Amis: I admire the fluidity of your process because it’s meant to be a rule in the highbrow novel that the characters have no free will at all. E.M. Forster said he used to line up his characters before beginning a novel, and he would say, “Right, no larks.” [Laughter] And Nabokov, when this was quoted to him, he looked aghast, and he said, “My characters cringe when I come near them.” He said, “I’ve seen whole avenues of imagined trees lose their leaves with terror at my approach.” [Laughter]
Let’s talk about Cuba Libre, which is an amazing departure in my view. When I was reading it, I had to keep turning to the front cover to check that it was a book by you. How did it get started? I gather that you’ve been wanting to write this book for thirty years. It has a kind of charge of long-suppressed desire.
Leonard: In 1957, I borrowed a book from a friend called The Splendid Little War. It was a picture book, a coffee-table book of photographs of the Spanish-American War — photographs of the Maine, before and after; photographs of the troops on San Juan Hill; newspaper headlines leading up to the war; a lot of shots of Havana. I was writing Westerns at the time, and I thought, I could drop a cowboy into this place and get away with it. But I didn’t. A couple of years ago, I was trying to think of a sequel to Get Shorty. And I was trying to work Chili Palmer into the dress business. I don’t know why except that I love runway shows. I gave up on that. And I saw that book again, The Splendid Little War, because I hadn’t returned it to my friend in ’57. And I thought, “I’m going to do that.” Yeah, the time has come. So, I did.
Amis: In a famous essay, Tom Wolfe said that the writers were missing all the real stories that were out there. And that they spent too much time searching for inspiration and should spend ninety-five percent of their time sweating over research. The result was a tremendously readable book, The Bonfire of the Vanities. Now you, sir, have a full-time researcher.
Leonard: Yes, Gregg Sutter. He can answer any of your questions that I don’t know.
Amis: Were you inspired by the research he put into this book?
Leonard: He got me everything I needed to know. I asked him to see if he could find out how much it cost to transport horses from Arizona to East Texas and then to Havana. And he did. He found a cattle company that had been in business over 100 years ago and was shipping cattle then. He found an old ledger book and copied it and faxed it to me.
Amis: Among the differences from your earlier books, this book is more discursive, less dialogue-driven and, till the end, less action-driven. Toward the end, you get a familiar Leonard scenario where there’s a chunk of money sitting around, and various people are after it and you’re pretty confident that it’s going to go to the least-undeserving people present. And it’s not hard-bitten; it’s a much more romantic book than we’re used to from you. Could your Westerns have had such romance?
Leonard: No. In my Westerns there was little romance except in Valdez Is Coming, which is my favorite of the Westerns. No, I just wanted to make this a romantic adventure story.
Amis: And there’s a kind of political romanticism, too. You’ve always sided with the underdog, imaginatively; one can sense that. And who could be more of an underdog than a criminal? And your criminals have always been rather implausibly likable and gentle creatures. What is your view about crime in America?
Leonard: I don’t have a view about crime in America. There isn’t anything I can say that would be interesting at all. When I’m fashioning my bad guys, though (and sometimes a good guy has had a criminal past and then he can go either way; to me, he’s the best kind of character to have), I don’t think of them as bad guys. I just think of them as, for the most part, normal people who get up in the morning and they wonder what they’re going to have for breakfast, and they sneeze, and they wonder if they should call their mother, and then they rob a bank. Because that’s the way they are. Except for real hard-core guys.
Amis: The really bad guys.
Leonard: Yeah, the really bad guys. . . .
Amis: Before we end, I’d just like to ask you about why you keep writing. I just read my father’s collected letters, which are going to be published in a year or two. It was with some dread that I realized that the writer’s life never pauses. You can never sit back and rest on what you’ve done. You are driven on remorselessly by something, whether it’s dedication or desire to defeat time. What is it that drives you? Is it just pure enjoyment that makes you settle down every morning to carry out this other life that you live?
