Leonard Gardner on 'Fat City' and 'Valentino Returns'

Leonard Gardner is best known for his absence. His debut novel Fat City was released in 1969 to rapturous praise and a National Book Award nomination, but he never published again. He worked sparingly in Hollywood, adapting Fat City into a screenplay for director John Huston in 1972, and then, much less famously, expanded one of his short stories for Valentino Returns (1989). His influence on a generation of writers (including Denis Johnson) was enormous, his output slim. His writing has a lucidity of loserdom, what it feels like to get your head caved in by a right cross or top an onion while nursing a hangover. It’s instructive to look at his two screenplays for how they so faithfully adapt his hyper-local literature to the screen – Fat City condenses while Valentino Returns expands, but both retain the flavorful detail of his snake bit hometown of Stockton, CA.