<<I have to agree with this, as well as with the
prohibition against adverbs. I'm surprised that no one has
mentioned it yet, but an early example of this particular
piece of advice is Hemingway-- certainly not only an
admirable writer, but also one who was not the least bit
soft-boiled himself. He claimed to write a piece, then go
back through it crossing out the adjectives and adverbs. Tony
Hillerman also said something to the safe effect at one
point--if you're using an adjective, you probably have the
wrong noun; if you're using an adverb, you probably have the
wrong verb.>>
It's E.B. White's advice, too: "Write with nouns and verbs,
not with adjectives and adverbs" (Reminder 4). And, on
adverbs after "said", see his Reminder 10.
I read Leonard's essay as a summary of what works for him,
for the type of fiction he writes. A travel writer or a
writer of seafaring stories will not and cannot avoid the
weather. In fact, there's no reason to avoid it if it
advances the story.
For example, here are the opening paragraphs of Richard
Hugo's _Death and the Good Life_:
"I imagine the three men having a good time. I imagine them
singing.
We know they'd had beer for breakfast at the Hammer's house,
and we know that Lee's sister, Lynn, had served pancakes and
ham. By six A.M. they were off to catch the early fishing at
Rainbow Lake. It was mid-September, and at our altitude the
nights were already cold. Sedge was receding in the lake now
that the surface water was cooling, and the big rainbows were
coming up. The three men expected to catch fish, and they
felt festive."
I wouldn't remove the weather here or anywhere else Hugo
mentions it. In this book, it's not hooptedoodle, as it is
not in A.B. Guthrie's masterpiece, _The Big Sky_, or in
Gabrial Garcí¡ Má²±uez's _Cien Añ¯³ de Soledad_, or in countless
other books. The weather can even be the protagonist.
Leonard, who is closer to the modern playwright and
screenwriter than he is to most other novelists, knows his
territory intimately, but his territory doesn't encompass all
possible literature (nor does he claim it does).
Regards, he said expectedly.
MrT
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