David Carr has a wonderful piece about Elmore Leonard in today’s New York Times. I suggest you read it, then go get Leonard’s latest, The Hot Kid.” But here’s a couple excerpts:
He writes seven days a week in the living room of a nice house in the suburbs here with a No. 5 Pilot Pen on unlined yellow paper. He does not use e-mail or a computer. He types the handwritten pages on an I.B.M. Selectric, which occasionally breaks down from daily exertion.
“There’s one name in the phonebook who repairs typewriters,” Mr. Leonard said, adding, “he says he can live on $6,000 a year. He lives in a trailer park.”
…
This great American author, one of the best dialogue writers ever, lets people at charity auctions bid for the right to name his characters; Ed Hagenlocker, a “hard-shell Baptist” and cotton farmer in “The Hot Kid,” got his name that way. “Why not help them out?” he said.
…
“Elmore always says you have to do what you love; otherwise, what’s the point?”
And that explains 40 wonderful books.