I responded to Kerry's assertion that Ellroy's panty-sniffing
exploits lent him veracity with:
"So, to pick just one, Donald Westlake's work lacks veracity
because he is "nothing but" a damn good writer?"
Kerry responded:
"I didn't say that. And you know better."
You're right. I do.
However, I don't think my (or Kevin's, if I'm reading him
right) objection is not so much to Ellroy's past as to the
way he exploits that past. You may very well be right that it
informs his work, lends it veracity. But why does he have to
smirkingly tell us the same damn stories over and over
again?
For instance, let me compare him to George Pelecanos. George
talks very little about any possible misdeeds in his past. He
is even sorry he ever publicly told the one personal story he
did, about a gun going off and almost killing a friend. It
seems pretty clear that much of his writing, particularly his
early books, is based on personal experience, but George
wishes to be judged by his work, so he tries to fade behind
it.
Ellroy never lets us forget his past. He recounts, at high
volume, every sleazy little thing he did in his youth. And
while I'm sure he was indeed a slimy little shit, I refuse to
believe he is not inflating his roll in the mud. It no longer
has anything at all to do with veracity, but with myth
making. He is now writing his own persona larger than his
characters. And it is affecting his work, in my mind. I found
the uniformity of voice, the same voice as his public
persona, in American Tabloid incredibly tiresome. It killed
my interest in reading any of his future fiction. And I was
once a huge fan, turned all of my friends on to him. To my
ear, with that book, he became a self-parody, intentional or
not.
On top of that, I could no longer ignore the racism, misogyny
and homophobia in his books. Up until then, I had pretty much
accepted his rationalization that it was the characters and
the times, not himself who felt that way. But it is his
choice to write only about those times
(and it's not like his earlier, contemporary books didn't
have similar characters with similar views) and those kinds
of characters. Yes, I've seen Kerry's defense that he is
exposing the corruption, bigotry, etc., in our society. No,
he's not. He's wallowing in it. And sometimes he's so gleeful
about it that he seems to me to be championing it. His work
is pure nostalgie de la boue. He misses those (whether mythic
or real) good old days when strong white men were strong
white men, for good and bad, and everyone else knew their
place.
Mark
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