Join author C.M. Kushins at the Caroline Kennedy Library, on June 1, 7:00-8:30 PM to hear him talk about famed Michigan author, Elmore Leonard and his own award-winning book, “Cooler Than Cool: the Life and Works of Elmore Leonard.” C.M. Kushins shows how Leonard became one of the most successful storytellers of the 20th century. Author book signing will be available afterward. Book Beat will be selling books at the event.
AN EDGAR AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL WORK
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Consistently engrossing … Kushins does an excellent job of guiding us through Leonard’s stories, manuscripts and adaptations.”
– Wall Street Journal
Drawing on unprecedented archival and family access, Cooler Than Cool: The Life of Elmore Leonard, is the first comprehensive biography of the master American crime writer, author of witty, gritty bestsellers like Get Shorty and Raylan.
Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard, “the Dickens of Detroit,” published forty-five novels that have had enduring appeal to readers around the world. Revered by Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King, his books were innovative in their blending of a Hemingway-inspired noirish minimalism and a masterful use of realistic dialogue over exposition—a direct evolution spurred by his years as a screenwriter.
Leonard’s fiction contained many layers, and at the heart of his work were progressive themes, stemming from his years as a student of the Jesuit religious order, his personal beliefs in social justice, and his successful battle over alcoholism. He drew inspiration from greats like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but the true motivation and brilliance behind his crime writing was the ongoing class struggle to achieve the American Dream—often seen through the eyes of law enforcement officers and the criminals they vowed to apprehend.
C. M. Kushins tells Leonard’s full life story against recurring themes and evolving storytelling methods of his work, drawing on interviews with primary sources ranging from Leonard’s family and friends to those who acted in, produced, and directed his work onscreen. He also includes never-before-published excerpts from Leonard’s unfinished final novel and planned memoir. Definitive and revealing, Cooler Than Cool shows Leonard emerging as one of the last writers of the “pulp fiction” era of midcentury America, to ultimately become one of the most successful storytellers of the twentieth century, whose influence continues to have far-reaching effects on both contemporary crime fiction and American filmmaking.
“Monumental.” – Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Cooler Than Cool is an anatomy lesson. It demonstrates that Leonard, as often as not, was writing close to the bone—much closer than many of us suspected. . . . The fun of it resides in the minutiae of Leonard’s mores, or in those interludes when he rises, with reluctance, from his typewriter. . . . The crowning surprise of Cooler Than Cool is that it stirs the heart.”
– New Yorker
“Comprehensive, enlightening.”
– Los Angeles Times
“True Leonard fans will love the heavily detailed account, with page after page of facts about the author’s 45 books, countless movie scripts and short stories.”
– Denver Post
“Exhaustive, though never exhausting…A rich biography of the genre’s greatest writer.”
– Toronto Star
C. M. Kushins has been a freelance journalist for over fifteen years and his work has appeared in High Times and The Daily Beast, among others. A musician himself, he is also the author of the acclaimed Warren Zevon biography, Nothing’s Bad Luck. He lives in Berkeley, California.