At 07:03 PM 11/24/02 -0800, you wrote:
>JIM DOHERTY wrote:
> > If you're going to arguewith somebody, deal
with the
> > issues he or she has raised. Brian never
said
> > corruption, racism, etc., didn't exist, and to
suggest
> > that he did as a way of showing the fallacy of
his
> > arguments is to fight unfairly.
>
>*************
>I quote Brian:
>"...the only landscape Ellroy is exploring
(mytho-poetic or otherwise) is
>the
>interior landscape of his own dark, twisted
psyche..."
>
>I interpretted this as meaning that the world Ellroy
portrayed was a mere
>reflection of himself with no foundation in reality.
It still doesn't look
>like
>an unreasonable interpretation to me. I'm standing by
it. And I realized
>that I was overstating my case and I believe that
Brian saw the humor I
>intended.
Hold on a sec, Mike. While it's true that I did see the humor
in what you were saying, I also said the following:
"As the person responsible for starting the latest round of
Ellroy "bashing", I suppose it's time I weighed in on the
topic of his importance to the genre et al. As a bit of
background, I was first exposed to his work several years
ago
(late 80s, early 90s) when I read "The Black Dahlia". I was
blown away. I thought it one of the finest mystery novels I
had ever read."
> > What Brian implied, and it's a fair point, is
that the
> > TOTAL corruption Ellroy shows, in which there
is NO
> > character acting from good or noble purposes is
at
> > least as far from reality as a presentation
that
> > suggests that there is no brutality,
corruption, or
> > racism in the ranks of American law
enforcement.
>
>Well I didn't know how to take that statement. I saw
some good in some
>of the characters in every book I read of his. Bucky
and Lee might not have
>been saints in BLACK DAHLIA, but at least they were
trying to bring a
>murderer to justice. Wasn't their supervisor a good
guy? Same for the
>rest of the Quartet. And I think there was a guy or
two in AMERICAN
>TABLOID who at least started out half-way
good.
Allow me to quote myself at length again, since it is
directly relevant to this statement:
"I read 'L.A. Confidential', and was, to be honest,
disappointed, thinking that this was one of the few times
where the film was actually better than the book on which it
was based (Tom Clancy's 'Patriot Games' being another telling
example of this). I then took a chance on 'My Dark Places',
which was brilliant (and disturbing). Next I went back and
re-read 'The Black Dahlia', which stood up well to this
renewed scrutiny. Following that I gave 'The Big Nowhere' a
shot, and couldn't finish it. The same went for 'Brown's
Requiem' (although I really enjoyed his discussions of
classical music contained therein). I got part way in to
'White Jazz' before the whole incest subplot became too much
for me to bother with, and got in the way of my enjoyment of
what might have been good prose.'
"I'm not saying that Ellroy isn't a good writer. I'm saying
his work is uneven. As he has become more succesful, along
with the Proustian 'come roll around for a while in my
just-used bath water' sensibility, I have noted a developing
sense of self-consciousness in his work. As this
self-consciously pretentious tone has evolved, the quality of
his work has (at least for me) eroded considerably."
So there you have it, Mike. I mentioned "The Black Dahlia"
specifically, and one of the reasons I enjoyed it was because
the characters Bucky and Lee where pretty human.
Brian
-- # 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 : 25 Nov 2002 EST