A familiar feeling, Vicky. Halfway through the Quartet, plus
HNocturnes, I
am drawn on by the insides of his characters, the energy that
flows through
them, an awareness of the Awful that (so far) doesn't seem
weary, and some
very inventive and ingenious plotting.
Perhaps because of the size of his novels, I am reminded of
Theodore
Dreiser. Flaws, problems of style and sensibility are
obvious, exposed on
page after page, but they don't seem to matter. When he
speaks in his "own
voice," without the fictional screens, I gather Ellroy is
more problematic.
So more than one person on this list has said. At which
point, we invoke
a modernist idea, "Trust the Art, not the Artist. The Artist
is a driveling
liar..." [Fr. something D.H. Lawrence wrote, probably
misquoted.]
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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