Elmore’s Recommended Reading

Elmore promised the audience at the LitFest in Chicago that we would publish a list of authors who have influenced him in the past and ones he likes to read today.

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway

High Water
Richard Bissell

The Professional
W.C. Heinz

The Friends of Eddie Coyle:
George V. Higgins

Paris Trout
Pete Dexter

Bang the Drum Slowly
Mark Harris

Midnight Magic: Selected Stories of Bobbie Ann Mason
Bobbie Ann Mason

Cop Hater
Ed McBain

A Drinking Life: A Memoir
Pete Hamill

Legends of the Fall
Jim Harrison

The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood

No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy

The Night Gardener
George Pelecanos

Samaritan
Richard Price

Mystic River
Dennis Lehane

Raymond Carver: Collected Stories
Raymond Carver

Meditations from a Movable Chair
Andre Dubus

Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game
William Kennedy

But I’m not looking at suspense right now.  I’m looking at Action and Adventure.  Let’s take the epitome of the genre: Clive Cussler.  I say CC is the quintessence, because he does not fall into any subgenre such as War or espionage.  It is big paneled adventure stories for the sake of adventure or action.

I read Sahara.  Someone I knew is a big fan of the author and suggested I read him.  “pick out the best one” I said.  the friend went to his wall lined with the large hardcover editions, picked up the one I read and added, “this isn’t my favorite but its really good and generally considered one of his best.”  Fine.  Then I read it.

there are stories around CC about how one of his first books was optioned by Hollywood and they made such a titanic disaster out of the thing, it barely had the energy to flop.  The story goes on about how the author swore he would never trust Hollywood again.  He problably didn’t trust them, but they probably threw enough money at him that he kept them close albeit keeping them in check in the corner of his eye.   The next optioned book was Sahara.  That flopped too. 

There is a reason why the books don’t do well in the cheesiest of arts.  They barely have any book qualities, so if they were to have any film qualities they would need someone to rip the story apart.  Godard might make a good movie out of CC.  It would still be a flop, but it would make the material interesting.

The main problem is the hand of god reaches into everything.  Coincidence is the carbohydrates of fiction but this work doesn’t even care about restraint.  The author himself makes a cameo, an intentional cameo, non-ironic, non-modern, non-self-reflexive entrance into the story.  There is action yes, but who cares, it doesn’t matter, the hero is going to find some implausible way of getting out of the trouble just in time to… Boring.  The whole endeavor was boring and I will save myself the trouble of reliving the thing by not going any further.

I made a flippant comment about Ms.  Roberts in my last post and I felt it necessary to inspect my comment.  I admit I never read her or anything under her alias JD Robb.  Why, I asked myself, she writes romance novels, I answered.  That was my assumption, but I didn’t really know because as I said I never read her works.  Okay, for whatever reason I’ve not picked up one of her books, and to be honest I won’t pick one up to read before this is posted.  I’ll have to revisit the subject some day.  Meanwhile, I decided to look into what I can find out about the author and why she is so popular (after all she isn’t marketed to me so I have to go and find this information on my own).

I start by going online and ask ‘best Nora Roberts novel’, the most promising sight is from GoodReads, which had some type of vote and the following was picked as the best from the author:

Blue Dahlia = (blurb from blurb of Good Reads)

“From #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts comes the first novel in the new In the Garden trilogy. Against the backdrop of a house steeped in history and a thriving new gardening business, three women unearth the memories of the past and uncover a dangerous secret-finding in each other the courage to take chances and embrace the future.

Trying to escape the ghosts of the past, young widow Stella Rothchild, along with her two energetic little boys, has moved back to her roots in southern Tennessee-and into her new life at Harper House and In the Garden nursery. She isn’t intimidated by the house-nor its mistress, local legend Roz Harper. Despite a reputation for being difficult, Roz has been nothing but kind to Stella, offering her a comfortable new place to live and a challenging new job as manager of the flourishing nursery. As Stella settles comfortably into her new life, she finds a nurturing friendship with Roz and with expectant mother Hayley. And she discovers a fierce attraction with ruggedly handsome landscaper Logan Kitridge

But someone isn’t happy about the budding romance…the Harper Bride. As the women dig into the history of Harper House, they discover that grief and rage have kept the Bride’s spirit alive long past her death. And now, she will do anything to destroy the passion that Logan and Stella share…

