I'm with you Jay on this one. I liked the novel but at
times the plot seemed very confusing and it took me several
weeks as apposed to the normal couple of days to get
through the book. After 10-15 pages I had to put it down for
the night. An exhausting read for me in the vein of
Underworld and American Psycho , but more interesting in the
end. And I've never introduced myself. I'm Bryan, DJ/
musician, avid reader and library paraprofessional
living in the Pioneer Valley, Western MA ( Rachel Jones - are
you out there :-) ? ) . I prefer Sun Ra to Sinatra
and have reread Gertrude Stein more times than any other
writer. Back to lurking...
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 23:18:43 -0400 From: Jay
Gertzman Subject: RARA-AVIS: Ellroy's __White Jazz__, a hard
read
James Ellroy's _White Jazz_ seems to me to bog down in its
own plot. The explanations necessary near the end in order to
unravel the intricacies of the Kafesian-Dudley Smith-Herrick
cabal make for a static end. Although the narrator Dave Klein
is fascinating and as tough (and tough minded) as they come,
even he seems to be frozen in d鮯uement. Aren't there at least
one too many historical references: Dragna, Harry Cohn,
Mickey Cohen, Howard Hughes, Sam Giancana, Vampira
even?
I also wonder why Klein sees Ed Exley as "evil". He is as
devious and as much a user as Dudley Smith, but he seems to
be motivated not be sinister self-aggrandisement (unless
political ambition is per se evil) by a desire to destroy the
arch villain Dudley (he has political ambitions of course).
What did I miss?
Klein's desire to go back to LA and deliver retribution so
many years later is fascinating. He says he wants to
"eclipse" his guilt, not expiate it. He's not capable of
anything else. He wants to recapture his lost youth?? to be
the man he once was, and also get his long nurtured crush on
Glenda resolved at last. Kind of funny, since sitcom-famous
Glenda is now well settled in as a national icon of some
kind--maybe Mary Tyler Moore is who Ellroy has in mind? Maybe
Klein, after all, is addicted to his own compulsions, the
same basic kind that define his enemies.
- --
# Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show
up.
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe
rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest
version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
.
------------------------------
===== Be seeing you, Bry
brg30@yahoo.com
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the
inexpressible is music." Aldous Huxley
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and
Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Jul 2004 EDT