More with less, again

I've been obsessively thinking about that New York Times piece by Elmore Leonard that Pale Ramón posted in the comments a couple weeks back. In it, Leonard makes the case for spare prose, and offers up some basic rules to follow, summarizing it all with "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

A lot of it is stuff you've heard before (don't use adverbs). But there are a couple of really surprising things in this list, and they are "avoid detailed descriptions of characters," and "don't go into great detail describing places and things." When you think about it, these constitute fairly radical advice. He's telling you not to describe stuff, pretty much at all. Whatever faults Leonard's books may have, a lack of vividness is not among them. So how does he do it?

It's all about the power of suggestion. The more readers are forced to invent on their own, the more invested they become in the story. The key is to sketch the right lines, so that the detailed picture forms itself in the reader's mind. I am reminded of David Hockney's "greatest drawing ever made," a simple sketch by Rembrandt that has perhaps the largest meaning-to-content ratio of anything I've ever looked at.

I've spent the past week trying to get students to put fewer words on the page--by coincidence, this seems to be the #1 problem in my classes so far this semester. And as I embark on another new possible novel project, I am beginning to envision a slim volume, sketched out with the faintest of lines. I just finished Don Delillo's highly spare and stylized new book, and while I don't adore it, it makes me very excited. To write this way requires a leap of faith, and a level of judiciousness that, to be honest, I have never actually attempted to achieve.

As long as I'm demanding it of my students, I might as well give it a try.

Elmore Leonard's dialogue

You'd think, if you read this blog at all regularly, that I would be a huge Elmore Leonard fan. And indeed, I've long thought of myself as one, even though I'd only read one of his novels (Killshot, maybe?) and listened to another (Be Cool) on a car trip. Unfortunately, the guy reading the latter was terrible--I can't recall who it was--but he made all the women sound like seven-year-old children.

Anyway, the one book I actually read, I loved. And I knew I would love his other books. And I love crime novels and am always looking for something to read. Sometimes it is actually painful for me not to have a good crime novel to read--and here's Leonard with like, how many, thirty books? And yet I never read him. Why not? I have no idea. I guess it was always just something I was going to get around to.

Well, I'm on a Leonard kick now. I just read the new one (terrific) and Freaky Deaky, and will probably read half a dozen more before school starts. It's kind of a cliché to say that Leonard is a Great American Writer, because it's obvious that he is, though he doesn't write about anything of particular importance--nothing historically significant, or morally challenging, or especially "moving" or "inspiring." But he does do the only thing literary writers are supposed to give a crap about--create distinctive characters using distinctive prose.

The thing that really makes the guy what he is, though, is dialogue--he is better at writing it than pretty much anyone I've ever read. Here's a random scene from Freaky Deaky; a police Detective, Chris, is staying at his father's apartment after getting kicked out by his girlfriend:

     His dad said, "You seem to have a lot of trouble with women. They keep throwing you out."

     "I do what she wants, she comes up with something else, I don't talk to her."
     "I don't know what it is," his dad said, "you're not a bad-looking guy. You could give a little more thought to your grooming. Get your hair trimmed, wear a white shirt now and then, see if that works. What kind of aftershave you use?"
     "I'm serious."
     "I know you are and I'm glad you came to me. When'd she throw you out, last night?"
     "She didn't throw me out, I left. I phoned, you weren't home, so I stayed at Jerry's."
     "When you needed me most," his dad said. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."
     "Actually," Chris said, "you get right down to it, Phyllis's the one does all the talking. She gives me banking facts about different kinds of annuities, fiduciary trusts, institutional liquid asset funds...I'm sitting here trying to stay awake, she's telling me about the exciting world of trust funds."
     "I had a feeling," his dad said, "you've given it some thought. You realize life goes on."
     "I'm not even sure what attracted me to her in the first place."
     His dad said, "You want me to tell you?"

Leonard is a master of dropped words, rubber-stamped dialogue tags, comma splices, tense changes, cross purposes--he mingles the inventive efficiencies of real speech, as spoken by people who love to talk, with the technical requirements of written prose in a way that makes the page disappear and the voices come to life in the mind. As I said to Rhian last night, in the final stretch of this book, I could listen to these people all day long.