[PEN-L:3355] Re: The pleasures of pulp fiction

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Isn't Leonard from Detroit  ?

Charles Brown

Detroit

>>> Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> 02/14 12:14 PM >>>
My idea of great fiction is something like "Cuba Libre," Elmore Leonard's
1998 historical novel about the Spanish-American war. The main character is
an ex-bank robber and cowboy who has come to Cuba to sell horses to a rich
plantation owner, and guns to the rebels. Leonard's sympathies are with the
rebels.

Most people know Leonard from his crime novels such as "Stick" or "Get
Shorty" which have been made into popular Hollywood movies. There is little
question that this is what he does best and he has never pretended that he
is anything than what he is, a writer of pulp fiction. What's interesting
is that every so often he deals with leftish themes, such as the pro-rebel
"Cuba Libre" or the anti-contra "Bandits," a novel written in the late 1980s.