Dutch Treat

Elmore Leonard sounds a bit like Jimmy Stewart. Which is weird, because Jimmy Stewart is definitely not the voice I hear in my head when I read Elmore Leonard novels. He also has this wonderful mischievous grin whenever he cracks himself up, and the wild, boyish humor that runs through his work is apparent on his face.

I could listen to Leonard speak all night. But tonight at the Free Library we only had an hour. Leonard read a little from Road Dogs, talked about how the book came together, told us how he sent a draft to George Clooney—who played the character of Jack Foley in Out of Sight—only, Clooney hasn't had time to read it. ("I guess they have other things to do in Hollywood," Leonard said.) He talked about his work-in-progress, a novel called Djibouti, about a documentary filmmaker on the hunt for Somali pirates. "I'm a 130 pages in," Leonard said, "and I'll start back on it after this book tour." He talked about some of his favorite contemporary writers—Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Cormac McCarthy. He talked about his love for Hemingway, although wished he had a sense of humor in his work. He talked about avoiding writing that sounds like writing. "People ask, what do you mean by that?" Leonard asked, then said: "Upon returning to the room..." Leonard strives for dialogue that sounds like "normal people talking." He doesn't do similes. He likes to have characters talking before you realize where they are, or what they're doing. And he still thinks George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the best crime novel ever written. (And a lot of people would agree with him.) He talked about how he and his wife Christine once saw Paul Newman in a Beverly Hills clothing shop, and briefly thought about approaching and telling Newman that he was the author of Hombre. "But what if he didn't like it?" Leonard asked.

So he didn't.