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i'll write some thoughts when i regain the ability to form half-decent sentences
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In "Sei pezzi da mille" di James Ellroy ci sta un sacco di cose, ma sicuramente non ce ne stanno due, nemmeno a pagarle oro: un briciolo di speranza e una frase subordinata.
In un episodio di "The Office", Kevin si convince che per risparmiare tempo quando parla si possono eliminare tutta una serie di parole inutili, mantenendo intatto il significato di ciò che si vuole esprimere: "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?". Ecco, "Sei pezzi da mille" è un romanzo scritto con questo criterio ben stampato in mente. La cosa sorprendente è che non solo funziona, ma che proprio questo stile di scrittura al contempo telegrafica e sincopata riesce a trasmettere il senso di angoscia e disperazione che permane ogni singola riga del romanzo, lasciando chi legge in uno stato quasi alterato e claustrofobico. Cioè, per dire, questo è un estratto completamente a caso per far capire lo stile con cui è scritto "Sei pezzi da mille": "Senior nascondeva informazioni a Junior. Junior lavorava alla Squadra Informazioni. Junior gestiva i fascicoli del comitato. Junior nascondeva informazioni a Senior. Senior aiutava Mr Hoover. Senior distribuiva propaganda. Su: Martin Luther King / la Southern Chrstiana Leadership Conference".
"Sei pezzi da mille" è il secondo romanzo nella trilogia dedicata ai complotti americani. Il primo era dedicato all'elezione e poi all'omicidio Kennedy, con un connubio fra mafia, CIA e FBI passiva, questo secondo si concentra fra gli anni che vanno da quell'omicidio a quelli di Martin Luther King e Bobby Kennedy nel '68. Tornano anche due dei tre personaggi di "American Tabloid", ma, la sensazione è che mentre il primo fosse non dico più concreto, ma comunque più orientato dalla trama e dal mostrare la connessione dietro l'omicidio Kennedy (a cui non so quanto Ellroy veramente credesse, a prescindere da quello che sostiene lui), questo secondo romanzo assuma toni quasi metafisici del Male. Che poi metafisici è un termine che può trarre in inganno, in quanto il male in Ellroy è sempre piuttosto concreto e materiale.
Alla morte di Martin Luther King, il presidente Johnson disse che la sua uccisione non era colpa degli americani, che la colpa era unicamente di due squilibrati. Allora, la costruzione di una corruzione e di un male che pervade non solo ogni singolo personaggio che compare in scena, ma che sembra spurgare da ogni singolo dettaglio del mondo descritto da Ellroy, serve non tanto a indicare come siano andate effettivamente le cose - in questo secondo romanzo, Ellroy sembra crederci ancora meno alla sua ipotesi complottista - quanto a mostrare come la colpa, in realtà, ricada su tutti gli americani. E' un mondo soffocante quello di Ellroy, fatto di colpa e disperazione. L'unico gesto che ha una qualche sfumatura altruistica è la vendetta.
Il noir di "Sei pezzi da mille" si ritrova anche nelle tre figure che si muovono in questo mondo completamente allo sbando. Ma, la grossa differenza con i protagonisti della letteratura noir degli anni '30 - '40 è che mentre quelli avevano una loro specie di codice morale che doveva resistere alla prova di essere gettati nel mondo, in una specie di esistenzialismo macchiato dal poliziesco, i personaggi di Ellroy sono privi di qualsiasi bussola, proprio come il mondo in cui sono costretti a vivere. Sì, hanno della specie di ideali o legami, ma non hanno mai una vera e propria forza capaci di indirizzarli. L'amore per la moglie di Pete o gli ideali politici di Littel appaiono come pii desideri, una specie di aspirazione a cui magari tendere per avere un briciolo di redenzione, che tanto non avranno mai. Paradossalmente, in controtendenza è l'arco del terzo protagonista, Wayne Jr che parte come quello con i valori morali più netti e precisi, "lasciami in pace. Non sono quello che vuoi, e non tradisco mia moglie", e finisce completamente stritolato dalla violenza della realtà sociale, politica, morale del mondo in cui si muove, mosso da un unico, profondo, desiderio di vendetta e violenza.
