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Messier for Elmore
Posted: 12 January 2007 04:33 PM   [ Ignore ]
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As in all things heavenly means to measure and qualify are cherished traits of the species, the smudgy lights Messier so loved to number are sought much as are Dutch’s novels. Having read all the novels in as out of order fashion as is possible I ask,
How cool is that?
and next
in chronological order?
What should I call them?
A Dutch Treat Feat? &
A Cool Fool
Which was your first and how did you happen to pick it up
Which was the last to complete the rota?
Why did it take so long to get it?

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Posted: 14 January 2007 06:16 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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“Why did it take so long to get it?”

I had to do a little growing up first.  You know, learn to read.  ;-D

Seriously, I just posted on another thread about my itroduction to Elmore’s stuff.  It was when Get Shorty was being released in theaters.  I read that one first, got hooked, and here we are.  Looking at The Complete Western Stories now.  They’re awesome.  Gonna take a little break though and read John Irving’s latest: Until I Find You.  I’ve read his stuff since Garp.  Quite a different style than Elmore’s.  It’s all good.

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Posted: 14 January 2007 10:40 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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Scrum - 14 January 2007 11:16 AM

“Why did it take so long to get it?”

I had to do a little growing up first.  You know, learn to read.  ;-D

Same for me. I read the 70’s books in the mid 80’s when they came out in mass market paperbacks, but I was too young and reading for plot. When Get Shorty came out I picked them up again and was amazed at the writing style.

But I’m backwards with John Irving. I stopped reading with Garp. Too many pages. Maybe I should try again. But those early books, The 158 1/2 Pound Marriage, Setting Free the Bears, that stuff was great.

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Posted: 16 January 2007 10:21 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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With Irving, at least you can catch up.  He used to write a novel every three years like clockwork.  Not so much anymore.  I can’t keep up with Elmore’s pace.  Of course, he started a little earlier than Irving did. 

And yes, these things are epics.  This one tops out at just over 800 pages.  Hopefully I’ll be done with it by the time “Up in Honey’s Room” comes out.

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Posted: 16 January 2007 11:43 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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800 pages? That’s three books, at least, not one. I just read the Marin Amis book, Money, which wasn’t that many pages but seemed long as the narrator is so unlikeable. Very good book, though, and a great title.

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Posted: 16 January 2007 12:32 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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To answer my own question I must admit to being “cool adverse” so any mention of Elmore Leonard conjured a cool image that I avoided. Reading uncool authors goes with this equation, F. Paul Wilson was undergoing my studious pursuit and in an attempt to locate his title “Touch” I stumbled upon another with that name and asked that it be delivered to my local library branch along with the other. Having an Elmore in my hand proved to be too much temptation and reading it opened a door in my mind, such a blend of real and hinky, dorky and smooth, boy oh joy. So began a search for every title so conveniently listed in the front of Harper Collins editions, ticking them off in an almost fevered fury, delivered by the Toronto Public Library one and two at a time, my understanding of this phenomenon growing till only one had escaped my grasp. For some reason there was only one copy of 52 Pick-Up in the whole system and my hold for it made no progress for months, while I read everything else, some more than once. Finally I got the call, this little Avon book with a syringe on the cover was waiting for me. I read it in one sitting as though my life depended on it. All the novels from first to last, all the short story compilations, everything and a coyote. What do you call that?

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Posted: 17 January 2007 05:50 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]
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That’s funny, I got a few of them delivered by the Toronto Public Library system, too. I’ve lived here for fifteen years now. Maybe that’s why I like Killshot so much, that first scene in the Waverly Hotel on Spadina, talking about the guys drinking in the Silver Dollar, talking about the Blue Jays…

But back in the early eighties, in my hometown of Montreal, I was playing in a band and the drummer (a guy named Taylor, a name that comes up a few times in Elmore Leonard novels) handed me Unknown Man #89 and said he thought I’d like it. I think I was reading Hemingway at the time, short stories like The Killers and Fifty Grand (is that what it’s called?) and I realized, yeah, this is the next step.

I’ve seen Emore Leonard read in Toronto twice. Once at the Indigo at Bay and Bloor and once at Harbourfront. The Harbourfront reading was funny because people buy a yearly subscription to the reading series, like to a theatre or the opera, and they don’t always know who all the authors will be. There were a couple hundred people in the audience, mostly fairly well-off, middle-aged, plenty of them who’d never read any Elmore Leonard. He read from Mr. Paradise and won them over immediately with the scene where the lawyer tells the two ex-cons he’s turning into hitmen that it might not pay enough to be full time, and they’ll have to do something else, maybe look at home invasions, something like that. The place just burst into laughter (plenty of it the nervous kind) and it was all fun after that.

