American tabloid

James Ellroy has called me a panty sniffer to my face. Granted, he calls everyone at his book signings a variety of colorful names, but I still like the idea that I’ve been personally mock-insulted by one of my favorite authors. This is his best novel, and my love for it is pretty much unconditional Leggi tutto

to paraphrase kris kristofferson: if it sounds fucked up, man, that's because it is. sometimes i chug coffee to the point where i'm glazed with sweat, red-eyed, about to crap my pants, and i throw my headphones on and blast either miles davis bitches brew or motorhead ace of spades . i sit down in fr Leggi tutto

Check out the prose. Dig the style. Raymond Carver looks verbose. Hemingway looks weak and fey. Dig the streamlined story. 1500 pages of plot compacted into 576. Dig the violence. The greed. The manipulations, the conspiracies. Check out the Outfit. The Beard. The Cadre. Jimmy and the Klan. The Hair Leggi tutto

The fates of three men, Ward Littell, Kemper Boyd, and Pete Bondurant, are forever entwined in the era of mobsters, Fidel Castro, and the Kennedys. Yeah, that's not much of a teaser but there's no quick way to sum this one up. American Tabloid takes key figures of the late 1950s and early 1960s and pi Leggi tutto

He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History. Whoa, Ellroy's done it again: another 5-star read. So far, that's 5 out of 5 for me. This time, he takes his talent for weaving complex plots and conspiracies from his 50's Los Angeles setting and unleashes it nationwid

Questo romanzo si può dire che segni un confine netto nella mia vita di lettore, la mia linea d'ombra. Ricordo che lo comprai il giorno stesso dell'uscita, o quello dopo, avevo letto qualche anticipazione sui quotidiani (forse conservo ancora un ritaglio della Stampa da qualche parte) e quando lo pre Leggi tutto

Whoa. This book is the literary equivalent of sticking your head out of a car window at 80mph. I don’t hear this talk much anymore, but at one point folks were very interested in defining and/or writing “The Great American Novel.” I assert that this may be it. Forget everything about grandma and her Leggi tutto

I began reading this book around mid-December but given the chaotic nature of my life at the time, I found it nearly impossible to focus. Seeing as Ellroy’s American Tabloid is a novel that commands your attention, a wandering mind will do you no favors. So when things settled down, I picked it back Leggi tutto

“He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History.” ― James Ellroy, American Tabloid Could I give this six stars? I'm almost serious. I've said in reviews of le Carré, that long, long after the temporary prince and princesses of pop literature (Yes, I'm looking at your Foer brother Leggi tutto

This is a LONG read, loaded with umpteen characters and written in choppy, gumshoe detective language. The basic run down -this is a chronologically presented story of three characters who played a role in the eventual assassination of JFK. My curiosity about Jimmy Hoffa, Howard Hughes, J Edgar Hoove Leggi tutto