In un episodio di "The Office", Kevin si convince che per risparmiare tempo quando parla si possono eliminare tutta una serie di parole inutili, mantenendo intatto il significato di ciò che si vuole esprimere: "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?". Ecco, "Sei pezzi da mille" è un romanzo scritto con questo criterio ben stampato in mente. La cosa sorprendente è che non solo funziona, ma che proprio questo stile di scrittura al contempo telegrafica e sincopata riesce a trasmettere il senso di angoscia e disperazione che permane ogni singola riga del romanzo, lasciando chi legge in uno stato quasi alterato e claustrofobico. Cioè, per dire, questo è un estratto completamente a caso per far capire lo stile con cui è scritto "Sei pezzi da mille": "Senior nascondeva informazioni a Junior. Junior lavorava alla Squadra Informazioni. Junior gestiva i fascicoli del comitato. Junior nascondeva informazioni a Senior. Senior aiutava Mr Hoover. Senior distribuiva propaganda. Su: Martin Luther King / la Southern Chrstiana Leadership Conference".
"Sei pezzi da mille" è il secondo romanzo nella trilogia dedicata ai complotti americani. Il primo era dedicato all'elezione e poi all'omicidio Kennedy, con un connubio fra mafia, CIA e FBI passiva, questo secondo si concentra fra gli anni che vanno da quell'omicidio a quelli di Martin Luther King e Bobby Kennedy nel '68. Tornano anche due dei tre personaggi di "American Tabloid", ma, la sensazione è che mentre il primo fosse non dico più concreto, ma comunque più orientato dalla trama e dal mostrare la connessione dietro l'omicidio Kennedy (a cui non so quanto Ellroy veramente credesse, a prescindere da quello che sostiene lui), questo secondo romanzo assuma toni quasi metafisici del Male. Che poi metafisici è un termine che può trarre in inganno, in quanto il male in Ellroy è sempre piuttosto concreto e materiale.
Alla morte di Martin Luther King, il presidente Johnson disse che la sua uccisione non era colpa degli americani, che la colpa era unicamente di due squilibrati. Allora, la costruzione di una corruzione e di un male che pervade non solo ogni singolo personaggio che compare in scena, ma che sembra spurgare da ogni singolo dettaglio del mondo descritto da Ellroy, serve non tanto a indicare come siano andate effettivamente le cose - in questo secondo romanzo, Ellroy sembra crederci ancora meno alla sua ipotesi complottista - quanto a mostrare come la colpa, in realtà, ricada su tutti gli americani. E' un mondo soffocante quello di Ellroy, fatto di colpa e disperazione. L'unico gesto che ha una qualche sfumatura altruistica è la vendetta.
Il noir di "Sei pezzi da mille" si ritrova anche nelle tre figure che si muovono in questo mondo completamente allo sbando. Ma, la grossa differenza con i protagonisti della letteratura noir degli anni '30 - '40 è che mentre quelli avevano una loro specie di codice morale che doveva resistere alla prova di essere gettati nel mondo, in una specie di esistenzialismo macchiato dal poliziesco, i personaggi di Ellroy sono privi di qualsiasi bussola, proprio come il mondo in cui sono costretti a vivere. Sì, hanno della specie di ideali o legami, ma non hanno mai una vera e propria forza capaci di indirizzarli. L'amore per la moglie di Pete o gli ideali politici di Littel appaiono come pii desideri, una specie di aspirazione a cui magari tendere per avere un briciolo di redenzione, che tanto non avranno mai. Paradossalmente, in controtendenza è l'arco del terzo protagonista, Wayne Jr che parte come quello con i valori morali più netti e precisi, "lasciami in pace. Non sono quello che vuoi, e non tradisco mia moglie", e finisce completamente stritolato dalla violenza della realtà sociale, politica, morale del mondo in cui si muove, mosso da un unico, profondo, desiderio di vendetta e violenza.
