Not quite halfway done with this, but I just can't bring myself to finish. I read all of Ellroy's L.A. Quartet (with The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential standing out as wonderful works). I read American Tabloid all the way through and, though I didn't love it, found it impossible to put down. This book suffers from too much for me to continue further. The three-to-five word sentences are assaultive and hardly informative after awhile. The action is more of the same from American Tabloid, and the characters don't have that grey love-hate quality; Mostly I just hate them. The bleakness and violence start to overwhelm after a while. So yeah, I get it. People are going to get rich, and RFK/MLK are going to die. The JFK conspiracy in American Tabloid was so much more interesting.

Ellroy writes. Short, clipped, fragment sentences. Guys do shit. Girls do shit. Many characters are similar. Style doesn't help. '63 -'68. The killing of John to the killing of Bobby. MLK, CIA, FBI. Hoover. Hughes. Vegas. 'Nam. The shit goes on for 670 pages. Is this a novel, or the notes for said novel? Ellroy did this to me with White Jazz. Didn't dig it as much as some of his other stuff. Lack of style. Or wrong style. Minimalism can lead to heavy hits. Big Impact. Or it can come off as absurd. Still I give three. Other Ellroy is better. Shit goes on for 670 pages. Still come away from all of this sketching with distinct impressions. Noir on meth. What's the point? There is a point but the style kills it.

WARNING: reading more than 50 pages of this book after a six hour Marathon Final Fantasy Crisis Core, finishing The Catcher in the Rye and watching a crappy Bruce Willis movie may result in total and absolute psychological melt down… that being said I’ma go put on my aluminum foil hat and protect my cake flour cuz I know them aliens want it!!!

A Masterpiece.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white*” -- nixon was a racist, red-baiting bastard. nixon was a paranoid insecure fuck. nixon jacked off reminiscing about bugging offices and launching latin american juntas. nixon said "make their economy scream" to 'the jew' (his term of affection for kissinger) as a means to destabilize Chile in order to insert an american friendly right-wing dicktator.

LBJ was cheating on Ladybird, stealing elections, calling out political enemies as commies fags or anti-americans, Gulf of Tonkin'ing as a means to escalation, forcing reporters to conduct interviews in the bathroom while he's taking a shit as a means of intimidation: 'eat my ass fumes, cocksucker.'

JFK's banging whores, starlets, singers, and secretaries. he's colluding with the mob to take down foreign leaders. he's running so much CIA blackops he makes Bush look like a friday night regular at Unicorn Alley.

J. Edgar Hoover's wiretapping the fuck outta EVERYONE. he's got bagmen working for the FBI, mucho shakedown and extortion, and a closet full of clothes my grandmom'd love to get her hands on.


that's why mike davis' criticism that ellroy's world is too much a black hole of immorality doesn't hold. when we hear the words and catch wind of the actions we get some sense of what was happening. davis argues that when things are so dark, so black, there's no contrast and everything's flattened. not so. when things are so dark it's like driving drunk: we're being overly careful so we're better at it. in the dark we can see more.

JFK, RFK, and MLK all assassinated within 5 years. all by lone gunmen. make sense?

on the one hand. we feel that the cosmic balance is way off if a major figure such as JFK or MLK is taken down by some irrelevant asshole - it just feels wrong. history doesn't work that way -- some nothing, some peon, can't alter the stream like that, right? maybe. maybe the times created these assholes. maybe peons did and do alter the stream. maybe oswald worked alone but was really an agent of History. maybe oswald was our creation.

on the other hand. it just can't have happened like that. fuck no. as ellroy's j. edgar hoover makes clear in both books, it all seemed to be moving toward a common point. it was inevitable. and it wasn't some random peon influenced by some vague 'Tide of History'. check it: castro nationalizes the casinos and the mob is booted. they're in deep with the kennedys. joe's an ex-rum runner, joe bought w. virgina, joe's crooked and bought his boy the power. his boy: a humper, a stickman, a cuntman. 'get up on top, baby, i have a bad back' MLK incites the spooks, the shines, the smokes; RFK incites the kikes, pinkos, and the young. it's all happening and it's inevitable and it's growing and it's racist and hateful and brutal and hungry and never sated and devouring everything in service of what it is and what it knows and it keeps moving. it's still going.


ellroy's the great american writer of our time and this trilogy, his 'american' trilogy, is shaping up to match (surpass?) what dos passos did with his 'american' trilogy. that is: offer one hell of a fun time while saying something very profound and disturbing about what america is.

america? from american tabloid, the first volume of the trilogy:

'America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.

Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.'


i first met james ellroy when i worked at the book store and he was doing a reading -- i asked if he wanted a drink and he told me rapid-fire that he'd been sober for years but could use six espressos. i laughed. he wasn't kidding: he wanted six espressos poured into one cup. i ran to Coffee Bean and got the order and ellroy gulped it down like water and launched into a tirade of alliterative and intellectual dementia focused mainly on the sleaziness of bill clinton and on his great love for pit bulls. words can't express. ellroy admitted he's upset he'll die in however many years only in that he won't have the time to gain proper distance from the clinton administration to write a book about it.

i love this man.

*a gem, but not even close to one of the best from the nixon tapes

I have to DNF this at 13%. I'm just not in the mood.

In remembrance of my eventual adoration of American Tabloid I'm not going to rate it, but I'm not going to throw it back on the TBR either.

I was glad when it picked up the story right after the Kennedy assassination because I had just read American Tabloid, but the twists and turns and convoluted story lines got tiresome and even though I knew we would end up at the Martin Luther King and RFK assassinations, my interest flagged.

Can a book trouble, offend, unsettle, blaspheme, and ultimately flagellate the senses of its readers and still be a five star book that upon completing you immediately place in your "I will read again" category of important titles? Welcome to the realm of James Ellroy books. The late Barbara Seranella, a wonderful author in her own right, once told me in a long one on one conversation at a book event about attending a particular group's meetings (ahem, I won't mention the two initials of the group) with a prepublished James Ellroy and how in his bold and brash way he informed everyone in group that he was going to be a great and famous writer. Talk about Babe Ruth pointing to where he was going to hit the ball and calling his shot; sometimes these mythological tales really happen. Because he is a great writer, but more importantly, an important writer. So it's ironic that I can't recommend his books to everyone. In a perfect world, the citizenry would be mature enough, curious enough, and desire truth enough to seek out books that expose the underbelly or in this case the ugly underpinnings of what goes on in the seats of power. THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, much like its predecessor, AMERICAN TABLOID, is like Game Of Thrones American style. It's James Michener on crack. It's bold, perverse, obscene, touching, poetic, tragic, heroic, and Shakespearean. Even Ellroy's literary styling is unique. The book often reads more as an epic poem than customary narrative. It is delivered in rhythmic but spare stanzas. It delivers cadenced choruses, reprises, crescendos. It is obscenely lyrical driven by a finger snapping back beat. Who else writes like this? Nobody I can think of. And yet the subject matter is so bold it can not but offend certain categories of readers. One of my favorite behind the scenes stories about Ellroy came from a bookseller who hosted a signing event. The store had a customer who couldn't come to the event who liked to have all her books inscribed "Dear Mystery Lover" by the visiting authors. Ellroy instead inscribed her book, "Lady, this ain't a fucking mystery!" That is vintage Ellroy and exactly why not everyone is ready to go down the Ellroy rabbit hole. But for those who do, the rewards are great. If you haven't read Ellroy and you have a strong stomach and genuine intellectual curiosity, maybe this will coax you into his world. If you have read him, you already know exactly what I'm talking about.