Exactly what I thought, overwrought emotionalism about women in the sultry South.  But I haven’t read it so I have to go further  and do what everyone does on the internet and look at the reviews:

Reviewer from  Amazon: Off To A Great Start For Her New Series!!!
Ms. Roberts is off to a great start with her latest “Garden Series” with the first of the books being “Blue Dahlia”. This read offers the fan of the paranormal romance genre everything that Ms. Roberts is known for. Tears, Laughter, and a great cast of characters that tell their own story. Major and secondary characters are all important to the telling of this story and…

I couldn’t read anymore after “paranormal romance” – that is a genre?  I think I should start classifying genre’s.  But I’ll admit it the surprise made me go further.   Another  review:

Montana  Sky – (from Amazon)Why so many detailed descriptions of animal torture?
I usually love Nora Roberts’ books, particularly those set in Ireland, but was so disturbed by this one that I had to stop reading it. There are horrifying descriptions of the torture and killing of an old barn cat, a beloved pet, and several descriptions of sadistic torture of cattle, as well detailed descriptions of castrating and dehorning young male cattle. I was so…

Animal torture, not that I’m into that, but hey not something you read about everyday.  Okay let me go even further.  I’m a big LibraryThing fan so I moved over to that website to read some reviews that weren’t’ attached to a product for sale.

Further on Library thing I look her up and found the list of books reviewed.  Yowza:

Average: (3.84)

She gets respect .

Looking on LibraryThing for reviews I found Time and Again someone had posted the Amazon ad(again Amazon ad):

They crossed centuries to find a timeless love… He was stranded in the present, but time traveler Caleb Hornblower’s biggest predicament wasn’t returning to the 23rd century…it was leaving behind beguilingly innocent Liberty Stone, who’d shown him a love more powerful than Time Was. Cynical Jacob Hornblower had followed his brother, Caleb, into the past, hoping to lure him back. But once captivated by his spitfire sister-in-law, Sunny Stone, he discovered that even for a romance-resistant man of the future, Times Change. Multi-New York Times bestselling author NORA ROBERTS enchants readers once again with two unique and intriguing tales about passion so powerful it transcends time itself.

Now time travel.  This one is in Romance, paranormal, time travel.   I realized I’m going to have to read one of these now.  Found her on LibraryThing, had her own page:

Here’s a review:  going over the review I thought this is probably what my reiew would be like.  Haha I’m thinking but then check out the stars.

A man who was severely abused by his mother as a child begins raping and murdering women who have her hair. He then removes their eyes. A psychic-sensitive sees his murders as he commits them. Peabody is attacked. ( 4 1/2 stars)

The first in the In Death series has 43 reivews on Library Thing: here is a review that I could handle by Mandolin-

“This is the 1st of the In Death series. For those who don’t know, J.D. Robb is Nora Robert’s alter ego. I’m not a big fan of Nora Roberts, although I do read her work occasionally. I will say that she writes in a very different style as J.D. Robb. I really enjoyed this book. It is not for the squeamish of faint of heart….the crime in the book is very brutal and graphic and extremely sexual in nature. I like the fact that while it is set in the future, the settings and devices used are actually somewhat plausible. It’s a fascinating premise with a solid crime/mystery. I definitely plan on reading more of this series. ( )

Then there is

Well…I didn’t really like it. I don’t read Nora Roberts for murder mysteries or futuristic cop drama, I read her books for the silly romance aspect. I don’t know who reads JD Robb books. There must be a very specific audience for them – and I am not one of them.

It moved jerkily along. The male lead, Roarke, was a total asshole. Reading some  of                their “love scenes” became uncomfortable. This is the gist of it:

Eve: “No!”

Roarke: “Yes!”

Eve: “Get the hell out of my apartment!”

Roarke: “I own this building so I can stay.”

Eve: “You’re harassing me!”

Roarke: “No I’m not, I’m seducing you in a very persistent manner.”

Eve: “You’ve physically thrown me against a wall and held me there! This is assault!”

Roarke: “You love it! C’mon, this is a little game you play, right?”

Eve: “I hate you! I hate you! Oh….I mean, I think I love you.”

Yeah, it became really hard to read. I grew to hate Roarke and just about everything about him. Doesn’t make for a good romance novel.

I’ll read more Nora Roberts novels – the second and third “In the Garden” trilogy books should be out soon – but I won’t pick up another JD Robb.

anterastilis | Feb 24, 200

I will have to come back to this author and or genre.  A lot here I don’t know about.