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Secondo volume della cosiddetta “Underworld USA Triology“, Sei pezzi da mille è il seguito del bellissimo American Tabloid.
Il romanzo di James Ellroy, pubblicato nel 2001, riprende la narrazione esattamente da dove l’aveva lasciata: dall’omicidio di JFK. Kemper Boyd, protagonista del primo romanzo viene sostituito da Wayne Tedrow Jr, mentre ritroviamo i punti di vista del grosso franco-canadese Pete Boundurant e dell’avvocato ex agente FBI Ward Littell, insieme alle comunicazioni tra J.Edgar Hoover e i suoi sottoposti.
Un ritmo incalzante con frasi brevi e scarne ci condurranno attraverso gli anni della rivolta alla segregazione razziale e della Guerra in Vietnam di Lindon Johnson, segnate dalle ormai ricorrenti lotte di potere tra i gruppi di forza della politica americana: FBI, il miliardario Howard Huges, anticastristi cubani e Mafia.
Un libro perfettamente equilibrato tra fonti storiche e finzioni letterarie, che ritrae l’America non come la Statua della Libertà, ma come i vicoli maleodoranti di una metropoli sovraffollata che sfociano su viali perfettamente freschi e puliti.
E se siete arrivati fin qui, il prossimo, l’ultimo, non potete perdervelo: Il sangue è randagio.
Il romanzo di James Ellroy, pubblicato nel 2001, riprende la narrazione esattamente da dove l’aveva lasciata: dall’omicidio di JFK. Kemper Boyd, protagonista del primo romanzo viene sostituito da Wayne Tedrow Jr, mentre ritroviamo i punti di vista del grosso franco-canadese Pete Boundurant e dell’avvocato ex agente FBI Ward Littell, insieme alle comunicazioni tra J.Edgar Hoover e i suoi sottoposti.
Un ritmo incalzante con frasi brevi e scarne ci condurranno attraverso gli anni della rivolta alla segregazione razziale e della Guerra in Vietnam di Lindon Johnson, segnate dalle ormai ricorrenti lotte di potere tra i gruppi di forza della politica americana: FBI, il miliardario Howard Huges, anticastristi cubani e Mafia.
Un libro perfettamente equilibrato tra fonti storiche e finzioni letterarie, che ritrae l’America non come la Statua della Libertà, ma come i vicoli maleodoranti di una metropoli sovraffollata che sfociano su viali perfettamente freschi e puliti.
E se siete arrivati fin qui, il prossimo, l’ultimo, non potete perdervelo: Il sangue è randagio.
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I was wondering if I would ever get sick of James Ellroy’s depraved, vile look back on the criminal world of 1960s USA. After finishing The Cold Six-Thousand, the answer is yes. After American Tabloid, the goal with this book seemed to out-do its predecessor on every front: the hyper-staccato prose, the enormous web of conspiracy, the racism, and the racism. The problem is that American Tabloid already pushed this type of storytelling to its limit. The Cold Six-Thousand crosses the line. It’s bloated, over-the-top even by Ellroy’s standards, and directionless.
Following from the immediate aftermath of the first book, The Cold Six-Thousand follows series newcomer Wayne Tedrow Jr. and returning characters Pete Bondurant and Ward Littell. Ellroy’s signature machine gun prose still puts the book at a breakneck pace as we follow their journey from the fallout of JFK’s assassination in 1963 up to MLK and RFK in 1968. But while the pace of the prose is dizzying, the actual plot is a frustrating combination of agonizingly slow sections where multiple chapters span the course of a day to months of time flying by in less than five pages. At nearly 700 pages, this is the longest book between the L.A. Quartet and the Underworld USA trilogy by a significant margin, and it really, really did not need to be this long. Trying to capture everything that was happening in the 5 year timespan this book takes place in was a huge mistake and doesn’t give a clear climactic point that everything is building towards like American Tabloid. The coverup of JFK’s assassination and the characters’ involvement doesn’t flow well into the heroin trade out of Vietnam to fuel gun runs to Cuba and push drugs on the black population of Las Vegas, which I still don’t really understand how this worked for Howard Hughes’ purchase of Vegas Casinos and what the organized crime rings were getting out of it, and almost none of this really had anything to do with MLK and RFK’s assassinations. In fact, the main characters had so little connection with the assassinations that the majority of the setup was done via recorded conversations exclusively between side characters and news headlines.
