Anthony Lane, film critic for the New Yorker, wrote an appreciation for Elmore Leonard that is now posted on their website.  When important literary figures pass away, that magazine’s editors and writers share personal stories that serve to celebrate the lives of those who will write no more. On this site, we have studiously avoided obituaries but occasionally shared links to celebrate contributions of the recently departed.

Here, a slightly different purpose for linking to Lane. Yes, read this and better appreciate the prolific author’s contributions, which helps ease remorse at his passing because the contributions keep on giving (if you choose to see it that way). But more to the point here, celebrate the critic’s appreciation.  It takes guts, and mastery of words, to pit pulp fiction against high art (this act of critical bravery is after the jump):

…“The Switch” was published in 1978. Leonard (or Dutch, as his friends called him) had been writing about cowboys since the start of the nineteen-fifties, but he moved on to modern gunslingers with “The Big Bounce,” in 1969, and by the late seventies he was in full spate. The fullness required no enrichment of the style, let alone beautification; incapable of primping, Leonard chose to plane and pare until he ended up with folks like Melanie and Frank. As for their conversation, swatted back and forth like Ping-Pong, the phrasing as dry as a scoreline: if you wanted that brand of comic beat, with all the frills torn off, where did you go before Leonard came along? Early Evelyn Waugh. Continue reading →