Plain Writing

I once wrote a short story in what I thought was Hemingway's style: short sentences with few adjectives, not much description, plenty of dialogue; I sent it to the BBC and they broadcast it much to my surprise.
A couple of days later a colleague and friend said his wife had heard my story and was impressed.
I thought: "this is the way to write - like Hemingway!"
But it wasn't like Hemingway at all. I've read it since and, though it works as a short story, it's definitely not like Hemingway - it's like Jones - me.
But I am always fascinated by the American writers who write succinctly, plainly, in a hard-ass kind of way - a bit macho you could say.
The great one these days, getting on a bit now, is of course Elmore Leonard. He is not now talked of as being a writer of crime fiction but, in The Times today, as a great novelist.
Yesterday I read the obituary of James Crumley of whom had I never heard (but will soon read him if the local library can get one for me); apparently he too writes in that plain style, no frills, hard-assed.
The obit said he is famous for an opening passage in his novel "The Last Good Kiss": "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonora, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
The Telegraph acclaimed him as "undoubtedly the righful heir to Raymond Chandler."
Big acclaim that!
Does it beat the opening of Chandler's first novel, "The Big Sleep"?
"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing a powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars."
In both cases a sort of wry smile creeps to my lips.... I have to read on.