The arcs for the three POV characters are just not all that satisfying to follow either. Wayne’s descent into being a super racist like his father stems entirely from the brutal murder of his wife by a black man that he let live in Dallas, who had no reason to even come back to kill his wife in Vegas, and Wayne’s relationship with her was already shown to be something he doesn’t really care about anyway with the way he voyeurs after his stepmother and ignores her for the entire time she’s on the page. Ward’s pathetic attempt at redemption was muddled with how much time he spent just going through the motions of managing all of the schemes of everyone he’s involved with. And Pete’s just kinda there.
James Ellroy always soaked the language of his books in the era of history they take place in. Racism, homophobia, and violent disdain for anyone remotely left of Nazi has always been commonplace. But Ellroy gets really enthusiastic about it here, making puns out of racial slurs and replacing c with k in reference to the KKK. Sometimes it feels like it’s an insight into the personality of the POV characters, but oftentimes it just feels like Ellroy really wants to be Quentin Tarantino and just drop n-bombs twenty times in a paragraph for the sake of it.
Reading this book was frustrating. A lot of what made the previous books in this criminal underworld series so good is still here. Real historical figures and events are woven in with the fictional characters that I had to google some names just to make sure I knew what was real or not. Each POV character had a pretty distinct personality that was conveyed through the prose, and little phrases would sometimes show up in other POV’s chapters as a way of showing how they influence each other. The unapologetic bluntness of the descriptions of hatred and violence are so sickeningly believable. But these elements without a compelling plot and characters to bind them ring hollow.
Following from the immediate aftermath of the first book, The Cold Six-Thousand follows series newcomer Wayne Tedrow Jr. and returning characters Pete Bondurant and Ward Littell. Ellroy’s signature machine gun prose still puts the book at a breakneck pace as we follow their journey from the fallout of JFK’s assassination in 1963 up to MLK and RFK in 1968. But while the pace of the prose is dizzying, the actual plot is a frustrating combination of agonizingly slow sections where multiple chapters span the course of a day to months of time flying by in less than five pages. At nearly 700 pages, this is the longest book between the L.A. Quartet and the Underworld USA trilogy by a significant margin, and it really, really did not need to be this long. Trying to capture everything that was happening in the 5 year timespan this book takes place in was a huge mistake and doesn’t give a clear climactic point that everything is building towards like American Tabloid. The coverup of JFK’s assassination and the characters’ involvement doesn’t flow well into the heroin trade out of Vietnam to fuel gun runs to Cuba and push drugs on the black population of Las Vegas, which I still don’t really understand how this worked for Howard Hughes’ purchase of Vegas Casinos and what the organized crime rings were getting out of it, and almost none of this really had anything to do with MLK and RFK’s assassinations. In fact, the main characters had so little connection with the assassinations that the majority of the setup was done via recorded conversations exclusively between side characters and news headlines.
The arcs for the three POV characters are just not all that satisfying to follow either. Wayne’s descent into being a super racist like his father stems entirely from the brutal murder of his wife by a black man that he let live in Dallas, who had no reason to even come back to kill his wife in Vegas, and Wayne’s relationship with her was already shown to be something he doesn’t really care about anyway with the way he voyeurs after his stepmother and ignores her for the entire time she’s on the page. Ward’s pathetic attempt at redemption was muddled with how much time he spent just going through the motions of managing all of the schemes of everyone he’s involved with. And Pete’s just kinda there.
James Ellroy always soaked the language of his books in the era of history they take place in. Racism, homophobia, and violent disdain for anyone remotely left of Nazi has always been commonplace. But Ellroy gets really enthusiastic about it here, making puns out of racial slurs and replacing c with k in reference to the KKK. Sometimes it feels like it’s an insight into the personality of the POV characters, but oftentimes it just feels like Ellroy really wants to be Quentin Tarantino and just drop n-bombs twenty times in a paragraph for the sake of it.