Leonard: It’s the most satisfying thing I can imagine doing. To write that scene and then read it and it works. I love the sound of it. There’s nothing better than that. The notoriety that comes later doesn’t compare to the doing of it. I’ve been doing it for almost forty-seven years, and I’m still trying to make it better. Even though I know my limitations; I know what I can’t do. I know that if I tried to write, say, as an omniscient author, it would be so mediocre. You can do more forms of writing than I can, including essays. My essay would sound, at best, like a college paper.
Amis: Well, why isn’t there a Martin Amis Day? Because January 16, 1998, was Elmore Leonard Day in the state of Michigan, and it seems that here, in Los Angeles, it’s been Elmore Leonard Day for the last decade. [Laughter]
[Applause]
Editor’s note: Martin Amis is the author of many novels — including Money: A Suicide Note; London Fields; and Night Train — and many works of nonfiction, including a collection of essays and criticism, The War Against Cliché, in which may be found other interesting observations on the work of Elmore Leonard.
About the Author
* * *
Elmore Leonard has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the national bestsellers Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies, and Be Cool. Many of his novels have been made into movies, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Valdez Is Coming, and Rum Punch (as Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown). He has been named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America and lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan, with his wife.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
* * *
ELMORE LEONARD
RUM PUNCH
“Right up there with his best. The story builds solidly on a foundation of characters . . . mostly crooked—and nobody does crooked better than Elmore Leonard.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Delicious summer reading . . . Leonard’s prose is spare but powerful, complementing the clever plot. Few others in the genre can match his astonishing ear for dialogue. The book is fast-paced without rushing. . . . If you’re among the legion of folks who can’t wait for the latest Elmore Leonard novel, you’ll want to get away some weekend and take Rum Punch with you.”
Baltimore Sun
“Outpacing the classic hard-boiled novel, Elmore Leonard has compressed Rum Punch into almost pure drama. Mr. Leonard never tells you; he shows you. The story is all action, a scam within a scam.”
New York Times Book Review
“Elmore Leonard is in top form in Rum Punch. . . . Leonard fans will be more than satisfied, and those who are reading him for the first time should be delighted.”
San Antonio Express-News
“Rum Punch is vintage Elmore Leonard. . . . There’s the Leonard dialogue—if this isn’t how people talk, they should take lessons. And there’s a violence-prone plot with plenty of twists and surprises and enough suspense to keep the story moving.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“A story of betrayal, danger, and death . . . Mr. Leonard has been lauded as America’s greatest crime novelist . . . and with reason . . . Leonard is still as fresh, still as kinky, still as vivid a writer as ever. He uses a quick brush to paint intimate portraits of his characters, weaves intricate legends for them to live. . . . Reading an Elmore Leonard crime novel is a little like prowling through someone else’s dresser drawer. You find some surprising things,
plus there’s the cheap thrill of doing something fairly illicit to add a little kick to the experience.”
Dallas Morning News
“Leonard has written a book that’s (pardon the pun) intoxicating. . . . So engrossing that the reader becomes hypnotized. One emerges from between its covers like a matinee goer, blinking in the sudden daylight.”
Washington Times
“Rum Punch pays off from the first page. It’s fast, funny, driven by the action, fueled by its droll dialogue and rogue characters.”
New York Daily News
“Fast-moving . . . Neat, low-key humor . . . Elmore Leonard is our leading thriller writer.”
Detroit News
“Ingenious . . . Painstakingly constructed . . . Genuine tension . . . I found myself turning the proverbial pages well past my bedtime. . . .Elmore Leonard’s latest foray into the South Florida demimonde of petty crooks, grifters, and smart women with big attitudes could be the caper novel by which all others . . . will be judged . . . Rum Punch is a heady brew, one that packs a delightful wallop. You’ll be tempted to quaff in one gulp, but you’ll enjoy it more if you sip and savor.”
Raleigh News & Observer
“Leonard is so scary he makes you want to leave the light on all night.”
