Meet the "Dickens of Detroit"

Elmore Leonard gets a hefty profile in The Washington Post. When I began reading it, I at first thought the opening paragraphs were from a Leonard story; but no. The story is Leonard. Except the call him 'Dutch.' 

Dutch lives in suburban Detroit, but his world is off-kilter America, primarily a vision of the lower end of the post-Vietnam era, when the margins got thin, the morals of the nation got cloudy, and irony became a survival mechanism.

And Elmore Leonard is the winner of this year's F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature. Previous winners include Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and E.L. Doctorow.

I'm interested in Leonard, because, like Stephen King, he holds an uncommon balance between being relegated as a 'mere' popular novelist and being an esteemed 'literary writer.' The fact that successful movies have been made from their books--again and again--makes some folks sniff. The establishment about had a hernia when King won an honorary National Book Award a few years back; King rightly slammed that isolationist mentality in his acceptance speech as being a death knell for literature. 

I'm curious what the response will be for Leonard's award.

From the article:

Leonard isn't Raymond Chandler, the designated crime writer allowed to perch upon Mount Literature. He was a copy writer for an ad agency who started writing for pulp western magazines in the 1950s, getting up at 5 a.m. to crank out a couple of pages before work. He didn't have a bestseller for 30 years.

"It came down, on the final ballot, to Elmore and John Irving,' says John Moser, the conference president. "Elmore won."

I admire the writing of both King and Leonard, though I've read much more of King's writing. Leonard's Complete Western Stories and another book of his short novels sit on my shelf and welcome me to read at will. The work ethic of these two writers is irreproachable; it gives me something to aim for. And it's thrilling to see how often their hard work is rewarded with brilliant stories and sharp writing.

Thanks (again) to Chris for the link to the Leonard profile.