Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Soderblad, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have as my guest, Elmore Leonard, whose new book, Mr. Paradise, has just been published by Morrow.

I am wondering, because in this book, we've got a real mob of peculiar folk,

clustering around the pages.

And it doesn't let up.

I mean, there are new characters dropped into this narrative.

Oh, as late as 70 pages before the end of the book,

we're still being introduced to new gangs. And it seems as if, because of Get Shorty and Jackie Brown and movies that have been based on your books,

that people know that they're going in there

to meet a whole townful of extremely idiosyncratic characters.

Has that become your emphasis?

That wasn't the way you started, is what I mean.

And I have the feeling that there's a new way.

Perhaps not when I was doing westerns in the 50s,

but I decided that I wanted to put the emphasis on the characters and not the plot,

that if I assemble some interesting enough characters,

I can make up the story as I go along, which is what I do. In 1957, 56 or 57,

...