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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
And he almost succeeded; "American Tabloid" jerked Ellroy out of the crime fiction shelves in the big bookstores and into fiction. And, even more incredibly, Ellroy did it without changing his subject, crime, and his subtext, evil. He did it, as he told me years ago he would, by making each succeeding book "bigger, denser, more complex, more multilayered, more multiplotted, richer, darker, more stylized, dare I say it, more profound." Dare it, dare it. That's exactly what "The Cold Six Thousand" is -- more everything, including profound. It's also exhausting in a way that Ellroy's writing never was back when he was cautiously probing the perimeters of genre with "The Black Dahlia."
Fans of crime thrillers would have complained that "American Tabloid" was nearly as impenetrable as "Ulysses" -- that is, if fans of crime thrillers had known what "Ulysses" is. I think Ellroy knows damn well what "Ulysses" is, and I think he has intended "The Cold Six Thousand" to be his -- dare I say it -- "Finnegans Wake." Ellroy has gotten a lot of ink as a result of carefully cultivating his image as an American primitive, a natural, uneducated talent (you know, little Latin, less Greek) who has succeeded despite having written more books than he has read. But I think Ellroy has read a bit more than he lets on. Innate storytelling ability can get you through the problems of plot, but style is the product of civilization. And Ellroy's style is what Ellroy is about, not the bloodless anesthetizing technique of so much current academic fiction but its opposite, a throbbing, kinetic, neon-lit view of the world that draws the reader into the character's (and author's) pain. Here, from "The Cold Six Thousand":
Carlos laughed. Carlos howled. Carlos oozed delight.The hit awed him.
Me, too, as did this one:
He walked. He grabbed at the cell bars. He anchored himself.There's Betty Mac.
She's on her bunk. She's smoking. She's wearing tight capris.
She saw him. She blinked. I KNOW him. He warned me last --
She screamed. He pulled her up. She bit at his nose. She stabbed him with her cigarette.
She burned his lips. She burned his nose. She burned his neck. He threw her. She hit the bars. He grabbed her neck and pinned her.
He ripped her capris. He tore a leg free. She screamed and dropped her cigarette.
He looped the leg. He looped her neck. He clinched her. He threw her up. He stretched the leg. He looped the crossbar.
She thrashed. She kicked. She swung. She clawed her neck. She broke her nails. She coughed her dentures out.
He remembered she had a cat.
And:
Eldon Peavy vibed butch. Eldon Peavy vibed mean queen.
Here's a night on the town in Vegas:
They caught Dino. They caught Shecky Green. They got ringside seats. They slept late and made love.
Here's sex:
Wayne walked outside. It was windy. It was hot. It was dark.There -- her room/her light.
Wayne walked inside. The hi-fi was on. Cool jazz or some such shit -- matched horns discordant.
He turned it off. He tracked the light. He walked over. Janice was changing clothes. Janice saw him -- bam -- like that.
She dropped her robe. She kicked off her golf cleats. She pulled off her bra and golf shift.
He walked up. He touched her. She pulled his shirt off. She pulled down his pants ...
He jammed her knees out. He spread her full. She pulled him in. She squeezed the fit. They found the sync. They held each other's faces. They locked their eyes in.
And here's my nominee for the Ultimate Ellroy Passage to date:
Pete pulled the blinds. Wayne hit the lights. There:Sink water -- dark pink -- carving knives afloat. Baked beans and fruit flies on mold. Hair in a colander. Dots on the floor. Dots by the fridge.
Pete opened it. Pete smelled it. They saw it:
The severed legs. The diced hips. Mom's head in the vegetable bin.
