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

the nearest representation of what 20th century american history feels like. fuck the facts, we'll never really know what that is. and when ellroy's riffing away and it's all over-the-top and just plain stupid and threadheaded to a plot by the american government and CIA to hire the mafia to put a h 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

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

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

“America was never innocent.” “It's time to demythologise an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.” American Tabloid is one of three big books by major authors I’ve read in the last twelve months focus Leggi tutto