But in every book there’s a minor character who comes along and pushes his way into the plot. He’s just needed to give some information, but all of a sudden he comes to life for me. Maybe it’s the way he says it. He might not even have a name the first time he appears. The second time he has a name. The third time he has a few more lines, and away he goes, and he becomes a plot turn in the book.
When I was writing Cuba Libre, I was about 250 pages into it and George Will called up and said, “I want to send out forty of your books” — this was the previous book [Out of Sight] — “at Christmastime. May I send them to you and a list of names to inscribe?” I said, “Of course.” He said, “What are you doing now?” I said, “I’m doing Cuba a hundred years ago.” And he said, “Oh, crime in Cuba.” And he hung up the phone. And I thought, “I don’t have a crime in this book.” And I’m 250 pages into it. [Laughter] It was a crime that this guy was running guns to Cuba, but that’s not what I really write about. Where’s the bag of money that everybody wants? I didn’t have it. So, then I started weaving it into the narrative. I didn’t have to go back far, and I was on my way.
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
BE COOL
"Thoroughly entertaining . . . Wonderful and terrific."
New York Times
"The Godfather: Part II of crime novels . . . It works in every way. . . . Be Cool is funnier, smarter, hipper, more clever, more audacious, and more surprising than Get Shorty, which makes it just about the best novel Leonard's ever written. . . . The first book was great. This one is better. Leonard has beaten the odds and exceeded the high standards he sets for himself."
Portland Oregonian
"While Leonard excels at low-life suspense, he's also a master fiction writer whose gift for dialogue and cunningly meandering plots any novelist would envy."
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
"The finest thriller writer alive."
Village Voice
"Leonard went ahead and wrote the same perfect book all over again. And made it even better the second time around. It's all very deftly done, and—remarkably—just as fresh as it was almost a decade ago."
Salon
"Crime fiction's greatest practitioner. Elmore Leonard has reached his audience because he writes books about the kinds of people we want to be. His heroes know who they are, are supremely self-assured, and are invariably cool under pressure. Sure, it's wish fulfillment, but it's also entertainment of the highest order."
Washington Post Book World
"The King Daddy of crime novelists."
Seattle Times
"Be Cool rewards readers with sharp, wry dialogue and observations that provide keen insight into the minds of criminals and music people—who are sometimes one and the same. As the plot spins faster than an old 78 record, everyone's life becomes a movie with a varied soundtrack. Russian mobsters, helpful cops, a Samoan bodyguard—it's Leonard's typical cast, and their story is entertaining to the end."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"There's nobody like Elmore Leonard."
Cosmopolitan
"Be Cool has all the hallmarks of Elmore Leonard's best novels: his uncanny ear for the way people really talk; his well-researched approach to his subjects; his attention to detail."
Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Leonard is a terrific writer who fills his page with rat-a-tat one-liners, vivid descriptions, and irreverent takes on almost everything. But the best thing about Be Cool is its hero. Smart and decent, with a unique outlook on life, Chili Palmer is a true original. You just can't help liking him, and you eagerly await his next adventure."
Denver Post
"A wildly entertaining page-turner . . . As terrific as he has been in the past, passages of Be Cool exceed standards the author has set."
Detour
"Elmore Leonard has the best ear for dialogue in the crime-writing biz."
Playboy
"We first met Chili, the droll creation of crime-fiction master Elmore Leonard, in Get Shorty. Now Leonard is back with his even funnier Be Cool."
USA Today
"Lots of fun to read . . . The plot is full of compelling incidents and twists, and the dialogue, as always, rings wonderfully authentic."
Lexington Herald-Leader
"Terrifically entertaining . . . Be Cool's running gags and in-jokes on the movie game are highly amusing and its rock scene banter is equally fresh."
Wall Street Journal
"All the familiar pleasures of a Leonard novel are here: spot-on detail, language sharp enough to mince a coconut, and real heat between believable men and women."
People
"The reigning master of hard-action crime fiction."
Cincinnati Enquirer
"When Elmore Leonard's people start talking, I can't help myself, I have to listen."
Lawrence Block
"Scandalously funny . . . A cartwheeling affair."
Esquire
"Leonard's plotting is as propulsive as ever and his desert-dry wit continues to flare at high heat. Nearly every sentence of this novel reads as if it's dipped in gold. This is a knockout work from a master crime writer: Be cool, and relish it."
Publishers Weekly
"Fast-paced . . . A funky, hard-boiled crime novel . . . Don't wait for the movie."
Maxim
"Leonard remains a master of scene-setting, wry dialogue, and suspenseful plotting. . . . Leonard has made a triumphant return to Hollywood. We'd be happy to make the trip to L.A. with him and Chili Palmer anytime again."
Sacramento Bee
"Nobody but nobody on the current scene can match his ability to serve up violence so light-handedly, with so supremely deadpan a flourish."
Detroit News
"Elmore Leonard is the king!"
Houston Chronicle
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.
BE COOL. Copyright © 1991 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.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2002 ISBN: 9780061804861
First HarperTorch paperback printing: June 2002
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
&nbs
p; Chapter 26
The Extras
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Elmore Leonard be Cool
Books by Elmore Leonard
Copyright
About the Publisher