The short answer is, yes, the plots are just the glue and they’re not very important. It’s really what seperates literary fiction from genre fiction. Genre fiction is about its plots and literary fiction is about its themes.
So, for example (because when the movie was announced I reread it) Freaky Deaky is about the risks you’re willing to take. In the first scene the cops tell Booker he might be able to jump from the chair with the bomb in it to the pool and they leave him alone. Booker takes a risk, and the cops do, too. It’s really explained where the title is mentioned, when Chris says to the homicide guy that if you danced Freaky Deaky with the wrong guy’s woman you could end up dead and Wendell says, yeah, but if it’s the right woman you could really score.
All the relationships in the book are about how far people will push something to get a payoff. Robin’s is the clearest, or maybe even Donell, but Greta goes through it and Chris’s is the big one.
This is also the theme of Tishomingo Blues, how big a risk will people take. Like all literary writers, Elmore Leonard keeps coming back to this and refining it.
But the plots? The plots are just hiests and robberies and kidnappings. Clever ones, for sure, but very realistic with nothing that makes you think, “That could neer happen.” The exact kinds of things these real characters would be involved in. If the plots are too “original” or too “far out” then the characters would hae to be as well. It’s very rare in literary writing to have a plot drive the book.
I disagree. Plot for Elmore is a helluva lot more than mere glue. Novels as pristine as his wouldn’t be that way otherwise. In his books, engaging characters do interesting things and the reader is dying to know what happens. It’s all important.
If plot were mere glue, it’d stick out like a red flag. And nothing sticks out, seems weak or out of place, in Elmore’s books. That’s one of the most remarkable aspects of his writing.
Simply becuase Elmore’s plots aren’t fantastic or massive in scope—like Clancy’s books, for example—doesn’t mean they’re incidental, glue.
Elmore may not plot much in advance, but so what? The plots that end up in his books are as interesting as his characters. Characters may be created with care, crafted, and plot may just happen, but the end result is seamless and riveting. Just because Elmore starts with characters then watches what they do when he puts them in situations doesn’t mean what they do, the action, isn’t as interesting as the characters themselves.
For the most part, plot and character are inextricably intertwined. What the characters do, how they act and react in situations, and especially what they’re after, tell the reader who they are as much as backstory and speech patterns and how other characters view them. For a character to be interesting, the thing he’s into must be interesting. I mean, would you care about Jack Delaney and an ex-nun if they got together in Dayton, Ohio to form a sewing circle?
I mean, would you care about Jack Delaney and an ex-nun if they got together in Dayton, Ohio to form a sewing circle?
Okay, that’s a good point. It’s why Hanging Out at the Buena Vista is a short story (though I’d like to see more with those characters).
One of the things I like about the “plots” of these novels is that there are loose ends, there are plans that don’t work out and things change in the middle. The novels are certainly not “plot-driven,” which, as you say, doesn’t mean the plot is unimportant, but it isn’t what the books are about.
You could say that what makes the books so good is the way the plot, theme and characters work together. That what makes a book not so good is when any one of these isn’t as good as the others. I’ve never read any Tom Clancy novels, but my guess is the characters are more archetype than individual characters and the books are about the plots.
And really, the “interesting things” the characters do in Elmore Leonard novels aren’t all that interesting. More interesting than a sewing circle, sure, but (gladly) the fate of the world never hangs in the balance. The crimes are usually fairly common, real-life crimes. They happen everyday. The way the stories are told, the depth of the characters, is what makes them literature. Mr. Paradise, is an underrated book. The storytelling, the voice, in that book is so good it doesn’t get noticed (no writer sticking his nose in at all). It’s a perfect moment in time for the characters and the city of Detroit. But the plot?
I agree with everything you said except the last part, about Mr. Paradise. Your point about Buena Vista is excellent. Elmore would like it, I think; it tells the whole story in a short sentence.
Having read all Elmore’s books, the best ones half a dozen times, some more, I put Mr. Paradise in the bottom 8 or so in the group since 52 Pick-Up. I saw neither the characters nor the plot in Paradise as nearly as engaging as most of the other books in the last 30 odd years. It may be that the characters didn’t grab me because what they were doing was pedestrian, as crimes and criminals go. Or vice-versa. But overall that one was off a notch or two. I put it in with Touch, Pronto, Cuba Libre, and Riding The Rap; great reads, better than anything else in the genre—or most anything else generally for that matter—but not in the Revolver, Rubber Soul category, not a Tiger Woods at the Masters in ‘97-type deal.
But hey, by analogy, the greatest recording artists in rock ‘n roll put out relatively weak stuff from time to time, product that doesn’t hold a candle to what’s come before. Elmore’s like the Beatles, though, IMO. His relative misses are a lot closer to his best stuff. The Stones, on the other hand, or Bob, or anyone else for that matter, have had a number of bona fide stinkers. Which is why Elmore, like the Beatles, is in a class by himself.
Of the recent books, Pagan Babies, I think, is an underappreciated gem. And better yet, Tishomingo Blues, which I put in the top 5. So it’s not when the books were written, but how they hang together that counts. As you say, and as I was getting at in my other post, character and plot and theme combine, seamlessly, in Elmore’s best books.
