The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 2)

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.

NBMQ: How much time did you spend in Atlantic City?

Leonard: I spent from Sunday through Thursday, five days. I spent one day with the Atlantic County major-crime squad, and I went over their procedures with them — how they would investigate a death, what might appear to be a suicide. For example, I said to the detective, “You’ve got a woman that’s found on the sidewalk. She obviously fell to her death. What’s the first thing you do?” He said, “I’d look up. See if there’s an open window somewhere.” Then he explained how he would canvass the neighborhood or the apartment building first and talk to everybody. The procedures are the same most places except that they use different forms. They may go about it a little bit differently. Then I asked the police how they would react to a cop from another jurisdiction, a cop from Miami Beach coming in there and sticking his nose into it, asking them questions and offering to help. I got their reaction to that. I said, “Assuming, of course, that you feel that there is a rapport between you and the Miami Beach cop, you get along okay, would you allow him to help a little bit?” “Sure, yeah. But I don’t think I’d want my chief to know about it.” Things like that. I spent time with the cops. I was introduced to the president of one of the casinos; then he handed me over to a woman who was in charge of surveillance. She took me into the monitoring room where they look at the monitors of every foot of the casino floor. Then she took me to the eye-in-the-sky where you’re standing right over the tables, where you look directly down on the play. So I got a pretty good view of what goes on behind the scenes. Most of the information, of course, came out of newspaper and magazine articles. Specific stories about a guy who comes to town with a million bucks and how he’s treated and what he does with it. Same thing in south Florida, in Miami Beach, I roamed around there with a friend of mine who’s a private investigator, a fellow I went to college with, University of Detroit, more than thirty years ago. Roamed around there, spent some time with the Miami Beach police, one detective in particular for LaBrava. Asked a lot of questions about situations that appear in the book. What happens if a woman who lives in one of the hotels receives an extortion note, what do you do? What’s the procedure in investigating this kind of a case? Do you bring in the FBI? And so on. I find out exactly how they would handle the investigation.

NBMQ: You wrote westerns before you turned to contemporary crime novels. Do the two genres have anything in common? And why did you switch?

Leonard: I started out with westerns because in 1951 I had written a couple of short stories in college and they really had no purpose. There was certainly no market for them. I decided, if you’re going to write, let’s study a particular genre, concentrate, research and learn how to write within the framework of this genre. I picked westerns because I like western movies so much. I felt that there was a good possibility to sell them, to sell to Hollywood. I hadn’t read many westerns. I began to notice the westerns in the Saturday Evening Post and Argosy. I liked the fact that in this market you could aim at magazines that were paying $850 or $1,000 for a short story and work your way down through Argosy, which was paying $500 to $1,000, to Bluebook, and then down to all the pulp magazines. There were at least a half-dozen very good western pulp magazines. Dime Western being, I think, the foremost one. Zane Grey Western Magazine, Fifteen Western Tales, Ten-Story Western, those good ones paying two cents a word, which is a hundred bucks for a short story. And that wasn’t bad in the early fifties. I concentrated on the western, did a lot of research, subscribed to Arizona Highways for my descriptions for the settings. Did a lot of research on the Apaches and the cavalry, which was very big then. Cowboys — what they wore, what they ate. Guns. I started reading gun catalogs. I put all that together into western stories.

I stopped writing westerns after Hombre. I wrote it in 1959, and it took almost two years to sell because the market was drying up. That’s because of all the westerns on television. It finally came out in 1961, and I didn’t write another western until the early seventies. The last one was in 1979 for Bantam because Mark Jaffe, who was the editorial director at Bantam then, likes westerns. I don’t know if there is a similarity other than the western kind of a hero, that stand-up kind of a guy who manifests his attitude in Destry Rides Again. That’s kind of the idea. Maybe it can be seen to some extent in what I’m writing now, in crime fiction. In the back of my mind I kind of think that I do sort of a Destry Rides Again in that my guy is, usually, misjudged. He’s fairly passive. He’s not a typical hero. I try to make him a very ordinary kind of individual, very realistic. A real person who finds himself in a life-or-death situation. What does he do? He’s a stand-up kind of a guy, like the western hero. And by the time the antagonists realize that they’ve misjudged this guy, he has the situation turned around and he’s coming at them. I get so caught up and interested in some of my minor characters, especially my antagonist, that every once in a while I have to remind myself that I have a hero. That even though this story is not a traditional type of crime story, still there is a hero, and he’s going to have to solve the problem, whatever it is. So I have to get him to do something. Every once in a while I forget about it, that he’s there. He’s just sort of walking through the story and observing.

