On Meeting An Icon: Elmore Leonard

  Last weekend, I had the unique opportunity of attending a discussion/book signing with one of my favorite authors: Elmore Leonard. Author of Get Shorty, Rum Punch (better known as the film Jackie Brown), and several books and stories featuring Raylan Givens, the main character on the FX TV series Justified, the man is a legend. He was in Lone Tree out by Park Meadows mall to promote his new book, Raylan, along with his son, Peter Leonard--also promoting a new book. I was a a little surprised he hadn't drawn a larger crowd, but then again, he was at a Barnes and Noble way in the hell out of the way, and he is a writer, not a rock star. In fact, there were probably only 20 or so people gathered around the table he and his son, also an author, sat at.
     I was amazed to be sitting so close to a man whose books I've been reading for years, whose characters and sense of humor I've gotten to know so well. Once I start one of his books, I usually can't put it down, and I'm finished reading in a few weeks or less.
    During the discussion portion, I felt like I was in school again, where the teacher is at the front and nobody is brave enough to ask a question. Peter Leonard was the one leading the discussion, asking his father questions, talking about his own book every so often. In the end, the focus ended up being more on interesting memories, like meeting Charles Bronson and George Clooney, rather than on Raylan.
    When a few people finally put forth some questions, I was surprised again that the conversation was on writing tips rather than on Elmore Leonard's books. There are dozens of novels and short stories to pick from, especially the numerous ones that have been made into movies that people are more familiar with, and still, people were more focused on his 10 Rules of Writing and screenwriting in general.
    One of the things he said about screenwriting stuck with me: Peter mentioned how he showed a script he'd written to his father and asked his opinion, to which Elmore replied that wanting to be a screenwriter was like wanting to be a copilot. While I have always loved the movies, and I have always loved writing, I always enjoyed writing novels and stories more than screenplays. So, I thought his comment was pretty funny, and made a lot of sense, though I suspect he may have hurt the pride of the person who asked the question...
    Another thing I really enjoyed about the discussion was character names. Elmore Leonard says he spends days, even weeks, trying to choose the right name for a character in his books. I do not do this when I write. I hit up a names website (for whatever reason, I like BabyNames.com despite the bright colors and weird fonts) for anywhere from a few minutes to a couple hours making notes about names I like, until I narrow it down to a few. The ones I still like that don't make onto the list of main characters I keep on file for secondary characters as the story goes on.
    Elmore and Peter were saying how people buy names to be featured in their books. The money is donated to charity, but I was surprised that people spend thousands of dollars just to get their name in a book. Elmore Leonard was saying how he didn't always use the names, and he still had quite a long list of names to use in his books because they weren't right for the characters he was writing. If a person has a weak name or a boring name, "You can't shoot someone with a name like that," he said. And as fans of his books know, someone almost always ends up getting shot. That remark resonated with me as a writer. A WASP-y character can't have a modern sounding name, and a cowboy can't have a name that a dancer would have. It just doesn't fit. It won't be believable.
    What surprised me most about all this was not even how much people spend to have their names published in a Leonard book--it was more that Elmore keeps letting people have auctions where people can buy a name in one of his books when he doesn't use them very often. The man is 86 years old. He can't fit that many names into that many more books, something he realizes as well.
    One thing no one saw coming, not even the authors, was a surprise guest: during the discussion, a woman in the second of three rows of chairs raised her hand and asked a question about Rum Punch. Neither Peter nor Elmore recognized that it was Pam Grier, the star of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Once she identified herself, there was general surprise and awe that she had shown up. I knew that she lived in Colorado at one point, but I didn't know she was still here! Considering Jackie Brown is my second favorite Tarantino movie, I was quite starstruck myself.
    At the end of the discussion, everyone lined up and Elmore Leonard signed books. While most people were buying new books, copies of Raylan, I had brought a book from home. I meant to bring The Hot Kid, Riding the Rap, or Glitz, one of my favorites, I forgot when I left my apartment and I had to ask my dad for a book. Fortunately, he happened to have a copy of City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit that I took. I think I was the only person that brought a book from home.
    When I walked out of there that afternoon, I read the note he'd written when he signed my used copy of the book--"Take it easy." You too, Mr. Leonard. You too.

