Tishomingo Blues
by Elmore Leonard
A review by Chris Bolton
I still can't believe this is my first Elmore Leonard novel.
Maybe it's because his work seems ubiquitous to me; an Elmore Leonard film adaptation appears about once a year, with varying degrees of success. For every entertaining Get Shorty, there's a dud like Be Cool. And while I consider Out of Sight a masterpiece and personal favorite, I can't think of anything that would persuade me to endure the recent remake of The Big Bounce (or the original, for that matter).
Maybe it's just that Leonard's work feels familiar. It's no secret that his style -- with its screwball-paced dialogue laden with pop culture references, laid-back humor punctuated by sudden outbursts of violence, and fondness for colorful lowlife characters -- heavily influenced a young Quentin Tarantino (who adapted Leonard's Rum Punch into the overlong but enjoyable Jackie Brown). Following the Leonard-esque Pulp Fiction, a glut of wannabe crime flicks flooded the market; one seemed to appear about every fifteen minutes. Although the makers of these flicks were no doubt inspired by Tarantino and probably hadn't even heard of Elmore Leonard until Get Shorty became his first successful big-screen adaptation, the indirect influence could certainly be felt in their derivative efforts.
I was somewhat startled, then, to realize I'd never actually read a Leonard novel. With the rapturous reviews (an A from Entertainment Weekly, a starred review from Booklist, Publishers Weeklys declaration, "Prime Leonard, prime entertainment"), and without a film version to hinder my imagination -- though there is one in the works, directed by and co-starring Don Cheadle -- Tishomingo Blues seemed like the perfect jumping-off point. Plus, it's about a guy who dives eighty feet into a small tank -- how cool is that?
Well, it's about more than that. Leonard entangles high diving, drug running, a couple of murders, minor league baseball, the Dixie Mafia, the crossroads where blues legend Robert Johnson made his deal with the devil, and above all, a Civil War reenactment into a delirious mixture without it seeming in any way forced. One stretch of plot curves smoothly into the next, and the guy with his hand on the wheel never breaks a sweat.
I find myself conflicted when it comes to the crime genre. I love crime stories. I love the extremes to which they push characters, especially those who would not otherwise be inclined to take action, and the way they rush headlong toward a definitive climax. But I'm also resistant to formula; as soon as I feel it kick in, I'm checking to see how many pages I have to go. This is why I can't get into the Harry Potter books, feeling Rowling's imagination trapped under the burdens of her relentless Scooby Doo plots, and why so much detective fiction fails to satisfy me. I've read the modern greats, including George Pelecanos (Soul Circus) and Lawrence Block (the Matt Scudder series), and while I can appreciate individual moments for their dramatic strength and solid characterization, I can't get past the feeling that other media have pushed the crime genre further. Any episode of The Shield or The Wire is more riveting, more emotionally complex, more dramatically satisfying than the most acclaimed crime novels being published today.
I like structure. I disdain formula. If you can find a way to reconcile the two, I'd love to read your book.
Leonard falls neatly into my crime story parameters. The most satisfying such novels -- recent favorites include The 25th Hour, Mystic River, and Small Town (which, unfortunately, sabotages a first-rate build-up with a cheesy Magnum, P.I. climax) -- explore the inner lives of characters who break the law and have to live with their actions, and the consequences thereof. If Leonard only skims the surface of his characters' psyches, he's canny enough to suggest the depths that lie below.
There was a silence, both of them gazing straight ahead at the highway. Now Robert turned his head again to look at Dennis.
"Trying to figure out what I'm up to, huh?"
"It isn't any of my business."
"But you dying to know."
Tishomingo Blues starts with professional high diver Dennis Lenahan setting up his daredevil act at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi. One evening, shortly before his debut, Dennis witnesses the murder of his rigger -- right underneath him as he stands on the eighty-foot-tall diving platform -- and meets Robert Taylor, a confident, smooth-talking, Jaguar-driving black man from Detroit who may or may not be what he seems. As Dennis worries whether to tell the police what he knows, and thus make himself a target to the killers -- and wonders whether he'll be next on their list regardless -- Robert offers protection and friendship, as well as a business opportunity that might be irresistible if it didn't seem quite so much like Robert Johnson shaking hands with the devil.
