Chris wrote:
>The Ellroys that I've read -- and also "White Jazz"?
-- have this
>tendency to lapse into telegraph-ese, into stacatto
little sentence
>fragments whenever the action gets particularly
fervid. I suppose
>that the intention is to convey "More Vivid Than
Vivid" in these
>verbal outbursts that surpass mere phrase-making. To
me, though,
>it's merely annoying. Rather than draw me in closer,
all it does is
>get me angry at the guy who wrote 'em.
>
>So, basing my phrase on a line from Joe Orton's 'What
The Butler
>Saw," I find myself repeating: "Subject! Verb!
Object! It's a
>*fine* old tradition, and I *won't* be a party to its
destruction
>..."
Just an interesting bit of trivia on Ellroy and his work
habits:
According to comments made by Otto Penzler (a former editor
of Ellroy's) at last year's Bouchercon, Ellroy was (and
remains) one of the most heavily edited writers out there,
every novel going through numerous major editorial revisions
before being battered into shape for publication. I seem to
recall him saying the Ellroy's first novel boasted one of the
worst first drafts he'd ever read, but that there was
something in it that Penzler felt was unique and could be
developed into something really special.
So whatever Ellroy does (or doesn't do) for you, rest assured
it's not some spontaneous literary style bursting out of
nowhere, the result of unfettered genius, but a carefully
worked out, studied and deliberate style, a lengthy and
extensive process that requires a lot of reworking and
laboring over the manuscript from both the author and the
editor. Doesn't exactly play into the literary enfant
terrible mythos, does it?
So while the Mad Dog may or may not be a "hard read," it sure
sounds like it's a" hard write."
--
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