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James Ellroy

Ellroy's recent work is pretty jazzy in style, velocipded. Suggest you try his earlier work. Brown's Requium, Because the Night, etc. are much more standard LA Noir dectecive novels.
 
Coming in Sept: The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

From “one of the great American writers of our time” (Los Angeles Times Book Review): a raw, explicit memoir as high-intensity and riveting as any of his novels.

The year was 1958. James Ellroy was ten years old. His mother, Jean Hilliker, had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband. She gave her son a choice: live with his father or her. He chose his father, and Jean—“half gassed”—attacked him. He wished her dead. Three months later, she was murdered.

Ellroy writes, “I owe her for every true thing that I am. I must remove the malediction I have placed on her and on myself,” and in The Hilliker Curse, he narrates his quest for “atonement in women.” He unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, a nervous breakdown and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her. It is a layered narrative of time and place, emotion and insight, sexuality and spiritual quest. And all of it is reported with gut-wrenching and heart-rending candor.

A brilliant and soul-baring revelation of self—and unlike any memoir you have ever read.
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velocipede2288 said:
Started reading L.A. Confidential. And found it hard going. Difficult to follow the disjointed sentences and American and cop slang.If I hadn't seen the film, I wouldn't know what was happening.So gave up at around 30 pages.
Back to Ian Rankin and Collin Dextor for me.
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I was going to say that I'm sure it's very difficult for someone not from the US to read Ellroy because of the massive amount of slang he uses. Totally understandable if you gave up on it.


I just finished The Big Nowhere and absolutely loved it. What an incredibly immense story. So complex and ends perfectly. His vulgarity, especially with his use of racial slurs can take some people off guard, but it really sets the atmosphere and helps you to understand the kind of people you're dealing with and also what the norm was back in the 50s. Cops basically ran amok.
 
Well, I just read my first Ellroy, and I'm hooked. The Black Dahlia was awesome. OK, all the connections might have gotten a little bit too convenient at times (though obviously, that's the idea), but still... harsh, really well-written, doesn't attempt to turn our protagonist into a simple 101% nice guy, tackles social issues not by preaching but by simply showing and letting it play out. Damn fine book.
 
Oh, I'm definitely reading the rest. If anything, I had to stop myself from immediately running out and buying The Big Nowhere - I don't want to overdose.
 
I have read all of Ellroy's books, most of them more than once. My favorites were L.A.Confidential and White Jazz. His last one, which was about Cuba and Bay of Pigs, was the one I liked the least. There was a movie called Cop with James Woods, which was the Ellroy novel Blood on the Moon with a different title. I think it is a good movie though it did not seem very popular.
 
There's a documentary about him that you can stream on Netflix. I could only make it through about half before I turned it off. He just came across as a complete asshole and egotistical jerkoff.
 
I can see what you mean by this. I had audio tape of autobiography he wrote which he was narrator and he seemed that way also. he was laos a fan of Hitler if this tells you something. At least I think I remember this. Despite this I still like his books.
 
Oh definitely, I still want to read more of his stuff. It's also pretty typical too for people like him to have big egos, so it isn't like I'm surprised or anything.
 
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