RARA-AVIS: more Ellroy

Levin, Doug (DLEVIN@DIRECTIMPACT.COM)
Thu, 16 Oct 1997 13:12:07 -0400 Just to make things interesting, I'll put in a voice of dissent on
Ellroy. I've read Black Dahlia, Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White
Jazz, and American Tabloid. I think the Black Dahlia is the best, but
none of them strike me as great books. They move fast and have a lot of
intensity, but they didn't resonate with me too much.

Ellroy has made claims that he's moving out of the genre, into the
grander historical novel. I'm not quite sure where this idea comes from
or what it will mean. He clearly wants to be a Novelist with a capital
N, rather than a crime writer. On the other hand, I don't think he's
pulling it off. To my mind, the stronger novel on the Kennedy
assassination is DeLillo's _Libra_. (A novel that Ellroy himself
praises strongly.) Of course, DeLillo does not write with the
page-turning intensity of Ellroy, nor does he mean to.

Ellroy fans should look at a book called _Unchained Memories_, by a
psychologist or psychiatrist who does work on "recovered" memory. One
of her case studies is Ellroy, visiting the stuff that now forms part of
his recent memoir. The writer seems to have "rewritten" Ellroy himself
in a way that he seems to have taken to.

Other dissenters on Ellroy out there?

Doug Levin
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