Bill Denton wrote:
> Did you read the LA Quartet in order, or did you
jump to WHITE JAZZ out of
> sequence? Going in order and watching the language
change from book to
> book was a great experience, and I loved them all.
Skipping to the last
> without preparation might confuse a
reader.
Read them a bit out of sequence:
BLACK DAHLIA LA CONFIDENTIAL BIG NOWHERE WHITE JAZZ
I don't think I was confused. I think I wasn't entertained. I
thought DAHLIA was a great book. I liked LA CONFIDENTIAL, but
confess to enjoying the movie made from it more (when was the
last time you heard someone say the book wasn't as good as
the movie? Last time for me? PATRIOT GAMES). I liked THE BIG
NOWHERE less than the previous two, and WHITE JAZZ not at
all. A coke-snorting, corrupt cop, with the hots for his
sister.*sigh* I suppose that Ellroy had to go somewhere in
this vicinity eventually. After all, he'd left himself
nowhere else to go with it anyway, had he?
Of course it could just be me. Like I said, your mileage may
vary. On a first reading I liked Ellroy's MY DARK PLACES
memoir of his mother's murder and his own subsequent attempt
to solve it years later. In fact, I liked it immensely. But
it didn't stick with me. I suspect the knowledge of his
background and his own personal demons when it comes to
female relatives might have colored my view of WHITE JAZZ,
which I read after I read MY DARK PLACES.
It could be like Ross MacDonald's obsession with young people
who go missing and how their current problems nearly always
tie in with some crime committed a few decades earlier. He
was clearly exorcising some demons in riffing on that theme
over and over and over (and over and over). I didn't mind
that nearly as much as I did WHITE JAZZ.
Just my .02-
Brian Thornton
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 Feb 2006 EST