Favorite and Least Favorite James Ellroy Novels?

[mitchum]

For me:
Favorite: "American Tabloid"
Least Favorite: tie between "White Jazz" and "The Cold Six Thousand"

Yours?

Thanks,
mitchum

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Favourite: "The Big Nowhere"

Least favourite: "White Jazz" (although some of his earlier stuff is a bit uneven, too...he only really found his voice with "The Black Dahlia", I think).

[mitchum]

4. Did you find the writing of "White Jazz" a stylistic mistake?

Until then he had been building up to this feverish white hot obsessive style, but he seemed to go into a fragmented, telegraphic, near-Burroughsian approach with "White Jazz". And, of course, that is a distancing style. And it dilutes the obsessive quality. I enjoy the other 3 from LA quartet ("Big Nowhere", "Black Dahlia", and "LA Confidential"

I also enjoy the three Lloyd Hopkins novels. Long ago he said there would be a fourth ,but I think he abandoned the plan when he realized that Duane Rice, the criminal, had come to dominate "Suicide Hill" Ellroy said that he only wrote one book with the criminal as protagonist with "Killer On The Road", but I think that he came to realize that Rice was over shadowing Hopkins in "Suicide Hill" , and he abandoned plans for the fourth.

While "Brown's Requiem" and "Clandestine" do suffer from Chandleresque chivalry and sentimentality and are uneven works they still stand above the work of his contemporaries.

"THe Cold Six Thousand"? I think that he just let the chronology of historical events plot the book for him. And, of course, he liberally added a lot of patented hinky Ellroy touches. I suspect that that he got lazy.
Great! Now, he's going to come over to my house and call me a string of vile names.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. I don't know.

I'm of two minds there; the writing style in the context of the quartet of novels makes for a rather jarring departure, but as the last book of that particular set of novels the frenzied, fragmented style works in a way, as part of a larger stylistic theme--things breaking apart, the end of an era, the world moving more rapidly and even more uncertainly than before--that segues pretty well into "American Tabloid"; overall I think that my biggest problem with "White Jazz" was that I didn't find Dave Klein to be a very compelling protagonist, and after the buildup in "The Big Nowhere" and "LA Confidential" Dudley Smith's comeuppance was a grotesque anticlimax. I just felt sort of let down by it, really.

[mitchum]

8. I do see you point about the stylistic change in White Jazz...

and how it's frenzied style mirrored a breaking apart and the end of an area. Completely agree with you about the grotesque anticlimax of Smith's comeuppance. He empodied righteous monster or self styled scourge of god since his first appearance in "Clandestine" and his fate was a let down. I also agree that David Klein was just not very compelling.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

2. Favorite: American Tabloid.

Don't have a least favorite, since what I've read of his is great, but I'm about to start The Cold Six Thousand.

[swag]

3. I only like his memoir "My Dark Places."

[mitchum]

6. Yeah, but who among us isn't partial to authors who put their mother's crime...

scene photos on the jackets. We're just a bunch a sentimentalists :)

2 funny stories about "My Dark PLaces"
My friend Jim bought me a signed copy for Xmas several years, BUT JIm (who is quite a good forger) wrote an inscription above Ellroy's signature filled with some heavy honoerotic sentiments

Ellroy appeared on Dennis Praegers short lived syndicated TV show in order to pronote the book. He opened with his standard spiel about how he loved his mother, he despised his mothrt, he lusted for his mother and for a long time he masturbated to the memory of this mother. The group of tourists were aghast at this last particular statement. Ellroy realized this and masterfully pulled out an "Oprah word" when he saw that he was losing their sympathy. The magic word? Closure. Worked like a charm and he had them for the rest of the show.
I have that VHS in a box and nreed to dig it out in order to rewatch that masterful performance.

[swag]

7. Sounds wonderful.

Please upload to the somewhere.

[mitchum]

9. Hey, there are no ladies posting on this thread?????

What's up with that?

[swag]

10. My girl loves Ellroy.

Dragged me to a reading of his.

She's just got better things to do than post shit on the interwebs, I guess.

I don't.

[mitchum]

11. My wife enjoyed "Clandestine" but she threw "Killer on the Road" across...

the room with the comment, "Dressing up like a villian from Cougarman comics! This is fucking ridiculous!"
My explanation that it was transcendently ridiculous was to no avail.

[swag]

12. The philistines are always right, they only err in their suppositions.

I am counting myself among the philistines here.

Really, I can't stand his prose style, if you want to call it that.

But he loves it, so there you go.

I should give him another chance, but vita brevis and all that shit.

Best to you.

[mitchum]

13. You want to know who he stole a lot of his prose style from and he never admitted it?

Ed Sander's hip rebop vulgar style in "The Family" True.

I was rereading "The Family" several years ago and noticed that. So, I called up another Ellroy buff, and told him that I was going to read him a passage and I wanted him to tell me who it was. I read a page, and my friend replied, Why that's our favorite cryptonazifag Big Jim Ellroy"
When I told him that it was Sanders, his reply was "Well, well, well..."

swag, you are no philistine of any type

[swag]

14. Oh, no. The dunebuggy attack battallions!

Sleazo Inputs!

Wow, you've opened up a new realm of applied literary criticism to me.

Muchas Gracias.

[mitchum]

15. I kid you not. Uncanny. And probably not coincidental.

Akin to Lou Reed not uttering the name Hubert Selby for 25 years or so.
Delmore Schwartz...Delmore Schwartz...Delmore Schwartz...Delmore Schwartz...sure, Sweet Lou