I just read LA CONFIDENTIAL (because I loved the film) and, as expected, it was was way more complicated, as most detective books>movies are, but it was HORRIBLY written. Most of it reads like Ellroy’s notes for a novel rather than a novel itself.
Does anyone like this style of writing? Is it not typical of his style generally?
Please don’t give me “modernism” as your explanation–this shit ain’t Joyce, it’s just lazy, sloppy, incoherent writing.
Or am I off-base here?
I think maybe it’s just his style of writing although I suggest that you try reading a couple other books by him, especially his earlier work. I find his more recent books to be less easy to read than his earlier ones; the one about the Kennedy assassination (I’m blanking on the title here) was imo especially bad, style-wise, in the way you describe. The one about the Black Dahlia murder is a good one, very complicated too–the style is not as … sloppy. It did take me more than one reading, though, to thoroughly figure out what was going on.
Hope this helps some.
If the one about the Black Daliah is one of Ellory’s better books, I hope I never have to read one of his worst.
shudder
Personally, I love James Ellroy. He’s one of my favorite fiction writers ever, although I admit the sparseness of his style in White Jazz (the follow-up to L.A. Confidential) was hard to get into. Generally, his style has never bothered me at all, and I always enjoy his work.
But it ain’t style, Lou. It’s the absence of style. It’s phrases, bits of sentences, endless rehashings of plot elements (often in the same language) in several characters’ narratives, it’s murky characterizations–it’s a stylistic disaster.
Is it that you don’t care about that prose stuff, or do you actually prefer Ellroy’s plot-heavy, style-light writing? Are you hungry for information, and you think all ths prose stuff is artsy-fartsy fancy-dan excess, or does Ellroy actually seem like a good writer to you?
I read some of his fiction and I have to agree with your criticism.
Then I read his nonfiction My Dark Places, about trying to figure out who murdered his mom, and was just blown away. Despite the potent emotional charge of the subject matter, he has a spare, straightforward, matter-of-fact style of writing in that book which pulled me in and kept me hooked. Highly recommended.