Reading this book was frustrating. A lot of what made the previous books in this criminal underworld series so good is still here. Real historical figures and events are woven in with the fictional characters that I had to google some names just to make sure I knew what was real or not. Each POV character had a pretty distinct personality that was conveyed through the prose, and little phrases would sometimes show up in other POV’s chapters as a way of showing how they influence each other. The unapologetic bluntness of the descriptions of hatred and violence are so sickeningly believable. But these elements without a compelling plot and characters to bind them ring hollow.
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This book is the worst car crash you've ever heard of, unfolding in excruciating slow motion. The characters are monsters. The action starts at the Kennedy assassination and ends at one of the other assassinations of the 60's, Bobby I think. I winced my way through this book and at the end I wondered why I had stuck with it. I have never been so horrified and repulsed by characters in fiction. But the writing has a force and brutal brevity that I found fascinating. I may read more Ellroy in the future, but I'd need to cut it with some nice soothing "Tuesdays with Morrie" afterward.
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The Cold Six Thousand starts like a rude slap in the face interrupting a deep sleep. We pick up where the preceding volume American Tabloid left off: November 22nd, 1963. JFK has just been shot in Dealey Plaza. We already know Pete Bondurant and Ward Littell and their involvement in the assassination, but a new man blows into town on the 22nd; Wayne Tedrow, Jr. Wayne works for the Las Vegas police department and is sent by the mob to Dallas to kill a pimp named Wendell Durfee for assaulting a dealer working at one of their Casinos. He's immediately sucked into the nightmarish criminal underworld of the '60s referred to by the characters as The Life and we follow him and the aforementioned Bondurant and Littell through the next five years and countless fucked up, labyrinthine criminal conspiracies.
The aforementioned conspiracies include but are not limited to Howard Hughes' takeover of Las Vegas and the mob's way of profiting from it, the start of a lucrative heroin trade in Vietnam using the war as cover, and the assassinations of public figures who threaten the Hughes-Mob-Hoover-CIA status quo like MLK and Bobby Kennedy. Of course, pulling these kinds of things off, in Ellroy's world at least, entails committing literally dozens of smaller accompanying crimes. B&Es, wiretapping, bugging and all types of coercion ranging from blackmail to gruesome torture are just tools of the trade. Fucked up murders are commonplace and dealt with cavalierly by characters who have become blasé about killing people. I know this sounds ridiculous when you're dealing with a dude like Ellroy but this has to be one of his heaviest, darkest books. The air of corruption and amorality is palpable and can become almost nauseating.
This is also notably longer than Tabloid at around 700 pages. The scope has expanded to a degree that whereas the first book in the trilogy felt more like a single globetrotting narrative this one almost feels like several separate but connected stories unfolding simultaneously; Dallas, Las Vegas, Vietnam, etc. I have to mention that I really loved the characters' exploits in Vietnam. The chaotic, destabilizing nature of the war really generates an awesome setting for the drug intrigue. That said, other than the major events of the time there is not a lot of period detail in the actual scenes in the book. Those looking for Ellroy's take on stuff like the architecture, fashion, music, etc. of the 60s will be sorely disappointed, which is understandable as he was really good with that shit in the L.A. Quartet stuff. This is mostly due to the incredibly blunt, staccato prose and focus on the propulsive plot.
I mentioned that prose thing earlier...and it has been the elephant in the room of the review so far. I'm sure I thought this about White Jazz, but this book is simultaneously the lofty zenith and self-parodic low point of Ellroy's style. The entire book (excepting the dialogue and the multiple inserts of bug transcriptions, newspaper headlines and communiques of all sorts) is written in an endless stream of clipped, blunt sentences that probably average three or four words. With regards to the style, the readers of this book probably fall into two groups: those who find the prose forced and over-the-top or a headache to read and those who dig it muchly. While I get those who are in the former group, I'm definitely in the latter (you probably guessed that from my rating, though.) Although it was incredibly challenging at first, soon I became kind of entranced by the prose and got sucked way into the story. I came to like the style so much it was actually hard to go back to non-psychotically obsessive styles of other writers.
