I also dislike the implicit critical assumption about cultural commentary in Myers’ piece: that books, or at least Leonard’s books, need cleanly delineated good/evil opposites to function. He writes, “Back then [Leonard] was still immune to the silly idea that it’s unrealistic to pit a very good person against a very bad one.” It may or may not be unrealistic, but Myers seems to imply that he prefers stories about very good people against very bad ones—which is fine, but if so, he shouldn’t criticize Leonard for writing the kind of books he does not prefer.
A lot has been made of the fact that The Sopranos revolutionized TV through having a sociopathic yet likeable main character in Tony. The point has been made repeatedly in articles and blogs in the last few days especially, in light of the airing of the final episode last night.
I think the point is a correct one, but find it interesting that what “revolutionized” TV is something Elmore has been doing in his books and scripts his entire career. Look at Stick—in Swag he shot the two black guys in the parking lot but everyone still loves him; he misses his “little girl.”
The Blackbird in Killshot is a full-on sociopath, but readers have empathy for him. And there are times when you feel something for Richie Nix in Killshot, Clement Mansell in City Primeval, Roy Hicks in Bandits, Sportree, Ordell & Louis, Cundo Rey, Ray Bones, Snoopy Miller, Robert Taylor…Even Teddy Magyk in Glitz. To one degree or another, throughout his 55 year career, many of Elmore’s characters, main and otherwise, have been likeable sociopaths.
Tarantino, as I recall, credits Elmore with showing him that bad guys like certain cereal brands and have phobias and problems and quirks, that most of the time they’re just like everyone else.
This is off the top of my head, but I’d bet a good case could be made that without Elmore’s writings, The Sopranos might not have been, or might not have been what it’s become. And an unassailable case can be made that without Elmore’s books, there would have been no Pulp Fiction.
Anyway, should “good guys and bad guys be clearly marked?” No way. JSeliger is right. Complex people are far more interesting. And, I would add, far more realistic. Two dimensional, cookie-cutter characters are what’s wrong with books by guys like Grisham and Clancy. Guys who can go either way—Vic Mackey in The Shield, Spenser & Hawk in the Robert. B. Parker books, McNulty and Carver and Bunk and especially Omar Little in The Wire—are the ones who become riveting.
This seems like such an old-fashioned view of books. And an old argument, something my grade nine english teacher might have come up with. I thought we were long past the day when writers wrote archetypes and morality plays.
The great thing (well, one of the great things) about Elmore Leonard novels is the mirror he holds up to the world around him. It’s why he’s THE American writer of his generation (and I guess that’s over more than one generation now).
It’s all about the details, right? The novel is really the only art form that can get into the gray areas of character and go so far beyond the black and white.
Although, the “long form” TV series like The Sopranos and The Wire come as close as you can without narration. And, finally, someone has mentioned the debt owed by The Sopranos to Elmore Leonard. The non-hooptedoodle, non-melodramatic approach to gangsters. Characters as real people in real situations instead of metaphors for capitalism or some other crap. (I have to admit, I’ve never been a big fan of Quentin Tarantino movies because I’ve always felt them to be the movie version of hooptedoodle and even Martin Scorsese seems to me to be sticking his nose in all over the place - exactly as Elmore says the writer shouldn’t, but maybe movies are different, I don’t know).
Now, giving credit where it’s due, I was a student at the Canadian Film Centre for a while (but clearly, I don’t know anything about movies) and the guy who created the Canadian cop show Da Vinci’s Inquest gave us a talk and he said although his show was full of drug addicts and dealers and crooked cops and two-timing informants and prostitutes and child abusers and rapists, it wasn’t a show about them, exactly, but he hopes it was a show about the circumstances that led to those behaviours.
Because, really, what’s the point of having characters that are born “good” or “evil” and watching good win in the end? That sure doesn’t look like the world we live in. Even Teddy Magyk, a born sociopath - maybe - had a lot of circumstances to deal with.
So, no, good guys and bad guys shouldn’t be clearly marked in novels any more than they are in our daily lives.
Johnny Mac makes a good point; pure good vs. pure bad, with the good guy winning in the end, is ridiculous, completely contrary to the way life works.