NBMQ: Many people have said the detective story or the crime story is the last refuge for the traditional, self-reliant American hero. I think this applies to your work.

Leonard: I think it does, too. Sure. I think that my work has come out of a tradition. But I don’t think there’s that much resemblance to the tradition that it came out of, aside from the fact that, yes, I am aware that my lead is the hero and he is going to win. There’s no question in my mind the guy is going to win. But he’s going to have my attitude in the way he does it. He’s not going to be the typical hero; though when you get right down to it, he’s going to be as gutsy as he has to be. My cops, I feel, are real cops, in Glitz, for example, when Vincent confronts Ricky, at Ricky’s car, and Ricky says, “What do you think you’re doing?” he takes him by the hair and the jacket, bangs him against the car, and says, “Anything I want. Rick.” This is a cop talking. I try to make them as real as possible. My cops cut corners a little bit, just as the real ones do.

NBMQ: Do you regard any one of your novels as your breakthrough book? The one in which you found your approach to your material or the one in which you found your authorial voice?

Leonard: Yeah, I think looking back it would be 52 Pick-up. At the time I didn’t realize it, but now I see that was the beginning of the voice that I’ve developed. Then I got into books like Swag and The Switch, where now the main characters are not the usual heroes. They’re on the other side. Then I realized how much fun I could have with those people, that I don’t have to make them entirely despicable. I can have fun with guys who are into crime, into the life.

NBMQ: Are you concerned with making a statement about the nature of criminal behavior?

Leonard: No, I’m not concerned with any kind of a statement. I just tell a story. My purpose is to entertain and tell a story. I’m not grinding any kind of an ax at all. My attitude comes through — maybe my attitude comes through. But they’re not big issues by any means.

NBMQ: Are there any recurring themes that run through your fiction?

Leonard: There might be, but I’m never aware of it. I don’t begin with a theme. If someone were to ask me what is the theme of Glitz, I’d have to stop and think, or re-read it to determine if I’m unconsciously doing anything beyond telling a story. Is there a theme? I don’t know. The New York Times headline for the review of Unknown Man #89 was “Decent Men in Trouble.” That’s probably as close as I would venture to describing my approach. Ordinary people who get into some kind of a scrape. How do they get out of it? I never know. I never have any idea how my book is going to end. I even think of Stick, in Swag, as a decent guy, even though he’s into that life. In Switch, I certainly didn’t know how it was going to end. I knew in Swag that they were going to be arrested, that they were going to fail, but I wasn’t sure how. In Switch, it was kind of a tricky ending. I come up with tricky endings here and there, but I never see them coming until I get there. In LaBrava, when I was about thirty pages from the end, I said to my wife, Joan, “Okay, here are the three ways this book can end. These are the three things that could happen to Jean Shaw. She could be arrested; she could die; she could get away with it.” It had to be one of those. My wife said, “What if...” and gave me a fourth option. I thought, Oh, my God. That’s perfect. And it was the one I used.

NBMQ: You’ve said that you write to be read. You write to entertain. Do you have any image of your reader, the person you are writing for while you are writing?

Leonard: No, I don’t. Because I don’t picture a particular reader. I think by now I have nearly as many women as men who read my work. At least more than half the letters are from women, though I do think my books appeal more to men. When I’m interviewed one day by George Will and by Pete Hamill the next — who would appear to be poles apart in their attitudes, and yet both enjoy my work — I think: This is wonderful that I can appeal to a wide range of readers. Ideally the author wants to sell books, expand his readership, without getting caught up in the actual business of selling them. I’m happy to see Glitz on best-seller lists, but I hope to God I never take it too seriously. The whole idea of how I work is to be very relaxed in telling the story, to do it my own way. I certainly can’t aim this book at a list — picking details that would make it more popular, appeal to more people. That’s the worst thing I could do. I’ve got to tell my own story in my own relaxed way, with the primary purpose of pleasing myself, then hope that there are other people who enjoy it too. And that does seem to be happening now. But if I had no more readers than before, I’d still write. It’s what I do.