For my money, this is probably the hardest, heaviest dose of Ellroy on the market. Even the Demon Dog himself admitted that he went too far out with the almost inaccessible style and apparently drew back on the reins for the following book. To me, that is a fucking amazing thing--James Ellroy out-Ellroy'd himself with the writing of The Cold Six Thousand. It's true that it's hard to become emotionally invested in a story about bad people doing bad shit and making history every step of the way, especially when that story is being told to you by a narrative voice that sounds like it's been up all night smoking meth--but why would you want to become emotionally invested in this shit? It's grippingly grim and callous enough without adding characters that AREN'T reprehensible human beings that you actually care for. That said, as dark as this is the moral of the story is clear as always; doing bad shit can get you places, but they're nowhere you'd really want to go.
The aforementioned conspiracies include but are not limited to Howard Hughes' takeover of Las Vegas and the mob's way of profiting from it, the start of a lucrative heroin trade in Vietnam using the war as cover, and the assassinations of public figures who threaten the Hughes-Mob-Hoover-CIA status quo like MLK and Bobby Kennedy. Of course, pulling these kinds of things off, in Ellroy's world at least, entails committing literally dozens of smaller accompanying crimes. B&Es, wiretapping, bugging and all types of coercion ranging from blackmail to gruesome torture are just tools of the trade. Fucked up murders are commonplace and dealt with cavalierly by characters who have become blasé about killing people. I know this sounds ridiculous when you're dealing with a dude like Ellroy but this has to be one of his heaviest, darkest books. The air of corruption and amorality is palpable and can become almost nauseating.
This is also notably longer than Tabloid at around 700 pages. The scope has expanded to a degree that whereas the first book in the trilogy felt more like a single globetrotting narrative this one almost feels like several separate but connected stories unfolding simultaneously; Dallas, Las Vegas, Vietnam, etc. I have to mention that I really loved the characters' exploits in Vietnam. The chaotic, destabilizing nature of the war really generates an awesome setting for the drug intrigue. That said, other than the major events of the time there is not a lot of period detail in the actual scenes in the book. Those looking for Ellroy's take on stuff like the architecture, fashion, music, etc. of the 60s will be sorely disappointed, which is understandable as he was really good with that shit in the L.A. Quartet stuff. This is mostly due to the incredibly blunt, staccato prose and focus on the propulsive plot.
I mentioned that prose thing earlier...and it has been the elephant in the room of the review so far. I'm sure I thought this about White Jazz, but this book is simultaneously the lofty zenith and self-parodic low point of Ellroy's style. The entire book (excepting the dialogue and the multiple inserts of bug transcriptions, newspaper headlines and communiques of all sorts) is written in an endless stream of clipped, blunt sentences that probably average three or four words. With regards to the style, the readers of this book probably fall into two groups: those who find the prose forced and over-the-top or a headache to read and those who dig it muchly. While I get those who are in the former group, I'm definitely in the latter (you probably guessed that from my rating, though.) Although it was incredibly challenging at first, soon I became kind of entranced by the prose and got sucked way into the story. I came to like the style so much it was actually hard to go back to non-psychotically obsessive styles of other writers.
For my money, this is probably the hardest, heaviest dose of Ellroy on the market. Even the Demon Dog himself admitted that he went too far out with the almost inaccessible style and apparently drew back on the reins for the following book. To me, that is a fucking amazing thing--James Ellroy out-Ellroy'd himself with the writing of The Cold Six Thousand. It's true that it's hard to become emotionally invested in a story about bad people doing bad shit and making history every step of the way, especially when that story is being told to you by a narrative voice that sounds like it's been up all night smoking meth--but why would you want to become emotionally invested in this shit? It's grippingly grim and callous enough without adding characters that AREN'T reprehensible human beings that you actually care for. That said, as dark as this is the moral of the story is clear as always; doing bad shit can get you places, but they're nowhere you'd really want to go.
