was hailed as one of the best crime writers in the land. High praise, but not quite high enough, and some way off the mark. He was one of the best writers, and he happened to write about crime. Even that is not entirely accurate. It's true that his novels (more than forty of them, with another left unfinished at his death) enjoyed the company of criminals and of those who tried to stop them in their tracks. This was seldom hard, since, as Leonard delighted in showing us, crime—more than anything, even politics—allows men of all ages to disport themselves across the full range of human ineptitude. Boy, do they screw up.[4]
Early life and education
Leonard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Flora Amelia (née Rive) and Elmore John Leonard.[5] Because his father worked as a site locator for General Motors, the family moved frequently for several years. In 1934, the family settled in Detroit. In the 1930s, there were two news items that would influence many of Leonard's works.[6][7] From 1931, until they were killed in May 1934, gangstersBonnie and Clyde were on a rampage. In 1934, the baseball team the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series, winning the Series in 1935. Leonard developed lifelong fascinations with sports and crime. He graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1943 and, after being rejected for the Marines for weak eyesight, immediately joined the Navy, where he served with the Seabees for three years in the South Pacific, where he earned the nickname "Dutch", after Tigers pitcher Dutch Leonard.[8] Enrolling at the University of Detroit in 1946, he pursued writing more seriously, entering short stories in contests and submitting then to magazines for publication. He graduated in 1950[9] with a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy. A year before he graduated, he got a job as a copy writer with Campbell-Ewald Advertising Agency, a position he kept for several years, writing on the side.[9]
Career
Leonard had his first success in 1951 when Argosy magazine published his short story "Trail of the Apaches".[10]: 29 During the 1950s and early '60s, he continued writing Westerns, publishing more than 30 short stories. His debut novel, The Bounty Hunters, was published in 1953 and was followed by four more Westerns. His early work already showed his affection for outsiders and underdogs. He developed his characters through dialogue, each defined by their manner of speech. In many stories, he favored Arizona and New Mexico as settings.[11] Five of his westerns were adapted as movies before 1972: The Tall T (1957), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Hombre (1967), Valdez Is Coming (1971), and Joe Kidd (1972).
In 1969, his first crime story, The Big Bounce, was published by Gold Medal Books. Leonard differed from well-known names writing in this genre—he was less interested in melodrama than in his characters and in realistic dialogue. He wrote the screenplay for, and the novelization of, Mr. Majestyk (both 1974); Anthony Lane called the latter "the best novel ever written about a melon grower."[4] The stories were often located in Detroit but he also liked to use South Florida as a setting. LaBrava, a 1983 novel set in the latter locale, was praised in a New York Times review, which said Leonard moved from mystery suspense short story writer to novelist.[12] His next novel, Glitz (1985), an Atlantic City gambling story, was his breakout in the crime genre. It spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and his subsequent crime novels were all bestsellers.[13][14] In his review of Glitz, Stephen King placed Leonard in the company of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonald.[15]
Leonard believed that his books during the 1980s were becoming funnier and that he was developing a style that was more free and easy. His own favorites were Freaky Deaky (1988), about ex-hippie criminals and the Dixie Mafia story Tishomingo Blues (2002).[16]
Some of Leonard's characters appear in several novels, including mobster Chili Palmer, bank robber Jack Foley and the U. S. Marshals Carl Webster and Raylan Givens.[17][18]
At the time of his death his novels had sold tens of millions of copies.[19]
Among film adaptations of his work are Jackie Brown, (1997), based on Rum Punch and described as an "homage to the author's trademark rhythm and pace";[19]Get Shorty (1995); Out of Sight (1998) and the TV series Justified (2010—2015) and Justified: City Primeval (2023—).[20] Nearly thirty movies were made from Leonard's novels, but for some critics his special style worked best in print.[4]
Personal life
He married Beverly Clare Cline in 1949, and they had five children together—two daughters and three sons[21]—before divorcing in 1977. His second marriage in 1979, to Joan Leanne Lancaster (aka Joan Shepard), ended with her death in 1993. Later that same year, he married Christine Kent and they divorced in 2012.[22][23] Leonard spent the last years of his life with his family in Oakland County, Michigan. He suffered a stroke on July 29, 2013. Initial reports stated that he was recovering,[24] but on August 20, 2013, Leonard died at his home in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills of stroke complications.[25] He was 87 years old.[22][23] One of Leonard's grandchildren is Alex Leonard, the drummer in the Detroit band Protomartyr.[26]
Style and influence
