Josh Weil and Elmore Leonard

What a Liquor Store Heist and a Divorcee in a Pink Teddy Have in Common: A Study of Endings

Swag by Elmore Leonard. New York: Harper, 1976.
The New Valley by Josh Weil. New York: Grove Press, 2009.
Review by Sharon Harrigan

I have trouble with endings. Often I stop a story short before the characters get into the inevitable trouble toward which the story has been propelling them. Leonard and Weil, like most great writers, have figured out the trick, and I’d like to learn from them.

It might seem ludicrous to compare two such different writers. Leonard has published forty books; Weil has published one. Leonard writes urban crime novels (Swag is set in Detroit, which is part of why I wanted to read it) that are huge commercial successes; they are driven more by plot than character. Weil’s book is a trio of novellas (award winning but not bestselling) that are slow moving, about rural people (The New Valley is set in Virginia, which is part of why I wanted to read it, too). Their lives have very little action or thrills; they are borderline autistic and certainly hermits. The book is full of lush, long, digressive descriptions of setting. But there is a lot that is similar about the way they end their stories, which I will show.

SWAG
Swag is the story of two partners in crime, Frank and Stick. They go on a three-month armed robbery spree, knocking off thirty-one liquor stores, using the couple grand or so they bag each time to throw parties in their bachelor pad apartment complex, equipped with “career ladies” lounging around in bikinis at the pool.

The final ending is given to the police officers or detectives who catch the criminals and arrest them. They reconstruct the puzzle pieces, and the whole story closes neatly. But the ending I am interested in is the one the protagonists create for themselves: the scene in which I realized that the story had to end in their downfall.

Frank and Stick are in the middle of one of their boozy parties. All the young hot women in their apartment complex, as well as some hotshot young brokers, are schmoozing, and Frank and Stick  each look forward to pairing up with one of the girls later in the night.

They leave to replenish their liquor. Stick carries a basket of bottles up to the cash register, ready to pay, when Frank comes up from behind and flashes his gun: “Empty the cash register,” he says. Stick has no choice but to play along, but later, in the getaway car, he chastises Frank. This scene is the beginning of the chaos of these characters’ lives. They are imploding.

This scene is such a departure from the rest of the book because Frank and Stick’s partnership is all about following rules—not the law, but their self-imposed rules. Frank calls these “The Ten Rules for Success and Happiness.” (I couldn’t help but enjoy the in-joke about Leonard’s famous “Ten Rules For Writing.”) Some of the rules are: “dress well” and “never tell a junkie even your name.” Frank convinces Stick to be his partner and get a gun (he had only done non-armed robbery before) by persuading him that their work will be systematic and careful and they will get away with it because they will follow the rules. Frank is not only disobeying the rule “always use your own car,” he is breaking the cardinal rule of starting a heist without any preparation.

The beginning sets up the end. Once we get these rules, we have an inkling that the characters are not going to be able to follow them as they promise they will, and this will cause their demise. It is a bit like a fairy tale or myth in which the characters promise they will not do something (e.g. look back to see if Eurydice is following or open Pandora’s Box). As readers, we dread that they won’t keep their word, and horrible consequences will follow. Even though Frank’s rules are self-imposed, we feel the importance of these rules and the suspense and tension they bring to the story.

The spontaneous heist shows that Frank is drunk on power. It’s as if he thinks he can use his gun as currency. Why pay for anything when you can just point a Luger at the cashier wherever you go? It’s absurd and shows he is losing his grip on reality. His next step is self-destructively grandiose: an attempt to rob the entire Hudson’s flagship store; seven stories high and at the time (1976) the department store with the largest square footage in the country. (Ten years later, when I lived there, it was already boarded up. During those 10 years, Detroit experienced its own inevitable unraveling.)

THE NEW VALLEY
The New Valley is a trio of novellas set in rural Southwest Virginia. For my comparison, I will stick to the first, “Ridge Weather.” The three have in common the hardscrabble landscape of Appalachia, the isolated and lonely human beings who are their protagonists, and the sadness of people who desperately want but have no ability to connect with other human beings. The focus of all these novellas is what Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, calls the only real philosophical question: Why not commit suicide?

The story starts as Osby, a middle aged virgin, who lives on a cattle ranch by himself and prefers the company of cows to people, mourns the suicide of his father. His mother died years ago, and he and his father lived together in disharmony but equilibrium for many years. Now that his father is gone, Osby has to decide whether he should join him. It’s not that he misses his father, a cold hearted man of harsh words. It’s more that his father has shown him a way to escape from a lonely life, and he is tempted.

Like Swag, “Ridge Weather” has a scene that signaled the protagonist’s inevitable downfall. Deb, a middle-aged divorcee working as a clerk at the C&O convenience store, has been trying to make small talk with him numerous times, attempts at flirting that the readers recognizes but Osby doesn’t. Finally, he gathers courage to talk to her. The author tells us he was “scavenging for something he could change to make him indispensable to somebody.”

Miraculously, Deb seems to need him. She makes up a story about a broken propane tank. He is excited, not by the promise of sex but by the idea of being needed, and comes to her trailer to have a look. Deb’s preparation in the bathroom, while he waits in her living room is poignant and beautiful. She digs out some scissors and trims her pubic hair, thinking about how she hasn’t had sex in years and this might be her last opportunity.

When she comes out of the bathroom dressed in “a pink teddy hardly covering the tops of her thighs,” Osby tries to contain his terror. He excuses himself, ostensibly to check on the propane tank, but actually flees in his truck.

Like the spontaneous heist in Swag, this scene is comic and absurd. The comedy comes from how over-the-top her outfit is and how abrupt and awkward her seduction is. But it’s also incredibly sad. Osby has been wanting so much to have another person depend on him, to not live out the rest of his life totally alone. His only friend, a high school buddy who drives the school bus, barely tolerates him. He gets a roommate but is so shy he avoids almost all contact. Finally, before he walks into the store, he decides he is going to change his life; he is going to talk to Deb.

The interaction starts out so hopeful. They are both utterly lonely and longing for each other. So, when Osby flees, because he doesn’t have the social skills to handle the situation, we know that he has no chance of breaking out of his isolation. He is doomed to kill himself which is what almost happens at the very end of the story. (He is about to give himself and a dying bull a lethal injection, but the bull miraculously comes back to life, which makes him put away the syringes.)

ENDING AS UNRAVELING

In both stories, the ending begins with the characters starting to fall apart. They become unhinged, unable to contain their yearnings, lose control and veer off the road of their hopes for the future. In “Ridge Weather,” the end begins when the Osby realizes his quest for companionship is hopeless. In Swag, it is the point where Frank is no longer living by any rules, even his own. His quest could be described as living the life of crime without getting caught, outsmarting the system. It is not as noble a dream as Osby’s, but it requires the same kind of writing craft that goes into leading it to its inevitable end.