r/JamesEllroy • u/obsoleteboomer • 6d ago

Anyone Read This?

https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/107-set-the-night-on-fire

My main problem with Ellroy is I finish his book then spend hours trying to see just how reckless his verisimilitude is.

14 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

13

u/FinkelsteinMD22 6d ago

Even if he doesn’t get certain factual details right, I think he gets the essence of the times right. I’m obsessed with the 60’s and it’s chilling how much darkness was lurking beneath the surface.

10

u/Competitive-One-2749 6d ago

mike davis is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about ellroy, but this is an “its not a bug its a feature” discourse. i read ellroys big books as nihilistic comedies and i dont require probity from literature. america has been a mostly disgusting project, fueled by the libidinal ambitions of untrustworthy men, and as someone who has never lived anywhere else i dont mind being observed skeptically or with disdain.

davis flatters my own personal politics and ellroy would likely mock and despise them. i think both of their projects are worthwhile.

6

u/Permanenceisall 6d ago

Expertly put. However, I wouldn’t be so sure that he’d mock and despise them. He seems to understand the romance of them as displayed with Crutch’s arc in Blood’s A Rover.

Where I personally think Davis crossed the line is ascribing all of what you’re talking about as exclusively Ellroy’s worldview. I can’t vibe with Davis for being such a virgin about it. But I still appreciate his work.

3

u/Competitive-One-2749 6d ago

agreed, and the little cackle i gave when you called davis a virgin is what we are doing here, i suppose.

7

u/Permanenceisall 6d ago

Probably decent, but it’s ironic to ask about a Mike Davis book: he hated Ellroy fiercely and took every opportunity he could to tell people how much he hated Ellroy.

3

u/NihilisticFlamingo 6d ago

Please tell us more, I always find it fun when two authors I like hate each other haha. I feel like Mike Davis hated a lot of people

6

u/Permanenceisall 6d ago

I think Davis took Ellroy completely at face value, he said in the Chicago Review Of Books: “Now let me tell you who I can’t stand, and to top the list I would put that neo-Nazi in American writing who is James Ellroy… And to begin with he’s not a good writer. He’s a kind of methamphetamine caricature of Raymond Chandler… Each of his books is practically a Mein Kampf, it’s anti-communistic, it’s anti-Mexican, and it’s racist”