The mere idea that there are such people is absurd. It’s so 1950s.
It’s interesting, though, that notwithstanding the patent absurdity of the concept, it’s nevertheless the essential basis upon which most Americans elect a president. As Joe Maginnis showed 40 years ago in The Selling of the President, candidates become president by selling themselves to the public in the same way cars and toothpaste and other mundane products are marketed. Businesses call it public relations and marketing, and candidates, off the record at least, call it spin and image making. The nut of it has to do with selling the idea that you’re the good guy, the guy with the white hat, the man with unbending moral purpose, church-going, god-fearing, and resolute, all of which spells out the central message: you’re a winner. And people buy it. Nevermind you might be a closet Charles Manson—you look like a good guy and that’s what counts.
The smartest and best prepared and most experienced candidate has almost no chance today if he doesn’t look good on TV. (People who heard the Nixon-Kennedy debate on the radio thought Nixon won. People who saw it on TV gave Kennedy the nod).
If FDR had run for reelection in the age of TV he wouldn’t have had a prayer.
The point I’m getting at has to do with the danger inherent in not applying the lessons of literature to presidential politics. What a blindspot.
Call it The White Hat Syndrome. Once you decide someone or something wears the white hat, they have carte blanche. Look at the Catholic Church. Hundreds, if not thousands, of priests used fear and intimidation and the power of their offices to rape children—and most of the rest of the church, all the way to the top, knew for more than half a century that this was going on and did nothing about it. A convicted child molester moves into the neighborhood and the locals are all over him. But was there a revolt against the church? Did most people stop attending? Nope. The church, like Nixon, denies, gets caught denying, and ends up paying some money. But for most people, it’ll survive. How low do you have to go in this country to lose the white hat?
No wonder most of Europe thinks we’re living in the Dark Ages.
If FDR had run for reelection in the age of TV he wouldn’t have had a prayer.
The point I’m getting at has to do with the danger inherent in not applying the lessons of literature to presidential politics. What a blindspot.
Call it The White Hat Syndrome.
A good point. And, the opposite is true, too. Anti-Americanism is probably at a high point in the world right now, the US is wearing a black hat and the rest of the world is just as guilty of this oversimplification as America.
Making literature simpler - I’d call it dumbing it down - so that “good” and “evil” are clearly marked is just a crazy idea. As you say, look what it’s done to politics. And even to TV. And, a lot of books, as mentioned, suffer from being oversimplified.
I really like a character like Robert Taylor in Tishomingo Blues, showing the postcard photo of the lynching (which is probably a real postcard, isn’t it Gregg) and saying, “It’s somebody’s grand dad.” Using it to get to people, to get something for himself, but no one can deny it happened. So is Robert Taylor a bad guy? He’s sure not “evil” - though he’ll kill you if you’re in his way. He’s a smart guy reacting to his circumstances.
It’s hasty to assume it’s a question of realism. And Elmore is much more of a black hat/white hat writer than most seem to think.
It might start just as a technical matter, a way of best exploiting your resources when inventing a story, having something to say about the bad guys as well.
Take, by contrast, our old pal (or my asshole brother-in-law’s old pal) Michael Connelly: you have the hero, the cop, nothing bad to say about him (the way nothing bad is ever said about Carl Webster or Raylan Givens), on the contrary, we go all the way into his soul, finding out again & again how noble, pure, sensitive he is, with the soul of some agonising Renaissance painter, while the opposition: Nothing. They’re either stupid or bad or both, if they’re criminals they’re psychopaths, if they’re not they’re crooked or dumb cops & that’s the end of it. Missed opportunities.
In the Iliad you get everyone. The only decent man in the bunch is Ulysses, but we get full portraits of spoilt-child Achilles, megalomaniac Agamemnon, his dumb brother, all those Trojans, everyone. Dickens does memorable good guys. But some of the fools & evildoers (Fagin, Micawber), are unforgettable. These storytellers are just making the most of their material. There has to be a character here, so what about him, what’s his story? And if it’s told right, with imagination, even the bad guy gets some sympathy. It’s technique.
