I’m curious to know as to how old everybody is in this Elmore Leonard fan forum. I imagine, with Dutch’s work stretching for nearly six decades, that a good majority of his fans are fairly aged, maybe baby-boomers and up. I’m 25 years old myself, and I’ve been hooked onto Elmore’s material since I was a freshman in Penn State University nearly seven years ago. I think the first EL novel that I completed - and loved - is “Glitz.”
How about everyone else? Your current age? Your age when you read your first EL book?
I’m 18 now and I read my first Elmore Leonard
book either when I was 15 or 16. I’m pretty sure
I was 15 though. The book I read was Rum Punch,
I finished it in less than a week and then read
Tishomingo Blues the week after. I’ve been
hooked since.
GLITZ at 16 or 17. I borrowed a copy from a friend’s dad (my high school principal) because of the Stephen King review. All I was reading at this time was Stephen King. I read Shirley Jackson because of Stephen King. I saw EVIL DEAD because of Stephen King.
GLITZ was very adult for me. Teddy raping and killing was beyond horrific.
The GET SHORTY and OUT OF SIGHT movies were great. I read RUM PUNCH because of JACKIE BROWN. I compared the book to the movie and couldn’t believe Jackie was white.
2001 is when I became the addict. 9/11 and I am on deployment. I picked up a BE COOL paperback someone discarded in the rec room and have never stopped. I discovered Gregg’s website and was very reluctant to post until Joel mentioned the touchstones.
I’m 25, discovered Tishimongo Blues (the ‘blues’ in the title is what drew me in; I’m a huge blues music geek) when I was, oh, 23 probably. Tackled the complete western short stories last fall.
Since reading Freaky Deaky back in September, by my count I’ve read 12 EL books in the past three months. Glitz is up next.
Hi there. First time poster on this forum. I’m 47 and have been reading Dutch’s books since about 2000. I started with “When the Women came out to Dance” and followed up with “Tishomingo Blues”. After that I worked my way through the whole lot, including the westerns. After realising some of the characters reoccur, I tried to read then in the order they were written. That way, I didn’t get any surprises in terms of character development. Favourite? Difficult to say. I like Foley and Givens as characters (so looking forward to Road Dogs) and I was particularly pleased with the finish to Pagan Babies as, regrettably, I lost a dear friend to the Rwandan troubles. What I will say is that if there is a better writer of short stories out there, I’ve yet to read them.
Read my first Mr. L novel, “Stick”, picked up from a remainder bin at mall book store in Torrance, California, back in 1983 just after being discharged out of the Army. I was 29. The man immediately supplanted all previous favorite authors.
It wasn’t until taking an English writing class in 2005 that I discovered that his writing style was an acceptable, definable and grammatical technique. Thought the man was all attitude, incomplete sentences. Now, an English Lit degree in hand, i have to agree Mr. L is right: Hemingway doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. Still, that man was a great writer. So’s Mr. L.
Maybe we should do this at the first of every year as the forum adds new members.
I’m 49, so it’s not like I have big milestones coming up or anything.
In the early 80’s I was playing guitar in a reggae band in Montreal and reading Hemingway and Rivethead and all the popular stuff at the time, Brett Easton Ellis and Jay McInerny and Tama Janowitz and the drummer (not a Jamaican guy, and not quite Bahamian like Lewis Louis, but from Barbados by way of London) handed me Swag and said I might like it.
Gregg & I each will be 58 in a few days, a few days apart.
I read Elmore first in the ‘80s and was hooked after reading Ryan decided it was ‘time to get off his ass, make some kind of move.’ Baby, right then I knew I was home.
I’ve read them all, of course, many half a dozen times or more. I also HAVE them all, signed firsts, every one of them, along with a couple hundred other signed Elmore-related goodies; many unique.
My standing asking price is a non-negotiable $35,000 for the lot. Would I miss them? Hell, yes. Why sell them? I have two kids in college. Do I expect a buyer? Not really. Why? Well, in the last 30 years we’ve had 4 dominant, monster geniuses: Magic Johnson, Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, and Elmore Leonard. The world is hip to the first three, but for the most part hasn’t yet awakened to the fact that Elmore is Hemingway plus, the ‘plus’ including better dialogue, top-notch humor, and more interesting stories. Elmore also is far more prolific.
Well, only about 55-60% of America is hip to Barack (yes, I’m one of them, but a lot of my family aren’t). And leave it to the LA man to say Magic is one of the four monster geniuses of the past 30 years.
Speaking of which, that’s my entire lifetime, so I’m really not qualified to debate that subject. I’m 28, started reading Elmore Leonard about six years ago, after finishing college. I first read The Big Bounce, without realizing when I bought it that it was from the 60s and his first non-western. I liked it, enough to buy another, but I wasn’t blown away or hooked until I read some more modern stuff. Tishomingo Blues and Maximum Bob were the two I read next. People at work (I was a waiter) thought I was weird, grinning with my nose stuck in a paperback and occasionally laughing out loud.
Im 26 and i read EL for the first time in 2007 with Pick up 52. I liked the bad guys who set the main character up more than him
I have read Stick too. Lame enough i havent still read Pagan Babies. It was too different from Stick,Pick up 52 for a new EL fan.
I have been reading The Complete Western stories the last days and being loving the stories about the dust,rugged landscapes and the tough,bad guys,indians,mexcians. Great stories without shootouts everywhere thats something.
The Hanging of Bobby Valdes,3.10 to Yuma(which i pictured Cary Cooper remaking High Noon role as the deputy ) and Moment of Vengance are favorites so far.
Thats my kind of western. Not John Wayne type but something beteween Cary Cooper and Clint Eastwood westerns.
Next i will buy Hombre,couple of his crime books now that im back to EL.
Don’t know where you got your numbers, bill_1through4 - but they are way off. Not the numbers of votes he got, not the numbers of approval (for basically doing nothing, yet).
Eh, I was estimating. I didn’t remember the exact totals. I see now it’s 53%, so you can’t say I’m way off. If I had said “roughly 55%,” would that have upset you less?
Anyway it had nothing to do with my point. If over 40% of the people are against… wait, why am I explaining this to you?
And I see LAC said “the world,” and it’s possible the percentage in the world of those who are hip to him could be higher than the US… aahhh, I’m still discussing this. I should’ve known to leave the subject alone. I’m sorry, Gregg.
I’m just settling into my 2nd half-century on this particular planet. Like many my attention was drawn to EL about the time that Glitz came out. But back in the day I was too mean (shame on me) to pay hardcover prices for ‘Crime Thrillers’ so my first Elmore was La Brava. Then in the few months before the paperback release of Glitz I read all the other crime novels, going to the library to read what was out of print. I tried a Western but didn’t like it at the time so it wasn’t until 2006 (shame on me again) with a view of the irv modified largely by this Forum that I could say I’d read everything. I’m almost always, obsessively, in the process of re-reading one book or another for the nth time.
Maybe members would like to say how Elmore has changed their lives in tangible ways. Me, for example, I’ve developed the habit of drinking American whiskey (God’s Owns, with sugar) out of used jelly jars.
) and Moment of Vengance are favorites so far.