<< I love Ellroy's books but I find his semi-invented
persona to be a bit
annoying. Would you mind blasting his prose for us so that I
have a more
specific understanding of what aspects bother you?
>>
Gauntlet tossed down (that's me), chip knocked from shoulder
(that's James),
beer spilled (that's the nature of things), challenge
accepted. But you're
going to have to wait a week for an informed and reasoned
response. Haven't
read an Ellroy for a while and I'd like to be up to speed;
also am running a
conference this week and won't have time for much sleep, much
less writing
lit-crit.
And I might add to Malone, and some of my defenders, that I
appreciate his
sense of humor, though I do also wish for more exegesis.
Perhaps I ought to
state clearly that I am going to read _White Jazz_ this week,
and possibly
_LACon_ (if I can find a used copy without the movie cover or
a copy to
borrow; I own it, but I'm not home), because enough people on
this list, whose
taste I've come to respect, think Ellroy is the cat's meow.
Had a bad
experience with _LACon_, but unlike Mark Twain's cat**, I'm
going to try
again--I might be wrong.
I've been a "marshmallow" all my life. Occupational hazard
with the name.
Can't see that that'll get my scottish up at this late date.
Thanks for the
love stories, I'm adding to the ol' list.
Cheers,
Marshall
**
Story about Mark Twain's cat goes like this:
Twain engaged an unsuspecting gentleman in coversation and
said, "Knew a cat
once that sat on a hot stove."
"Um," said the rube, not quite knowing what to expect.
"Never sat on a hot stove again," Twain continued.
"Seems like a pretty smart cat to me," opined Twain's
foil.
"Naw," said Twain, zeroing in for the kill, "damn cat never
sat on a cold one
neither."
What I'm wondering is where precisely I read this little
vignette recently.
It wasn't _here_ was it?
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.