The Library of America, a
nonprofit organization that publishes, preserves, and celebrates America's
greatest writing, looks back at when the late, great crime writer Elmore Leonard
was a young Western writer.
Months after he graduated
from the University of Detroit, Elmore Leonard began writing Western fiction.
In April 1951 he submitted his first Western story, “Tizwin,” to the pulp
magazine Argosy. It was rejected, but an editor encouraged him to send more. “Trail
of the Apache,” the third story Leonard wrote—and his first published
story—appeared in Argosy’s December issue. The magazine’s fiction editor James
B. O’Connell cautioned him not to give up his job: “You ought to know right at
the beginning that writing for a living is a most hazardous occupation.” By the
mid-1950s Leonard had developed a routine, getting up each morning and writing
for two hours before making breakfast for his kids and heading to a job as a
copywriter for the advertising agency Campbell-Ewald. “I had a rule that I had
to write a page before I put the water on for the coffee,” he said later.
His employers began to
realize they had someone special working in their offices. In October 1956
Campbell-Ewald took out a full-page advertisement in The New Yorker, showing
Leonard at his typewriter with a cow skull, two six-shooters, and a rifle on
the wall behind him. The headline: “Meanwhile, back at the agency.” The ad
described him as “a rising young writer of Western novels” whose “gunsights
never become entangled in fancy verbal foliage.”
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
You can also read my Crime
Beat column on Elmore Leonard via the below link:
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