Commended by critics for his gritty realism and strong dialogue, Leonard sometimes took liberties with grammar in the interest of speeding the story along.[27] In his essay "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing" he said: "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." He also said: "I try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip."[27]
Leonard has been called "the Dickens of Detroit" because of his intimate portraits of people from that city, though he said, "If I lived in Buffalo, I'd write about Buffalo."[10]: 90 His favorite epithet was given to him by Britain's New Musical Express: "the poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers".[28] His ear for dialogue has been praised by writers such as Saul Bellow and Martin Amis. "Your prose makes Raymond Chandler look clumsy," Amis told Leonard at a Writers Guild event in Beverly Hills in 1998.[29]Stephen King called Leonard "the great American writer."[30] According to Charles Rzepka of Boston University, Leonard's mastery of free indirect discourse, a third-person narrative technique that gives the illusion of immediate access to a character's thoughts, "is unsurpassed in our time, and among the surest of all time, even if we include Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and Hemingway in the mix."[31]
Anthony Lane praised Leonard's ear for dialogue, comparing him to Dickens and Evelyn Waugh:
"Leonard can make do with a single letter, or a blank where a letter is meant to be. 'What in the hell's a Albanian?,' a guy named Clement asks in Chapter 4 of City Primeval (1980). Typesetters may have pounced upon what they took to be a typo, but Leonard never misheard. In that respect, as in others, he was less like Hemingway—of whom he was a fan, and to whom he was often compared—than like Dickens, another city kid with his nose and ear to the ground... One proof of literary genius, we might say, is a democratic generosity toward your mother tongue—the conviction that every part or particle of speech, be it e'er so humble, can be put to fruitful use...
He is gone now, but he left us a fine consolation: if you've never read him, or if you'd never heard of him until yesterday, or if you merely need a fitting way to mourn, pick up 52 Pick-Up,LaBrava,Swag, or Glitz, and tune into the voices of America—calling loud and clear, and largely ungrammatical, from Atlantic City, Miami, Hollywood, and his home turf of Detroit. Elmore Leonard got them right, and did them proud. As Clement would say, he was a author."[4]
1992 Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America[36]
2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature; received during the 13th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference held at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, United States.[37]
Leonard has been anthologized by the Library of America in four volumes: Westerns (Last Stand at Saber River, Hombre, Valdez is Coming, Forty Lashes Less One and eight short stories); Four Novels of the 1970s (Fifty-Two Pickup, Swag, Unknown Man No. 89, The Switch); Four Novels of the 1980s (City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, Freaky Deaky) and Four Later Novels (Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, Tishomingo Blues and the short story "Karen Makes Out".)[40]
Foreword to Walter Mirisch's book I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History
Adaptations
Twenty-six of Leonard's novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen (19 as motion pictures and another seven as television programs).
Film
Numerous Leonard novels and short stories have been adapted as films including Get Shorty (1990 novel, 1995 film), Out of Sight (1996 novel, 1998 film) and Rum Punch (1992 novel, 1997 film Jackie Brown). The novel 52 Pickup was first adapted very loosely into the 1984 film The Ambassador (1984), starring Robert Mitchum and, two years later, under the slightly altered 52 Pick-Up title starring Roy Scheider. Leonard has also written several screenplays based on his novels, plus original screenplays such as Joe Kidd (1972). The film Hombre (1967), starring Paul Newman, was an adaptation of Leonard's 1961 eponymous novel. His short story "Three-Ten to Yuma" (March 1953) and novels The Big Bounce (1969) and 52 Pickup (1974) have each been filmed twice.
The Arrangement (with Bryan Greenberg) (from "When the Women Come Out to Dance")
Quentin Tarantino has optioned the right to adapt Leonard's novel Forty Lashes Less One (1972).[44]
Television
In 1992, Leonard played himself in a script he wrote and, with actor Paul Lazar dramatizing a scene from the novel Swag, appeared in a humorous television short about his writing process which aired on the Byline Showtime series on Showtime Networks.
The 2010–15 FX series Justified was based around the popular Leonard character U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens from the novels Pronto, Riding the Rap, the eponymous Raylan, and the short story "Fire in the Hole".
The short-lived 1998 TV series Maximum Bob was based on Leonard's 1991 novel of the same name. It aired on ABC for seven episodes and starred Beau Bridges.
^Ells, Kevin (January 31, 2011). "Elmore Leonard Jr.". Encyclopedia of Louisiana. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (published August 21, 2013). Archived from the original on August 22, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
^McClurg, Jocelyn and Carol Memmott (August 20, 2013). "Author Elmore Leonard dies at 87". USA Today. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
