Re: RARA-AVIS: Ellroy's "Contino"
Upliftr (Upliftr@aol.com)
Tue, 5 May 1998 03:13:10 EDT
Read "Dick Contino's Blues" four years ago in Granta's Winter
'94 issue on
Crime. My first exposure to both Ellroy and Granta. Just blew
my mind. Bill
Hagen's musical analogy is apt--a series of riffs; a jam
session, drum rolls
and all.
Made me go out and buy "White Jazz", as well as zubscribe to
Granta.
In "White Jazz" I was a little disappointed--the prose was too
loud. It
overwhelmed the facts of the story. Maybe I was too distracted
to give it the
time it needed. Anyway, it's definitely not something you can
just pick up and
read for ten minutes while sitting on the throne.
Granta, on the other hand, was bliss. I've been reading ever
since. It's not
always noir, but hey--there's more colors in the world than
black.
Back to Ellroy, I think the purest way to 'get' him is to hear
him read it.
Once heard him read the first chapter of "American Tabloid" and
it rocked.
Made white hot sense.
Anthony Britto.
#
# 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/.