There’s magic in Elmore Leonard’s writing. In his novels, he tells a whopping good story and entrances the reader with the banter among characters. I can’t get through one of his books without laughs and a few sighs. Audiobooks do justice to his work and I’ve passed a few engaging hours with “Out of Sight” and “Tishomingo Blues,” among others that I’ve listened to driving through miles of Wyoming sagebrush. The wide-open spaces figure in Leonard’s early writing, when he wrote westerns as stories (“3:10 to Yuma”) and novels (“Hombre”). I’ve seen the movies, too. “Out of Sight,” “Get Shorty,” and Tarantino's “Jackie Brown” (based on “Rum Punch”) were delightful.
Just finished “Cuba
Libre,” a bit different from most of his work. Cuba during the Spanish-American
War is the setting. Just a snippet of Cuba’s long and violent history. I
sometimes forget that Havana was capital of Spain’s New World Empire going back
to the 1500s. It was a thriving city while Seminoles ruled the Florida Glades
and panthers roamed the forests. Air conditioning was just a distant dream. Leonard sets some
of his books (“Maximum Bob,” “Be Cool,” "Pronto" which led the “Justified” series) in South Florida. And why
not – kooky characters and Florida are a match made in heaven and/or hell,
depending on your POV.
“Cuba Libre” begins in
1898 with one of the main characters surveying the wreckage of the battleship
Maine in Havana Harbor. I won’t tell you how it ends – it’s a wild ride, and
worth reading. Intriguing characters encounter one another and all hell breaks
loose. There’s an American cowboy escaping a shady past, a young marine from
Arizona who survives the Maine sinking, a rich American expatriate, bad guys
from Spain, barefoot Cuban revolutionaries, a hotel filled with U.S. reporters trying
to drum up a war, many horses, and many, many guns.
Leonard keeps the
story moving. Along the way, he violates all the rules that seemed important in
MFA writing workshops. That’s something I’ve been learning reading historical
fiction. Keep the story moving. No Proustian monologues. No settings in
academia. I had just come from reading Ann Beattie’s stories featured over the
decades in The New Yorker. Way too much academia. I liked the early
stories better. They were leaner and meaner and more fun. Maybe they had the
caring attention of a good editor? I did like the one story I read from her new
collection which all center on the Covid-19 Emergency. I want to read the rest
of those. Lauren Groff teaches writing at my alma mater UF yet writes amazing stories of Floridians in wild places. Check out her collection "Florida" that features a panther as cover art.
Look, I have an MFA
in Creative Writing. I wanted nothing more than a career in the academy but
that wasn’t in the cards. I still love teaching but take my writing cues from
other sources, other lands, other time periods. The most fun I had recently was
watching “White Noise,” a send-up of academia as well as American life. Don
DeLillo – that guy can write and the folks who did the movie like it too. Hitler
Studies! Airborne Toxic Event!
Go read Elmore
Leonard. Plenty to choose from at your local library. Better get them before
Moms for Liberty get their grubby mitts on them for the big book burning.
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