Must start campaign to get Stephen King to Colorado...

Dead Men Tell No Tales, Or Do They?

Literally, of course they don't. But what about the dead men (and women) who've written so many of the books that sit on your bookshelf at this very moment?
    The books that one reads can say a lot about a person. I, for example, might come off like a nihilistic maniac cook with what's on the bookshelf I'm looking at right now. I have several bookshelves, but this particular one contains almost exclusively books written by Elmore Leonard, Stephen King, and over a year's worth of Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazines. It also includes Orwell's 1984, also a nonfiction book about a 19th century serial killer from the Chicago World's Fair, some Dostoevsky, and a couple other nonfiction books and novels.
    I can't imagine anyone could really call me a maniac just for having so many Stephen King books. It's not like I've marked them up with devious little notes and furious scribbling. I suppose I just prefer getting a scare from a book than from a movie most of the time. And as for the Leonard books, I don't think there are too many people in this country who don't enjoy crime dramas, though they may get it on television instead of from a book with shows like NCIS, CSI, Law and Order, Detroit 187, Psych! (a comedy, but still a crime-related program), among myriad others. However, not to leave anyone out, many people do get their hankering for crime drama from a book, like those by James Patterson, Sue Grafton, and James Ellroy, to name a few.

The $64,000 question is, then, is it permissible, and more importantly, is it accurate, 

to judge a person by the books on their bookshelves?

What if I were to say that I had Jane Austen and all the Adventures of the Bailey School Kids books as well as Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto? Would that make me a communist? Or a racist? Or just peculiar, for still having books I read when I was eight?
    If we take Morgan Freeman's character (in the movie Se7en), to have given us a fact, we would have to consider the possibility that the US government tracks what books are checked out of the library for these kinds of suspicions, and according to this assumption, certain books are flagged--like Mein Kampf. Maybe it's movie bullsh*t and maybe it isn't, but if you're doing a paper on dictatorships through history, or even rituals and peculiarities of cults or Druids or something, you could feasibly come across one of these books that's "flagged." And then you get put on a "list." And nobody wants to be on that kind of list.
    While I'm certainly not suggesting that anyone ought to stop reading, or even that people should be more careful of what they read, some stuff is trash, but some stuff is "bad trash" (the way that Stephen King tells us his mother used to refer to certain literature). In other words, some stuff is worth reading, and some isn't.
    In any case, I don't think that what you read gives some deep, psychological insight into you as a person. I know there are plenty of people who do think exactly this--some psychologists, for example. While I don't think psychology is completely irrelevant, sometimes they reach for something that's just not there. Perhaps too much Freud addled their brains and caused them to see everything as a sign of the Oedipus complex or penis envy.
    I think if you read a book, it could be for a class or for enjoyment or plain curiosity.
But when something terrible happens, we want a reason. An answer. It's our nature.

Example: 'But why can't I eat from the tree?' 

'Because I said so.' 

But that's not reason enough. 

    We want something more concrete. And sometimes, we suffer the consequences when we go digging for those answers. But psychologizing everything is not the answer.

    Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen: sh*t happens.

    There are crazy people, and there are mean people, and there are people just trying to get attention. And then there's Maude. Just kidding ;) And then there's the rest of us just plugging along, trying to get from start to finish, without too much fuss in between.
    Since I'm starting to wonder what my point is, I suppose I ought to sum up. My point this: sh*t happens, and coming up with irrational and ridiculous reasons to try to explain it isn't going to make it un-happen. We move on, and we do our best to be aware enough, and brave enough, to see the signs and prevent the sh*t from happening the next time. It is not impossible. But you can't look the other way and pretend it's not there and then say, oh, what a shame, when it happens anyway.
    Participate. Be engaged with the world around you. You never know, you could do something really helpful, worthwhile, and even, perhaps, heroic, the next time the sh*t does go down.

Mindfulness, consideration, and courage, dear friends, courage.