It’s like historical novels, or sci fi, say more about the time they’re written in than the time they take place - my own time of when I read the book has a lot to do with it. As I’ve said before, when I first read books like Unknown Man #89 and Swag I was young and I read for plot. They were good books. When I got older, understood more, and I read them again, they were great American literature. They get to the heart of characters and place the way Hemingway did, but in the language of their own time.
Mr. Paradise may not be in the top five, and I’m sure I don’t have to try and convince you it’s a good book, but it does go a little deeper into the language - something I happened to be really interested in when I read it. The plot, theme and characters may not combine to make it the “best” but there are passages in the book where so few words get across so much… and the writer never sticks his nose in.
Martin Amis wrote that essay about Elmore Leonard, saying he invented a new tense to tell stories in, but really what he’s done is actually get down on the page the exact way people talk. You hear a lot of praise for Elmore Leonard’s dialogue, and it’s good, no doubt, but Mr. Paradise shows a refining of the prose to the point that it’s seemless with the dialogue.
Who is this McFetridge asshole, saying that Elmore’s a “literary” writer? Elmore is a crime writer, not an Updike or Delillo or one of those you sleep most of the time you’re reading them. And by the way, Mr McFetridge, if you think real people talk the way Elmore’s characters talk you must be deaf. If you want to read how real criminals talk, try reading the Watergate tape transcripts.
Now, the plots: it is certainly true that Elmore gets a lot of mileage out of apparently rambling stories where whatever happens seems to arise spontaneously from the characters just doing their own thing. This is, of course, an illusion. Don’t let us ever forget that it’s the writer who’s in charge - when it’s not his editor. This knack has allowed Elmore to bring out a book a year for more than 30 years even when he doesn’t have much to write about; and give a lot of pleasure to his fans who’d prefer reading a Rylan Givens story or a Tishamingo Blues or a Mr Parasise to reading the latest Michael Connelly crap any day.
But in all of Elmore’s greatest books the plots are tight as a duck’s ass - and that’s watertight. Everything tied up & not a page of slack. I’m thinking of Glitz, Maximum Bob, Touch - these stories are thrillers in the best populist tradition.
Then there are the stories where the plot must’ve come down on Elmore like a gift from heaven. Swag, Unknown Man - right from the beginning the situations are so brilliantly imagined that you just can’t stop turning those pages. The one I admire most is Gold Coast; a mafia don leaves in his will the stipulation that his wife never go out with another man, ever; where the hell did that idea come from?
And then there’s the case of Get Shorty. The plot starts unfurling on 3 levels; the back story, Chili’s origins; the Leo material; & how the aforesaid is told to a film producer & laid out as a movie; these 3 elements leap-frogging each other for the first 5 chapters. Thankfully, Elmore doesn’t take this postmodernist gimmick much further. Otherwise it would be literary, wouldn’t it…
I’m a published author, too, but that doesn’t guarantee that I’m not an asshole. And what is calling an honest working stiff a “literary” author if it isn’t name-calling? If, indeed, it isn’t plain slanderous? And this isn’t the place for spam, either.
Name calling will simply not be tolerated on the Dutch Forum. We have some quality discussions and debates going on here and there is absolutely no need to be abusive. I won’t allow it to continue.
Boy that was cool, us 6th graders were really grokking on this highbrow literary discussion of what was driving the car that we all want to ride in when somebody flips us the bird and off we go down the highway for some kind of road rage revenge. We pull up alongside the devil machine and the creature behind the wheel is a reflection of ourselves. I just want to call a spade a spade and not be thought of as offending anyone. Where does crudeness begin? And real language like the edge of a knife, now from neutral corners
Hey Gregg, dude, I’m really sorry. It’s just when I write I’m so under the influence of our Mentor. Now, back to the plots…
I’d like to see McFetridge back up his assertion that the fate of the world never hangs in the balance for EL’s characters. Doesn’t he think that getting shot in the head is a pretty bad thing to happen?
Yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly why these books are so great. The fate of the character’s world is in the balance. The specific character. And every character seems like a real individual (and you’re right, I have to say “seems like.” There’s a line from Otto Penzler when he asked Elmore Leonard how he managed to get the dialogue of hoods so perfect and Elmore said something like, how do you know it’s perfect, how do you know what they sound like? I just know they sound like some guys I know…) Guys with one line are never just tossed off as “Security Guard #1,” they’re always individuals. There’s never anything that only moves the plot forward - a little more character is revealed in every action.
And I’m going stick by it, Mr. Paradise is one of the best.
So, Mr McFetridge, if I understand you correctly (and I’m mainly guessing here), your claim that Elmore is a “literary” writer rests on books like Mr Paradise which you see in some way as being “character driven.” And “character driven” equals “literary.” Am I getting warm?
[Sorry, I have to go to bed now because I’m in Europe. I’ll be checking your answer at about 9 am EST tomorrow]
I could probably jump into this debate with some serious analysis if I were in the business like you guys. I’m just another working stiff who happens to also like these books. What’s the difference if someone calls this stuff literature or someone calls it crime fiction? Can’t any novel be conveniently placed into one genre or another? Sometimes these books are on the general fiction shelves and sometimes they’re on the mystery shelves. Who cares?
