What's the deal with Lansdale?

What's the deal indeed? I know I talk about him a lot, including at this blog. But I thought today was a good day to write about how his work influences mine—but also to celebrate the release of his new novel, Moon Lake, which drops today - and I can't wait to dig into it!

It certainly feels like Joe Lansdale is getting more (deserved) attention these days. The three seasons of Hap and Leonard on Sundance TV were critically acclaimed, and his recent publications with the high-level press Mulholland Books (A Little Brown imprint) has put his work in front of a lot more readers. Joe's always had a strong reader base, but in the past it seemed almost like a secret club with hand signals and mystical rites under a blood moon. Should everyone read Joe? Yes, I think they should.

I've told the story before... more than a decade ago, when we didn't wear masks and you could still lick dogs, I was swapping stories with a writer from Rhode Island. 

He told me, "You know you write like Joe Lansdale."
"Joe who?"

And that was it—a fandom, obession, whatever you call it was born. Yes, I did see similarties in the work—yet we were geographically (and I'm sure, culturally) quite different. Still, there was something in the storytelling that I recognized. 

Back to the beginning... 

Like most, I first fell in love with the Hap and Leonard books. They're funny, at times brutal in their violence, superbly well-told, and well-written stories.

Here's what the Tachyon website quoted me saying:

At the centre of this praise for Lansdale are his two best, and most well-known characters, Hap and Leonard. Working class white, liberal, draft dodger Hap teams up with black, gay, conservative, Vietnam vet, Leonard and they… wait, what do they do? Solve cases? Help people? Are their own kind of knight errants? Kick a lot of ass? Well, yes to all those things. It’s kind of hard to describe. They do get into their own sort of trouble, and end up helping people because it is the right thing to do. But really, for me, it’s all about who they are—I read them just to find out what they’re up to. And the characters are so sharp and original that I’d read a story about the two of them going to the grocery store to pick up a box of Vanilla wafers for Leonard (his favourite).

I soon discovered other Lansdale books, after reading through the Hap and Leonard books (which Joe is thankfully still creating). Personal favorites are The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, Lost Echoes, Edge of Dark Water, Freezer Burn, and the Thicket. They're all different, full of great characters, dialogue, action, and Joe's unique lens on the world.

If I had to pull out a common thread in his fiction, I'd say it is the sense of place. Most of his books take place in East Texas, a place I've never been—but I sure feel like I have. His characters live in real places, even if sometimes the names are made up, like LaBorde, Texas where Hap and Leonard hang their hats. I've wondered how much LaBorde is like Joe's hometown of Nacogdoches. But it doesn't really matter, because when I say sense of place, it's more than the towns.

I haven't read the Bottoms in years, but I can still see the deep swampy setting when Harry and his younger sister tromp around trying to avoid the Goat Man. Ditto to the forests in The Thicket, or the cylclone in Sunset and Sawdust (i think that's also the one where it rains June Bugs). But more than the landscape, I can see, and feel, where the characters live. Hap and Leonard live in real houses, they pick roses in real fields, and shit goes down by the Sabine river.

Recently, I've been delighted when readers point out a similarity to Lansdale in my work—although the settings are much different. I guess Hap and Leonard do go to Playa del Carmen in Captains Outrageous, which is at least set in the same country where Luke Fischer drinks Pacificos. But more than that, reviewers have talked about my descriptions of the Upper Penisula of Michigan in Manistique—and how I really captured that area, as well as the bleached, yet beautifully mystical New Mexico. While I've visited those areas numerous times, I've never lived in either place. So to hear that I evoked those settings means a lot.

I think Lansdale was one of the writers I learned this sense of place from—that and the incredible snap in his dialogue. Lots of crime writers talk about Elmore Leonard's gift of dialogue (and they should), but pick up a Lansdale book and take a listen to exchanges like this:

“Ever notice how Christians quote the Old Testament more then the New Testament? That's so they can say mean things, talk bad about the queers and such. New Testament, that's the Christian book. The stuff in red, that's Jesus talk. That's what they're supposed to live their life by, but, no, they like the God of the Old Testament, the mean, judgmental one, before he was on Zoloft.”  
(Lost Echoes)

"They're closing up the Kmart?"

"Tighter than a Republican's wallet."

"You white Democrats, you get on my nerves." 

"Yeah, well what I can't stand is a black man doesn't have enough sense to vote Republican. Shit, man. You look like a fuckin' fool in that hat."

"Let's not talk politics, Hap. It upsets your tummy. And I look fine in hats..."

(The Two-Bear Mambo)

And if for whatever strange reason you haven't come upon his work, start with Hap and Leonard - I suggest The Two-Bear Mambo (but you can start anywhere), and then bounce around. Lansdale's work, for me, transcends genre (and you know how I feel about genre) - and it reveals what's at the heart of a great book... a great storyteller.

Enjoy!