No time for Tolstoy? Put Elmore Leonard on your reading list.

Sometimes I think that all Western literature, from Gilgamesh on down, is really about what it means to be a man. That is, Man with a capital M: a mensch, an hombre, someone who is worth the space he takes up. This is the question of utmost interest to readers of both sexes, at least until the emancipation of women is complete. For men, life is just one test of manhood after another. For women, a good man may be easier to find on the page than in the flesh.

Which brings me to Elmore Leonard. Whatever his standing in the Western canon, he has no equal in the Western canon — you know, the canon that includes the likes of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. He is best known for his urban crime-and-caper novels, but Leonard began his career as a writer of Westerns, and what Westerns they are: Hombre, Valdez is Coming, Forty Lashes Less One. Leonard’s heroes are not heroic, but they are Men. Underestimating them is usually the last mistake their enemies make.

Leonard is the modern master of spare, economical storytelling. Compared to him, Hemingway is a gasbag. This is especially true of Leonard’s short Western fiction, which originally appeared in dime pulp magazines in the 1950s. You should read some. Try Three-ten to Yuma and Other Stories, reissued a few years back in honor of the Russell Crowe movie based on the title story. Your reward will be the pleasure of a good story, with not a second of your time wasted on needless words. Here’s an example from “The Captives”:

“How many did that make?” Brennan asked.

“What?” Chink straightened slightly.

Brennan nodded to where Mims had been shot. “This morning.”

“That was the seventh,” Chink said.

“Were they all like that?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“In the back.”

“I’ll tell you this: Yours will be from the front.”