Even if Nora Roberts is one of our greatest, by volume, authors, should we not be proud that, at least, so many people are reading? Is this just a dip, a lull, a gathering period before the big burst?

Or have we stabilized and simply found new ways to be status quo? So many books are read, but can it be the act of reading is not enough to stimulate the brain, or at best it is merely a boost such as comes from pharmaceuticals that the more it is used the stronger dose we need?

We are a literate nation, but claims have been made that we are deficient. Is the proper analogy that of our overweight citizenry: we do not have nutrition but we do not starve.

Elmore Leonard – Author originally wrote in the Western genre and moved to Crime genre after the popularity of the former waned.

EL writes in images, but not metaphorical images, His writing intentionally hides the authorial voice, a nonbrechtian approach that is refreshing in his hands.

The drawing of a scene prompted by an action that brings the reader to the next scene. It is why so many of his novels have been adapted to screenplays. That is not to say his writing is cinematic. He is strictly a master of the novel form. Though his scenes are moved by action, they are often moved forward and backward in time in the manner only accomplished through the written word.
EL uses words as props, emotion kept cool as a result. His characters are cool and the reader is left with the same nonchalance. But not a cool dispassionate nonchalance, it is being cool. Archetype of “cool” hero drawn by EL– a masculine cool– not uncommon by any standards of popular form images, cool in the way shaved heads are an antipathy of being bald and showing the loss of hair, being in shape has taken over the steak and potato build, knowing full well someone who regularly runs five miles is more apt to be able to jump into an adventure successfully than someone who drinks and smokes after 12 noon. Who doesn’t want to be cool? Popular music (HipHop, RockNRoll) portray the cartoon versions of these heroes to take with us while driving, walking or sitting stagnant in thought. All those people with white wires coming out of their heads? Being cool, baby.

Can’t go anywhere without being cool.

The author brings about this coolness by the Moral choices made by the characters. In writing characters their Moral choices flesh out who they are and where the action of the story will go. The trick here is the subtle distinction of good and evil by the characters in the novels.
The distinction from Crime genre is the main characters lack of having to make major moral decisions. Their actions will never set off repercussions felt throughout society. The heroes, already in a world tainted by less egregious poor moral decisions redeem themselves by the climax.
The heroes in their coolness personify the best of the readers hoped for persona. The villains make wrong moral decisions that increasingly become larger and worse as the novel progresses. In the back of my mind when reading Leonard is the background of Detroit in his works. It is an apt symbolic city as it typifies this lack of clear moral judgment and allows it gives realism to the petty criminals in the book ,why their choices are made, gives depth of understanding that these are people in a dystopia not of their doing and anything they do will not make things worse.

One aspect of his works not to be overlooked is the portrayal of race.  EL is not hampered by politically correct American-african portrayals.  He is not going to win NAACP’s image award, but if the Source Awards were honest they might give him some kind of honorable mention.

]]> http://giansan.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/leonard-elmore/feed/ 0 giansan Leonard library western novel Brecht ipod dancer iToilet detroit kops and robbers http://giansan.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/hello-world/ http://giansan.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/hello-world/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:06:38 +0000 giansan ]]> Welcome to WordPress.com.

This is not a critical analysis of the “western canon”. Rather, it is a survey on the current book reading landscape with the intent to discern the best from that massive field. The end goal is finding the standard for each marketplace designated genre and perhaps even transcend that limitation.

Note: Shakespeare in his time was an entertainer; it was Edmund Spencer who held the literary and cultural keys of the elite in Elizabethan England.

Keep in mind, the intent is not to find the next Shakespeare, but rather acknowledge that over a 100million Clive Cussler books went read in the past thirty years so something needs to happen to discern the “best” of the “worst”. Keep in mind, there is more than the scribble of a devotee needed to accomplish the goal. A modicum of critical reading is needed to separate the chaff from the chaff and see if we skipped over any wheat in that pile.

This is not an exercise in using the proletariat media of the internet to bash concepts of intellectual elitism. Far from it! I love the works of the Western Canon and even agree with most of Harold Bloom.

Yes, this weblog has nothing of the University analysis of the patina on antiques, but rather it should resemble an exploration through the forest.

So, time to see what is out there today and, if nothing else, give some “popular” works new appreciation.