. Excerpt from Come Morning, by Joseph Gores, copyright © 1985 by Dojo. Inc. “A Reason to Die,” by Michael Collins, copyright © 1985 by Dennis Lynds. “The Ripoff,” copyright © 1985 by the Estate of Jim Thompson. “And We in Dreams,” copyright © 1983 by H. R. F. Keating. “A Bullet for Big Nick,” copyright © 1949 by Michael Avallone. “Trace of Spice,” copyright © 1985 by Peter Lovesey.
Elmore Leonard:
An Interview
It has been commonplace to read confessional reviews of Elmore Leonard’s novels in which a prominent critic admits he is late to sing Leonard’s praises. Glitz has ended that. If it is not the most successful mystery novel of 1985, it is certainly among the most celebrated.
Glitz is Leonard’s twenty-fourth novel. He began his literary career in 1953 writing westerns in the mornings before he reported to work as an advertising copywriter. Eight years and five novels later, he published Hombre, which has since been designated one of the twenty-five best westerns of all time by the Western Writers of America. When the 1967 movie of Hombre (starring Paul Newman) freed Leonard to write fiction full-time, he found that the market for westerns had dried up, so he turned to mysteries, which many readers feel is the genre in which he excels. His reputation as a skilled storyteller and a master at characterization has been building with each successive novel. Herbert Mitgang has observed that the lives of Leonard’s characters “add up to social commentary.”
Mr. Leonard lives in Birmingham, Michigan. He is presently working on a pilot film for an ABC television detective series to be called Wilder.
NBMQ: How do you account for the instant success of Glitz? Did you do something different this time?
Leonard: No, I didn’t. It’s an accumulation. I think it’s something that’s been building gradually over the years, certainly since 1980, from the time I went to Arbor House and Don Fine really got behind me. I had reached a point where I was no longer simply grateful that a publisher had accepted my work. Now I expected the publisher to do something. If they really liked my work, they should sell it. So I went from Delacorte to Bantam, and then Don Fine at Arbor House said, “I’ll sell you.” He proceeded to get my material into the hands of, I think, reviewers who were more prestigious as far as having an effect on other reviewers. The next four years or so reviewers began to notice me and ask, “Where have I been?” The ‘I’ in some cases referring to the reviewer himself, though most often it referred to me. As if I had been hiding out somewhere. It was Don Fine who started this. From then on it was a matter of momentum. As more and more people began to read me, and as more reviewers began to review me all over the country, I got still more readers and my books began to sell at an astonishing rate.
I think the timing of the publication of Glitz was perfect: the fact that it came out when it did, right after the first of the year. Right after that Christmas rush of important titles, important authors. It came along during a sort of lull; that enabled me to get on the best-seller list to begin with. Then I got good reviews again — a good review by Stephen King, for example, in the New York Times. A write-up in George Will’s column must have surprised everybody; I’ve gotten an awful lot of response from it. I don’t think that the book is that much better. I’ve been more aware lately of trying to make each book better, but in very minor ways. It’s not noticeably better written. I think you’ll see the same style, the same tone, the same sound ever since ’74, ever since 52 Pick-up, that I would call the beginning of what I’m doing now. While I have been improving in some ways, it was mostly a matter of timing. My efforts paid off. I’m going to continue to try to improve as far as that goes. I think we can always do that. But it’s more in very small ways. In Glitz, for example, it was in experimenting with different points of view in writing the same scene. I would write it from one character’s point of view and then switch around and do the scene again from another character’s point of view and find that it had a lot more life in it, that it was a little more dramatic, more colorful, more interesting. I’m going to continue to do that.
NBMQ: I notice an increasing concern with sociology in your recent books. Is that deliberate?
Leonard: Well, I’m not sure I know what you mean.
NBMQ: The social structure of a city, a class of people.
Leonard: I have made more of an effort in that line ever since, I think it was 1977 or ’78 when a reviewer said, “He set a story in Detroit, and he didn’t take full advantage of the background of that particular city. He didn’t bring it to life.” I think that particular review was by an Associated Press writer, and unfortunately this review was the one that ran across the country and appeared in at least a hundred different newspapers. But I think I have learned things from reviews, ways to improve my writing.
NBMQ: You really take reviews seriously?
Leonard: Well, some. When I see that it can be helpful — because I do concentrate on backgrounds a little bit more. I certainly made more of Detroit in subsequent books. I’ve been more aware of it, for example, in Florida, in south Florida, in south Miami Beach when I did LaBrava, in Atlantic City when I did Glitz. It is important. It is a part of the feeling that I get when I visit there that I want to put into the book, I’ll tell you something else, too. As far as sociology is concerned, I try to keep current, in that what I’m reading in the newspapers while I’m writing the book, some of it is going to get into the book. Because it’s what’s going on. What the characters read, there might be a reference to something — certainly what they’re watching on television, a game show on television, for example. Which is part of our lives — watching television, reading the paper.
NBMQ: How do you go about researching background? Do you just osmose it, or do you go to libraries, read back issues of magazines or newspapers?
Leonard: Lately I’ve used a researcher, a fellow who works for a film company in Detroit. He does a lot of research for them. He’s sort of on a part-time basis with them, so he has time to do work for me. He went to Atlantic City, for example. First of all, I said I want to set a story in the Atlantic City-Philadelphia area. Let’s find out what’s going on there. He called the New Jersey Film Commission. They sent him some pictures, some literature on Atlantic City. He got the 1983 Pennsylvania Crime Commission report. When I decided, yeah, this is the place I want to set a story, he went to Atlantic City, came back with a file of newspaper clippings that covered the everyday activities of the city. He had it broken down into racketeering, prostitution, the unions, stories about the casinos themselves, new construction. This file is probably eight inches thick, stuffed with newspaper clippings. Then he took 180 pictures on Absecon Island from Atlantic City all the way down to Longport and then put all the pictures in order. So even before I went, I could see likely places to use as locations.