I am sure you have heard the news. We lost one of the giants of modern American pulp letters, and these days, that is about as good as literature gets. Elmore Leonard, 87, has passed of consequences of a stroke.
Big Mama and Elmore had something in common, well beyond just being long-time residents of suburban Detroit.
Big Mama taught a variety of specialized English courses at Kenowa Hills High School, and when I look at the sad state of modern education in America, I am amazed at what she was able to get away with. She taught “Bible as Literature,” which would of course be crucified as a back-door means to get religion into the classroom, though critics would be wrong.
Big Mama thought her students ought to know something about where their culture came from. She taught a module on the modern Science Fiction genre, and one about mysteries, which is how popular fiction became a building block in my life. It is also how Elmore Leonard became our family’s favorite pulp author, and why his death yesterday, at the same age as Big Mama, connected me back to her passing.
And that of Detroit, BTW, and there is some amazing crap happening as the Arsenal of Democracy stumbles through Chapter 9 bankruptcy. I will stay away from that topic today, though there are echoes of it elsewhere. In point of fact, Elmore got out of the city before it passed away and he died in Bloomfield Hills, the Oakland County suburb across Maple Road from the town where I grew up. So, it is a matter of local pride I feel this morning, along with an appreciation of a great writer.
I came to appreciate the singular genius of Mr. Leonard through the 40-odd novels published through all of my reading life. You know the ones that turned into movies- maybe “Get Shorty” is the most famous, but he popped back into my consciousness last year when a good pal tipped me off to some great television in the form of the FX Channel series “Justified,” which was based on Elmore’s story “Fire in the Hole.”
So rarely does a print character ever become so well personified by a living actor: Raylan Givens, as portrayed by actor Tim Olyphant, is so mischievously appealing that I defy anyone not to get sucked right into Harlan County, Kentucky, where the show is set.
With a major connection to Detroit, and the mob, of course.
But of course, the magic came from the dialogue penned by Elmore.
I was going to lead you on a merry chase somewhere else this morning, and may get to it in a minute. In the meantime, before we salute a Great American and wish him to rest in peace, I thought it was worth passing along his “Ten Rules for Writing,” which he listed for USA Today back in 2007. Here they are, just in case you have forgotten:
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
In my mind, Elmore nailed it. Along with the classic misdirection of Mark Twain and the modern brevity of Stephen Crane, that is the basis for the American narrative.
That is just the prologue to the other story, which is just one of the reasons we need Elmore more now than ever. “It was a dark and stormy night, when suddenly, he breathed heavily, all hell broke loose!”
It is way beyond even the wildest of his stories, but he might provide the dialogue that would be appropriate to the crime- and crime it is, let there be no doubt.
There is a story going around that there is no gold in Fort Knox. It is all gone. Elmore would have loved telling you the tale. I am sure he knew about it before the stroke that finally took his life. You may remember it, too, though it just blipped on the Mainstream Media.
The Germans informed us that they wanted their gold back. The Federal Reserve hemmed and hawed a bit, and then said they could have it , but it would take seven years.
Queer story, don’t you think? It doesn’t meet the common sense test, does it. In fact, it almost seems as if Mr. Bernanke was thinking he had to go somewhere and score the metal, just as if the real stuff the Germans had stored with us might have….you know…been used for something else.
They say that the German Gold is 80 feet underground, with the holdings of other nations, under the Manhattan branch of the Fed. Everything is fine. Don’t be alarmed. What could happen to something in Manhattan, after all.
Here is how it came to pass: during Great Hate II, the Federal Reserve convinced many countries worldwide to secure their holdings within the United States for safety. As a result, the Fed has received over 7,000 tons of the precious metal. Almost all of it is foreign-owned, and that is where things get strange.
(The US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, KY, not far from Harlan County. Photo US Army.)
FDR grabbed the gold held by US citizens in 1933. We are all uncomfortably aware of the sort of unconstitutional things our Government can do in the name of a crisis. Mr. Roosevelt made it a serious crime to hold onto what had been legal tender. He had it all trucked, not to Manhattan, but to the impregnable Fort Knox in Kentucky that opened for business in 1937.
The Fort is coincidentally just up the road from Elmore Leonard’s version of Harlan County.
There have been stories going around that there is no gold there anymore- that it was mysteriously trucked away during the Nixon Administration, and the implication that there is nothing golden tucked away in the nation’s piggy bank except what may- or may not be- under the Fed in Manhattan.
You would think that would be easy to ascertain, wouldn’t you? The Treasury audited itself for holdings last year and assured us “everything is fine.”
But they did not audit all the gold it holds, nor did it issue a report on the paper trail on all the obligations associated with the little heavy bars of yellow metal. It could be that the physical gold is there, but that the leveraged paper that covers it has been so oversold that a run on the bank would produce chaos.
(This gold is in a Swiss vault. There has not been a detailed inventory of US gold holdings in nearly 60 years. Wonder why? Me too.)
Germany has been getting nervous over all those Greeks and Spanish and Portuguese who live in the European basement, and decided to repatriate the gold it owned from the United States. The Federal Reserve informed Mrs. Merkel that repatriation wasn’t possible until 2020. That is curious- and despite pressure from the insistent Germans- the Fed would only open one out of nine rooms to the Germans and refused to allow them inside, only allowing them to look and not touch the inventory.
BTW, this is Germany’s property. It would be very much like me driving over to Navy Federal Credit Union and demanding my money and having them tell me “Well, we’ll show you a little bit of it…but you can’t touch it or have any of it. For seven years.”
This has led to concerns that perhaps all isn’t as it appears.
Many are wondering if the gold exists at all, or whether in the name of the Crisis, the Fed used it as collateral on other deals. The way the Federal Reserve is behaving about the Germany request for repatriation has left many people in the international community feeling uneasy.
Me? I am not uneasy at all. Since the Government has demonstrated the propensity to lie about nearly everything, from the real numbers on inflation and unemployment to real crimes and misdemeanors, I would suggest that only Elmore Leonard could write the dialogue for what is going to come next.
He would not do it in passive voice, like the scapegoat State Department flunkies who were just restored to their jobs they “lost” over Benghazi. “Mistake were made,” I think the line goes.
Leonard would not have put up with dialogue like that. He would have said it better. “Get somebody. For Christ sake. Get somebody.”
I am not going to hold my breath, now that he is gone.
(Best fiction author in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and maybe more. Photo NY Times.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303