This being Elmore Leonard, the cast of intriguing characters doesn't remotely end there. Before long we get a couple of redneck killers, a mobile-home salesman who might well be the drug kingpin of Mississippi, a former minor league pitcher who finds a way to drag his ballpark exploits into every single conversation, a Detroit mobster (Robert's boss) and his girlfriend (Robert's mistress), a by-the-book federal agent who will let the law slide to appease his fanaticism for the upcoming Civil War reenactment, and more than a few women who tempt Dennis to slip out of his swim trunks. The characters aren't as off-the-wall as in a Carl Hiaasen novel, but most of them make a definite impression. While I could have gone for a bit more description, if only to better distinguish one lowlife with a name like Arlen or Charlie or Floyd from another, the distinct voices come through loud and clear in Leonard's much-praised dialogue, as in this exchange between Dennis and a fellow Union soldier in the reenactment:
The First Iowan said, "You missed the drill. We marched out there and showed our stuff. The colonel said we didn't look too bad."
Dennis, now a private, said, "I was getting my stripes cut off."...
The First Iowan said, "General Grant showed up and the colonel wasn't too pleased to see him....The colonel asked General Grant what kind of credentials he had. Who said it was okay for him to be commander in chief of the Union Army? The first sergeant said the general told him, 'Abraham Lincoln, who the fuck do you think.'"
Considering the author is in his seventies and writes sharper dialogue than most writers half his age, each exchange is more than a pleasure, it's practically an achievement. I wish he'd scaled back a little, however. It seems Leonard never encountered an exchange between characters that he didn't want to jot down, word for word, regardless of how necessary it is to the story at hand. I'm not one for strictly economical dialogue, but too many meandering, if pleasurable, interactions between characters lend the book an occasional shaggy-dog feel.
What's more, if Leonard gets the words right, he sometimes misses the music. Like so many other crime writers -- Pelecanos and Burke spring to mind -- he appears to have an affinity for the blues. It makes sense for these authors: the moral compass of the blues is right in line with the treacherous ethical boundaries their characters navigate. It makes less sense to think of a thirty-something African-American drug runner from Detroit being a diehard blues enthusiast rather than a devoted fan of 50 Cent or Jay-Z. It's even more incongruous that every character should share this appreciation in a time when I can't think of anyone who actually listens to the blues with any degree of consistency, outside of crime writers and the characters in their novels.
If Leonard isn't writing precisely about the world we inhabit, it must be said that he writes beautifully about his own world, in which thirty-something adults -- black and white alike -- not only worship the blues, but know old Westerns and war movies by heart:
[Hector] said to [Dennis], "Let me ask you something. You know how to fire a Colt pistol?"
"I know you have to cock it first," Dennis said, "each time you fire. Thumb the hammer back. Or you can squeeze the trigger and fan the hammer, the way Alan Ladd did in Shane, he's showing the kid how he shoots."
"That was a good part," Hector said, "before he faced Wilson, the hired gun."
"And blew him away," Dennis said.
I'm wondering how many Latino gangsters from Detroit have actually seen Shane, let alone recall the names of individual characters. Scarface I could believe, and more recent Westerns like Unforgiven, but Shane? (Of course, the central paradox of the Elmore Leonard universe is that most of the characters he writes about would most certainly have seen all the Elmore Leonard movies, and might more likely reference those films instead of half-century-old Westerns.) As fantasies go, it isn't quite as far a reach as Tolkien, but it's easily as enjoyable.
The emotional core of the book is Dennis's conundrum: he's a risk-taker, and he can't dive forever, but is he willing to accept Robert's Faustian bargain? As he struggles with this crisis of conscience, Tishomingo Blues twists and turns away from predictable, formulaic developments, building to a climactic confrontation in the woods during which the reader can't quite be sure how things will turn out. Leonard handles this sequence with the assurance and skill of a gunfighter shooting cans; the reader hardly realizes a round has been fired until the bullet has hit its target.
Tishomingo Blues is not a life-enriching experience, but it is damn entertaining. It's a crime novel that understands that the crime is of secondary importance to its impact on the characters, and it handily avoids easy formulas. As introductions go, it left me satisfied and often enchanted -- and eager for my next Elmore Leonard fix.
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