I think if you’re going to write an essay on the ‘literary’ aspect of any Elmore Leonard novel, you have to start with his approach to writing them, which shows up (or doesn’t show up, as it were) in the final product(s). Mainly, what I mean is the total lack of a narrator. Well, since a novel is technically a narrative, I guess you could say the characters themselves are narrating, but it doesn’t even feel that way to me. I just feel like I’m right there with them in the story. Or to put it another way, it doesn’t feel like I’m being told a story at all, more like these are real events taking place and it doesn’t even seem like I’m reading about them, I’m there at the scene watching it go down in real time.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on enough and if you’re just looking for details on those specific stories and their characters, what I typed was irrelevant. Still, you might do a search of these forums for ‘invisible writing’ or simply ‘invisible’ for other discussions. Also, read/watch/listen/ to any interviews with the man himself. All the Charlie Rose interviews are great, available on google video and Charlie’s website . There’s one with Elmore and Martin Amis I think is particularly fascinating. The Christian Science Monitor interview, linked on the front page here, the Jan. 16 blog entry, is a decent, but very short summary (like, 7 minutes). Here it is.
Oh yeah, and read his 10 rules, mainly, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
