In a message dated 11/21/02
<< Can anybody here quote a paragraph from Ellroy
>that, to them, shows him a great writer?
>>
I've been trying to be a dutiful word
producer and stick to my lurking, but the Ellroy discussion
has pulled me in once again. The seesawing that's been going
on in this thread appears to center on what makes a "great"
writer, and whether Ellroy has the goods. The challenge to
produce a "great writer" paragraph from one of his books
suggests that he does not.
Yes, he is crude and arrogant and his
writing frequently is self indulgent. He's a showoff, and he
has a childish need to shock. At times he seems to enjoy
rolling in dreck and slurping blood from an oversized
spoon.
Like everyone else, he has stood on
the shoulders of giants, but he has certainly carved out new
territory in atmosphere, pacing, syntax, and style. He's an
original with a marked disdain for nuance, and although his
prose is rarely beautiful, it is unrelentingly powerful. He
moves at breakneck speed through storylines as complex as the
piping diagram for a nuclear submarine, and he gives us an
assortment of fascinatingly flawed characters whom we eagerly
follow for hundreds of pages.
He may not be as great as he thinks
he is, but I can't imagine why anyone who enjoys the genre
would pass him by. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the
Prologue to LA Confidential that exemplify some of the
reasons I enjoy and admire Ellroy.
An abandoned auto court in the San
Berdoo hills; Buzz Meeks checked in with ninety-four thousand
dollars, eighteen pounds of high grade heroin, a 10 gauge
pump, a .38 special, a .45 automatic and a switchblade he'd
bought off a pachuco at the border-right before he'd spotted
the car parked across the line: Mickey Cohen goons in an LAPD
unmarked, Tijuana cops standing by to bookjack a piece of his
goodies, dump his body in the San Ysidro River.
Meeks grabbed the 10-gauge, started
kicking in doors. One, two, three, four-cobwebs, rats,
bathrooms with plugged up toilets, rotted food, magazines in
Spanish-the runners probably used the place to house their
spics en route to the slave farms up in Kern County. Five,
six, seven, bingo on that-Mex families huddled on mattresses,
scared of a white man with a gun.
"There,there," to keep them pacified. The last string of
rooms stood empty: Meeks got his satchel, plopped it down
just inside unit 12: front/courtyard view, a mattress on box
springs spilling kapok, not bad for a last American
flop.
Ellroy puts you right into his
moment, and then pulls you along by your necktie.
Jim
Blue
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