A Blast From The Past

Scarlett Johansson - damn!
Originally uploaded by Phalanx.

I started reading James Ellroy's AMERICAN TABLOID today. I can't belive I bought this book TEN YEARS ago, and am only now just getting around to reading it. I was on an Ellroy kick back then... got roped in by his pieces in GQ magazine, and then picked up WHITE JAZZ just after the movie of L.A. Confidential came out. I didn' t know the book was going to be related to the storyline of the movie. I chose it 'cause I'm an avid jazz fan, and thought there'd be something curiously interesting int eh narrative.

Unfortunately, I learned that WHITE JAZZ was book four in the now infamous L.A. Quartet. So I went back to read THE BLACK DAHLIA (which is coming out as movie with uberhottie Scarlett Johansson -- see accompanying photo 'nuff said). The one thing I noticed is that reading WHITE JAZZ spoils you to rest of his previous novels, as none of them have the pumping rhythm that book has. I don't know how he came up with that literary style, but it boosted his status -- in my mind -- as one of the great American writers of the past century, if not of all time. Fuck it, Ellroy is one of the greatest American writers -- hands down.

What Ellroy does trenchantly good is delve into the unbridled id of his characters (and therefore his readers) and presents thought patterns and mucking around ideas that all men have (women are never expertly delved into , but hey Ellroy is the self-described Demon Dog, bitches ARE going to get short shrift) and makes you examine your core beliefs as a man -- are you an Alpha Male or a Beta Bitch? You'll empathize with murderers, psychos, perverts and all around deviants, because you had those thoughts, too.

Now you might not be considering butt-fucking yourself with a dildo the way one of the cops has a habit of doing in WHITE JAZZ or (ab)using a skull-carved wooden dildo on a stripper/hooker at stag party (do they even have those anymore), but you've been just as perverse in your own way. And Ellroy enables you to rejoice in your own degenerage behavior, because his characters are at once repelling and compelling -- much like each and every one of us.

The curious thing about reading Ellroy ten years after his serious climb toward national fame as a literary figure, is that his hatred of LA women (not women in general although it sure feels that way) is a direct result of him being a misfit and spending too much time in Los Angeles in his young adult years. Any straight man who spends too much time in LA -- with aspirations of grandeur mind you -- is going feel like dicking down women with impunity and leaving them in cold, because of the sheer ice queen behavior most women exhibit out here.

I certainly became that way... right about the time I was reading WHITE JAZZ, he tapped into the frustration I had with meeting suitablly fuckable women in Los Angeles. The I'm-better-than-you-just-because-you-want-to-fuck-me mentality that far far far tooooo many LA women have was fucking with my brain, and I harbored a lot anger.

Ellroy taps into his own personal anger about the grand dame bitch that is LA and squeezes out curiously attractive vitriolic prose and repugnant storylines with ease, that it made serious think about writing harsh harsh material

What I'd like to see Ellroy do is tackle modern day LA -- with it's moral Babylonian activities of Paris Hilton's Hollywood.

The beauty of entering into a by-gone world as novelist and exploring its unrepentant underbelly is that 20/20 commentary about those times is everywhere and its up to a skilled storyteller to wade through most of the carp to weave a dense story that resonates more so now, because the times were simpler then and therefore more apt for incisive allegory.

I'm only a few pages in on AMERICAN TABLOID and I'm completely reminded of why I liked this underworld storytelling in the first place, but it doesn't have to bite of WHITE JAZZ... although it's too early I guess. And stylistically, the first 50 pages or so of WHITE JAZZ can be alienating.

Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover and the Kennedy brothers seem to be at the heart of this novel, the same way the ripping up of Chavez Ravine was at the center of WHITE JAZZ.

I can't wait to see Scarlett Johansson's nubile flesh in the upcoming film. She fucks pretty good on camera, yet I still haven't seen a break-oout performance by her... mabye this will be it. It sure would sad if her only talked about performance this year is when Isaac Mizrahi squeezed her tit at the Golden Globes...

I digress into slanderous talk.

But that's why you read, isn't it!?!!?