Boston Globe
“Leonard is tops in his field. . . . In Leonard’s sleazy world you always meet interesting characters. . . . I’m an Elmore Leonard groupie.”
New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Nobody does lowlife better than veteran crime novelist Elmore Leonard. . . . The author creates an intricate, convoluted chess game of a plot as his characters try to outmaneuver each other, and you can’t be sure until the very last page what is going to happen.”
Los Angeles Daily News
“Elmore Leonard’s books should be read out loud: shouted, slurred, bragged, and whispered. There are long dialogues between very real characters living along either side of—or sometimes on both sides of—the jagged line that separates good guys from bad guys, cops from robbers. . . . This is no languid fruit drink of a book. This is more like a punch in the chops: a fast, lean jab, delivered with energy and a little smirk.”
Arizona Republic
“From Elmore Leonard you always get two things: the most authentic dialogue in contemporary fiction and the intimate working knowledge of some aspect of the criminal world. Rum Punch doesn’t disappoint.”
Vogue
“Pitch perfect . . . Incredible pacing . . . An equal opportunity kind of story where the sleazebags come in all colors and genders, and their habits run from blowing people’s brains out to lip-synching. . . . Leonard may write the best dialogue of any contemporary writer.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Leonard works out all these shenanigans skillfully, but his strength as a novelist is in the telling details of how his characters walk and talk themselves through their lives.”
San Francisco Examiner
“Memorable . . . Rum Punch is potent Dutch Leonard. . . . Only the water company has rivaled him in sputter-free consistency.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“An intricately compelling plot . . . A strong cast of characters . . . and an exciting climax.”
New York Times
“Leonard shows what an incredibly skillful plot-spinner he is, taking the various threads that run throughout his complicated story and weaving them beautifully into a skillful whole.”
Tulsa Tribune
“The mere mention of his name elicits cries of ‘greatest crime writer alive’ or ‘he’s the best’ . . . Readers just sort of slide right into his books the way they’d slide into a pair of favorite shoes.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Leonard lets his characters reveal themselves in talk (torrents of it, all wonderful) and action, describing in terse narrative that echoes the mind-set and vocabulary of the players. . . . And the results are irresistible. . . . He continually invents characters who lie, cheat, steal, rob, deceive, betray, maim, kill, and stomp on any remaining niceties of civilized behavior that get in their way. The wonder is that he makes these figures comprehensible and occasionally even sympathetic. . . . When the smell of cordite has drifted away, the least malevolent of the cast are still on their feet, and we could hardly be more pleased.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
“It would be a crime not to read Rum Punch.”
Salt Lake Tribune
Books by Elmore Leonard
The Bounty Hunters
The Law at Randado
Escape from Five Shadows
Last Stand at Saber River
Hombre
The Big Bounce
The Moonshine War
Valdez Is Coming
Forty Lashes Less One
Mr. Majestyk
52 Pickup
Swag
Unknown Man #89
The Hunted
The Switch
Gunsights
Gold Coast
City Primeval
Split Images
Cat Chaster
Stick
LaBrava
Glitz
Bandits
Touch
Freaky Deaky
Killshot
Get Shorty
Maximum Bob
Rum Punch
Pronto
Riding the Rap
Out of Sight
Cuba Libre
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
Be Cool
Pagan Babies
Tishomingo Blues
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
RUM PUNCH. Copyright © 1992 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
“If It Sounds Like Writing, Rewrite It.” Copyright © 2001 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. Reprinted with permission. Originally published in The New York Times, July 16, 2001.
“Martin Amis Interviews ‘The Dickens of Detroit’ ”: Commentary by Martin Amis is copyright © 1998 by Martin Amis. Commentary by Elmore Leonard is copyright © 1998 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. Both texts reprinted with permission. From their conversation at The Writers’ Guild Theatre, Beverly Hills, January 23, 1998. Sponsored by Writers Bloc; Andrea Grossman, Founder.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2002 ISBN: 9780061833052
First HarperTorch paperback printing: June 2002
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Elmore Leonard, Rum Punch
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