My comments are a little off the cuff, but it strikes me that
a sort of
uniformity of emotion drives Ellroy's characters. Think, for
instance,
of Spade Hearns' years of yearning for Lorna (in "Torch
Number"); his
deep reaction to the song that has united them; his pursuit
of her as
motivation and excuse for, say, sticking a loaded gun in
someone's mouth
and pulling the trigger. I think the mode works well for
Ellroy and
that sentiment is important. It is also possible, I suppose,
to mount a
critique of sentimentalism via Ellroy. Does sentiment excuse
or permit
certain actions, mask other conditions, etc.? But such a line
of
argument might require me to dust off some old books that I
don't own
(the best critique of sentimentality that I can think of off
the top of
my head appears in Ann Douglas' _The Feminization of American
Culture_).
I guess I might be saying that Ellroy is less hard than he
appears, and
perhaps his outlook is relatively normative. But maybe I'm
just full of
it...
Doug
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