I think Elmore’s become a lot more positive about his bad guys since he’s had a reputation for doing it. You can’t have that much sympathy for Sportree & Teddy; Robert Taylor, & Art (Gene? Art? Gene?) Krupa & his pal, though, you wouldn’t think they’d done anything bad in their lives, the way they’re written about.
I think Elmore’s become a lot more positive about his bad guys since he’s had a reputation for doing it. You can’t have that much sympathy for Sportree & Teddy; Robert Taylor, & Art (Gene? Art? Gene?) Krupa & his pal, though, you wouldn’t think they’d done anything bad in their lives, the way they’re written about.
Right. Because they aren’t psycopaths (or sociopaths). That seems to be the crux of this. Elmore Leonard characters aren’t so simple. I think the article that started this - and a lot of movies and books today - don’t see a difference between a “bad guy” and “evil,” as if in order to break the law you must be some kind of psycopath, or you’re born that way.
It’s true, it’s hard to have sympathy for Sportree, but the more you get to know him, the easier he is to understand. Robert Taylor has certainly done illegal and “bad things” but always with a purpose and never simply random violence or that kind of cliche, “sick” serial killer stuff we see too much of. Who knows, maybe somedy the drug prohibition will get lifted like the alcohol one did and Robert Taylor will be the next Seagrams…
I agree about the absurdity of the ‘war on drugs’. But we have to take the world as we find it (if we’re going to be realists). I was just thinking that Elmore presented Robert Taylor in a much more amoral way than he did Sportree, whereas, as criminals, they’re on the same kind of level; & this is a tendency that has increased over 25 years, in which time Elmore’s reputation for amorality has grown; & I wondered which really came 1st, the rep or the reality. And what I’m really wondering is, if Robert Taylor went legit., why the fuck would he found a corporation in Canada?
Gene Krupa was the drummer in Benny Goodmans band
Bad guys come in many manner of Masque
the variety of good and bad slides along a scale of perspective
some characters happen to be black or white
others are complex mixtures of humanity
the clarity of created environment
moments in time
the sound of
the night
the touch of a womans hand
as to why we do anything
canada is the greatest country on the face of the earth
you see?
I agree about the absurdity of the ‘war on drugs’. But we have to take the world as we find it (if we’re going to be realists). I was just thinking that Elmore presented Robert Taylor in a much more amoral way than he did Sportree, whereas, as criminals, they’re on the same kind of level; & this is a tendency that has increased over 25 years, in which time Elmore’s reputation for amorality has grown; & I wondered which really came 1st, the rep or the reality. And what I’m really wondering is, if Robert Taylor went legit., why the fuck would he found a corporation in Canada?
Wondering about which came first could go on forever with no answer, but it looks like you hinted at a possibility: We have to take the world as we find it. This is an ongoing process, the world is changing, and one we can see in Elmore’s novels.
It’s one of the great things here, this evolution of the ideas as seen through the characters, this taking the world - and it’s changes - as we find it. The biggest difference between Sportree and Robert Taylor is the decade in which they operate. The 1970’s world of Sportree is different than the 2000’s of Robert Taylor. They may react to the world the same, make similar choices to do illegal things for personal gain, but the world isn’t the same.
(oh, I know, I know, people keep telling me nothing’s changed, what goes around comes around, all that, but the changes are subtle - it’s why it takes whole novels over many years to see).
Now, Canada’s a good case in point of subtle changes, rolling along with its quiet, boring reputation and in fact becoming a foothold in north America for all kinds of international crime organizations. We’re the money laundering capital of the world, it was the Montreal mafia that introduced heroin to America (you remember that whole French Connection stuff, it was done through Montreal). But no one really notices us, and we like that…..
Oh yeah, one more thing. I don’t know if realist is the right word, but we need some common ground for discussion. We’re never going to agree on everything (wht would be the fun in that) but we need a few things.
I agree
the ongoing nature of communication
poses problems
at any one time difficult
to believe as one
insoluble
Yet we try to ease our way through life
avoiding the obvious desire of our hearts
Oh bye the way
I thought Armand
one of the good guys