Read it if:
* You enjoy lengthy books and sprawling sagas
* You love thrillers that keep you on edge
* You want to be swept into a whirlwind of hidden truths, power struggles, key figures of 1960s America, and intricate triple-crossing schemes

Don’t read it if:
* You prefer simpler stories without too many details or an overwhelming cast of characters
* You dislike dark, unsettling atmospheres with little hope or faith in the future
* You disliked the first volume of the saga

Why 4 stars:
- [ ] Theme: 5 (The book’s theme is incredibly compelling because the author has fictionalized the historical events that unfolded between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., which occurred just months apart. This novel weaves together real historical figures, including those responsible for the assassinations of these iconic leaders. It also features powerful figures such as the head of the FBI, Howard Hughes, key CIA operatives, and even well-known entertainers and real-life investigators. However, the spies in the story are entirely fictional, engaging in intricate webs of triple and quadruple-crossing intrigue)
- [ ] Plot: 3 (The novel has the feel of a spy thriller with a splatter twist, packed with power plays that are as strategic as they are ruthless. It delves into the grand schemes of espionage while also exploring the daily operations of petty crime that sustain them. This gives the reader a full-spectrum view of the criminal underworld, from high-stakes intelligence warfare to the gritty mechanics of street-level corruption)
- [ ] Characters: 4 (I really like the characters. There are two main operatives returning from the first book, along with a third newcomer. Though they aren’t exactly spies, they’re more like underworld fixers—navigating the murky waters between organized crime, the FBI, and powerful private figures like Jimmy Hoffa and Howard Hughes. They engage in constant double, triple, and quadruple-crossing, making their allegiances as fluid as the world they operate in. I find them fascinating, not just because of their skills but also because they have their own vulnerabilities—they’re not just hardened criminals. That said, I was disappointed that one of the key characters from the first book is gone, having died at the end of that story. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that these characters are merely pawns in a much larger scheme. The revelation is genuinely surprising, as even their own ambitions and desires turn out to have been manipulated for hidden, undisclosed purposes)
- [ ] Fun/adventure/surprise: 4 (I had a fantastic time reading this book—it was genuinely entertaining. There are plenty of thrilling adventures, but what I loved the most was the historical setting, which is by far its greatest strength. The only drawback is that, having read the first book, I already had a sense of the author’s structure for these massive, nearly thousand-page novels. That meant some twists felt predictable. Not everything, of course—there are still two or three solid surprises and a slightly different underlying message compared to the first book. However, some plotlines do feel a bit like copy-paste versions of what came before)
- [ ] Profoundness: 4 (The book has a surprising depth, as it explores the underlying sickness of our society—how everything ultimately revolves around money and power. Even as we recoil from certain dynamics, we’re still drawn to them, fascinated by the very forces we claim to reject. In this sense, the novel carries a powerful social critique. On top of that, its historical value is anything but negligible, making it an even more compelling read)
- [ ] Length of the book: 4 (The book’s length feels justified given everything it sets out to tell—it truly allows the reader to immerse themselves in the vibe and mood the author is crafting. Some details, while not strictly necessary for the plot, are essential for fully engaging with the story on a mental and psychological level. They help flesh out the characters, introduce key dynamics, and add depth to the narrative. For example, the Vietnam section felt overly drawn out. While reading, I kept wondering why it was given so much space. Only by the end does it become clear that its purpose is to help the reader understand the protagonists’ mindset)
- [ ] Language and style of writing: 3 (The writing style is highly innovative and intelligent. The author incorporates made-up newspaper articles, internal CIA memos, and FBI phone transcripts, making for a fascinating and dynamic reading experience. That said, it closely follows the structure of the first book. While this consistency makes sense given the type of novel it aims to be, I couldn’t help but find it a bit repetitive at times)

Fauvorite part
- [ ] It’s not a book to be loved, but one that commands respect. There’s no room for admiration of villains, wrongdoing, or violent revenge. However, the character of Ward Little evokes a certain sympathy for the risks he takes in attempting to undermine the plans of both the Mafia and the FBI

Least fauvorite part
- [ ] My least favorite part is when Otash meets Sirhan. The process of manipulating him into committing murder feels too rushed and underdeveloped. That said, given that we already know how the other two assassinations played out, I ultimately accepted it as part of the narrative

La lettura di Sei pezzi da mille è stata accompagnata dalla visione delle sei stagioni de I Soprano. Che trip, ragazzi.

Man, what a wild ride. This one picks up where American Tabloid ended. Fast paced, the unique writing style in these book takes a while to get used to, but the story is fantastic.

Mi ci è voluto un po’ per abituarmi allo stile iper-telegrafico, ma poi è stato come cadere nelle sabbie mobili