Like several of you, I found Nocturnes getting better as it
went along. I
especially liked the cops on the run in "Dial Axminster
6-400," though I
couldn't figure why Blanchard would pass out (or was he
knocked out?) after
a long day of action. Probably missed something. "Torch
Number" had a
nice curve to it, a relatively upbeat ending, come to think
of it. A song
connects you to someone, and all you have left is the song.
Plus
royalties.
What's interested me in the posts about Ellroy is the
research evident
behind many of the stories. I'm in the middle of _The Big
Nowhere_ and
realize that I'm beginning to accept his accounts of the LAPD
as, well,
pretty near the truth. Like a good realist, he's used details
I know are
accurate to pull me into a general acceptance of the
probabilities. But a
question of consistency arises: through the Quartet novels
and these short
stories, Ellroy threads a number of characters-- Meeks,
Blanchard, Cohen,
Loew, among others--and events that reappear or are recalled
enough to
build his fictional world. Sort of like a hard-boiled
Yoknapatawpha
County, the place that William Faulkner built. This leads me
to the
question:
His research suggests that Ellroy is careful about at least
some of his
historical details. Is he equally careful about characters
and stories
that reappear in different fictions? Are they
consistent?
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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