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Posted: 17 January 2007 08:52 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]
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A band mate from Montreal, that’s typical eh, I lost my heart at the silver dollar one night in 1987, I’ve been singing about it since, looking for band-members for the trip out to the edge of the lake, to play music in some ideal little lakeside town where the natives are square shooters and sing along to Proud Mary. I have dreams of an Elmore Review sort of along the lines of the Blues Brothers with a wicked twist and turn, true love and law enforcement.

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Posted: 18 January 2007 11:02 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 8 ]
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I caught Irving at a reading at UCLA.  Reading from notes that would become The Cider House Rules, he had the filled ballroom crowd in stitches.  Blame college on a great deal of early influences.  Hunter Thompson, in the same ballroom, quckly downed a bottle of beer offered him by some knowing fratboy.  Tom Petty jokingly complained that UCLA got their microphones at K-Mart.  Brian DePalma hosted an intense screening of Scarface.  Bread and obcenities flew in a midnight screening of Rocky Horror.  John Barth read from a work in progress about Sheherezade and the thousand and one nights.  Some storyteller, that girl.  Ah, the good ol’ days.

Elmore’s influence came later.  Better late than never…

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Posted: 28 January 2007 11:20 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 9 ]
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OK
I am starting on a chronological reading of all the novels
starting with The Bounty Hunters, that scene in the barber shop
I still don’t know what to call this endeavor, crazy perhaps,
I am enjoying the first one so far
aware how many adverbs are used
will keep you posted

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Posted: 28 January 2007 11:36 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 10 ]
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son slater - 28 January 2007 04:20 PM

OK
I am starting on a chronological reading of all the novels

Yeah, keep us posted, sounds interesting. There’s definitely a refining of the style over the years, paring down the words.

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Posted: 28 January 2007 05:16 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 11 ]
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I am proud to report that EL used the words
embarrassedly and
curiously
in successive sentences
on p90
John, what do you think?
The wrap party at MT 28
could be the event I was telling you about
The Elmore Review Band
Chilly Palmer MC’s
Linda Moon Hot Band
This may be more toward what the next EL novel will look like
after Honey’s Room
another thread
a touchstone perhaps
that Dutch’s novels
being novel
continue to evolve

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Posted: 30 January 2007 11:56 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 12 ]
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Son,
With a number of western novels heading up your endeavor, why not just start with the western stories? They’re not novels, but you could then say you read Elmore’s entire literary repertoire in chronological order.

Oops, too late. ;-D

Are you still in the midst of ‘The Bounty Hunters’?  And what’s the adverb count up to now?

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Posted: 31 January 2007 12:52 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 13 ]
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Ooops tooo late for this go around but it will give us time to get a complete list together for the next
Perhaps it is sufficient to have the complete western stories handy and read them in the chronic order
This method will require another designation altogether don’t you think? A leonard complex?

I am thoroughly enjoying this read, lost in the wild canyon lands,
wild men of every creed and the “law”
not really counting, checked back and the rule is
no adverbs regarding what someone said
in this case EL is describing how each character looked
it seemed noteworthy
embarrassedly

Flash Check out new article on EL http://www.helium.com/tm/128482/notion-world-needs-president

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Posted: 01 February 2007 08:05 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 14 ]
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A Leonard complex.  I like that.

Great link too, Son.  I second your nomination!

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Posted: 02 February 2007 04:49 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 15 ]
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son slater - 16 January 2007 05:32 PM

.........though my life depended on it. All the novels from first to last, all the short story compilations, everything and a coyote. What do you call that?

Great stuff!!!

I picked up my first Elmore Leonard novel in 2001 (I’m 37 and an idiot) while on deployment with the Army National Guard post 9/11.  I am usaully a teacher but had I had to work with chemical weapons for a year.  We would get books mailed to us and donated to our “rec” room.  I was thumbing through a box and picked up BE COOL.  I recognized the name of the guy that wrote it.  I thought it was good, the “sound” was great.

I went back and picked up a book called SWAG.  It changed everything.  I read every Leonard novel in a year—ebay, relatives, libraries.  The only other writer to do this is to me . . .  . . .you guessed it, John Irving.

I have since reread many of the his Mr. Leonard’s novels and short stories.  I discover new things.  You must read or reread the westerns below: 

    Hombre
    Valdez is Coming
    Forty Lashes Less One

They rival the 70’s classics (Switch, Swag, 52 Pickup, Unknown Man) and did I mention the 80’s classics (Labrava, Stick. . .)

Stupid to list novels.  He has about 20 perfect novels and 20 great reads.  I don’t need to list anymore books.  Read them all in any order.  Read the short stories when you run out of novels.

I need a fix!  May is too far away.

Gregg,

Give us something.  Bullring?  It is the only thing unavailable.  Do we get any short stories soon?  Give me a fix!!!

I have to grade 90 persuasive essays this weekend.  GIVE US SOMETHING!!!

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