Can anybody explain further this observation by Donald Westlake about Elmore’s work?

“I once adapted a screenplay for one of Dutch’s novels; I can’t remember now which one.  I was struck that he had an extra level of text.  There was the dialogue and the description and then this third level of commentary, I’d never seen before.

Sure. It’s the interior monologue, the thoughts of characters as they watch or listen in a scene and form impressions, or imagine scenarios that might happen but usually don’t.

Elucidation to follow.

When Westlake says he’s never seen this [third level] before it’s pretty startling.  Is it that unusual?

Is it that unusual? I’m not sure. Elmore’s characters tell you their thoughts and feelings and projections. The distinction Westlake sees, I think, is between that technique and the authors who tell you what the character’s thoughts, feelings, etc., are.

Elmore might write something like, “the man feeling pain now, a burning that was like a hot wire through raw nerves.” Whereas your average writer might express the same idea as, “he felt pain in the place where the bullet had gone through his arm. It made him think of what a hot wire might feel like.”

The key to the difference, besides Elmore’s genius for eliminating all non-essential words, is the use of the gerund form, which makes more seamless, sometimes eliminates, the gap between character and reader. With Elmore, the reader is inside the skin of the character, feeling what he feels, seeing what he sees. With other writers, you’re aware of being told those things by the author. It’s that awareness that takes you out of the story—what Elmore calls the author poking his nose in, not being invisible—with the result that the reader becomes less engaged, sometimes disengaged, from the story.

Here’s an example of the three levels Westlake saw (IMO), taken in sequence from City Primeval:

1) description: “Clement’s little-boy face looked red and swollen; his breath smelled of sour-mash whiskey.”
2) dialogue: “The Wildman all tuckered out? You big shit, where’d you go?”
3) 3rd level: “Clement opened his eyes, blinked a few times to focus, seeing noon sunlight in the window and Sandy’s frizzy hair sticking out golden from the pillow.”

In the 3rd level example, the sentence begins with the author giving a description. The magic happens with the transition from past tense to the gerund form, Elmore using “seeing” instead of “and saw.”

The critical difference is that with the past tense form, you have an extra, unnecessary player, the author, who’s telling you what Clement saw. With Elmore’s gerund form, however, the author is eliminated and the reader sees through Clement’s eyes. Now there are two players, Clement and the reader, becoming almost as one, with the reader feeling like he’s inside Clement’s head, like the two have merged and have only one perspective—i.e., what the character sees or feels or thinks, etc..

I look back at the books and movies and music and even art that I’ve loved the most, that minute percentage that stands far above the rest, and the common thread is immersion in the story, losing the awareness that I’m reading a book or watching a movie, something that was created by a third party. The magic is in the merger.

It’s one thing to know that, but it’s quite another to implement it, to write as Elmore writes. Thus his genius, or an element of it. We could get into what other things go into it—the authentic sounding dialogue, using dialogue to carry the story, the humor, the tension, the attitudes of the disparate characters—but maybe that’s something that should be taken up on a separate thread.

Yup, that’s it exactly, the internal monologues, the elimination of the writer from the narrative, everything from the characters. It’s why it’s so hard to turn these books into movies. Something would have to replace that interior monolgue.

And, really, what’s going on here is how all of the elements work together. You hear all the time about Elmore Leonard’s great dialogue - and it is great, it would stand up on its own - but the way it works with the narration is what makes it rise so much above everything else.

There’s also the way the same scene can be told by more than one character - or the way different characters pick up the story in their own voice, telling it the way it looks to them. This adds to that third layer (or fourth or fifth, or whatever).

It’s not the gerund, it’s the present participle. The distinction is important, because it explains how EL’s use of it works: it kicks the narrative from the past into the present tense, heightening its immediacy.

Why these people were surprised by this “3rd Level of Commentary”?; perhaps they’ve never read Ulysees, where James Joyce made famous the “stream of consciousness” style (although it was actually some French geezer from the 19th century who invented it). Developing a narrative by varying characters’ points of view (including their “streams of consciousness”) comes from Virginia Woolfe & Lawrence Durrell. 

Another important point to be made about EL’s method is that at some stage he must have decided to repudiate the 1st person singular - a device that was beginning to be over-used by the 1960’s; but that in employing the form of the 3rd person he reserved the right to include content of the 1st person point of view.

Hombre was the sole Elmore Leonard novel written in the first person.  It was totally overused by the Sixties.  Still is.

I stand corrected. Present participle it is, not gerund. Right concept, wrong term.

It’s been 40 years since I studied grammar. I should have looked it up before posting.

(But then again, it’s been almost that long since I made a mistake, so it’s understandable that I didn’t).

It’s OK. I made a really terrible mistake the other day about the Crowe family. I’ve been feeling really bitter about it…

djones - 23 February 2007 09:49 AM

It’s not the gerund, it’s the present participle. The distinction is important, because it explains how EL’s use of it works: it kicks the narrative from the past into the present tense, heightening its immediacy.

All I know, it’s exactly the way people talk. Like the use of only “said” so the narration never takes you out of the story, or out of the character’s voice. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone tell me a story, out loud, and use anything other than ‘said.’ (you might get away with the odd ‘asked’ in conversation, “So she asked him, what the hell? and he said, what do you think?” but not very many. It seems like a little thing in the writing of a book, but’s really important.

And I hope it’s okay to make mistakes here, ‘cause I’m sure I do it everyday.

Yeah, for me the third level of commentary is this funny thing that happens with the narrator in EL books. In most books, the narrator’s spot is like a broadcaster’s booth. The narrator is up there watching the action and broadcasting the play-by-play. The narrator’s voice is consistent and distinct. Sometimes it’s tied to a main character’s perspective without being first person.
But in EL books what happens is kind of funny. It’s like the dominant character in the scene gets to take over the mic and do the play-by-play. It’s a subtle thing and the mic passes so smoothly from character to character that you often don’t notice it.
That’s part of why people see EL’s secondary characters so clearly ... it’s because we get the dual level of their dialogue and their thoughts in the narrator’s booth. For example, at the end of Pronto, the narrator is clearly in the head of Nikki Testa as he observes the naked mob boss. Other writers do this. But EL’s the best. It’s an amazing skill.