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James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, is as difficult to read and as insightful as a transcript of a Trump rally. Is it possible that an author, who has spent perhaps years in agonizing research, might resent his readers breezing through his/her novel from EWR to LAX and retaliate by writing the next novel with such antagonistic brutal staccato sentences and sentence fragments, and with more than sufficient gangster patois, and with so many twists of motivations and puzzling consequences, so as to make his reader grind teeth and spit invectives in search of some vague clarity of meaning? An exception are the epistolary inserts, mostly fictional (one assumes) FBI documents which are clearly written and either expositions or transcriptions of conversations or illegal surveillances.
All in all, the book is a very long linguistic nightmare.
All in all, the book is a very long linguistic nightmare.
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This book, recommended by my roommate, is the second in a three-volume series reimagining some of the major events of the second half of the twentieth century in America: the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, the assassinations of King and the Kennedy brothers--and, I suspect, events inclusive of Watergate in the third volume. The players are just the kind of CIA-, FBI-, Mafia-connected thugs often adduced (quite plausibly, I think) behind the aforementioned political assassinations. The atmosphere is dark, the action degenerate, often violent. The writing style is terse, few 'paragraphs' being longer than a couple of sentences.
I enjoyed both of the first two volumes because it was obvious that Ellroy had done some homework (although, oddly, he makes the Lebanese Christian Sirhan Sirhan an Arab Moslem) about matters of serious concern. However, they aren't for everyone. If you don't know about the world-historical background to his tale then you'll likely be confused. Hell, I know the material pretty well, lived through many of the events he describes, and I found parts of his narrative difficult. It is also rather difficult to believe in most of his main characters. Their immorality is absolutely stunning.
I enjoyed both of the first two volumes because it was obvious that Ellroy had done some homework (although, oddly, he makes the Lebanese Christian Sirhan Sirhan an Arab Moslem) about matters of serious concern. However, they aren't for everyone. If you don't know about the world-historical background to his tale then you'll likely be confused. Hell, I know the material pretty well, lived through many of the events he describes, and I found parts of his narrative difficult. It is also rather difficult to believe in most of his main characters. Their immorality is absolutely stunning.
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To be fair: 'American Tabloid' was Ellroy's best novel, and the sequels had little chance of topping it. With 'The Cold Six Thousand', he picks up right where he left off: the assassination of JFK, orchestrated by a group of gangsters, mercenaries, and CIA hardcases, pissed off over the bloody and embarrassing 'Bay of Pigs' fiasco.
This time the bullseye is on Martin Luther King, as he makes enemies that include a Mormon power-broker and 'Company' connected tough guys selling heroin smuggled in from the ready-to-blow jungles of Southeast Asia, to be sold exclusively to black ghettos. And it's all TRUE. Is it? No, of course not. It's fiction. But... there's truth at the heart of it. Even if Pete Bondurant never existed, someone a lot like him did. Hell, 'American Tabloid' felt like fucking non-fiction.
I'm not someone who buys into conspiracy theories, but nevertheless: Oswald was a CIA asset, Jack Ruby was connected to the mafia, and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't looked closely enough, or they don't want to believe it. This is a story that requires entertaining some ugly possibilities about very important people. It's another dark excursion into the gutters of American history, with Ellroy once again displaying his mastery of stories so vast and complicated, he might be the only writer capable of pulling it off. He manages to beat his prose into something even leaner and denser; it's ugly as hell, and heavier than Osmium.
There are no 'good guys' in Ellroy's America. Even national icons like Kennedy and King are unable to avoid the ever-present cynicism, tainted by the poison Ellroy finds bubbling forth from every crack in the sidewalk. This time out, however, the pace begins to slow; Ellroy seems undaunted by the Osmium-heavy narrative, even as the repetition and pointlessness of the violence and hatred becomes exhausting. It certainly doesn't top 'American Tabloid', but it's still Ellroy in fine form, creating fiction that feels dangerous and true.
P.S.: I remember reading an interview with Ellroy after The Cold Six Thousand was released, and he said he was writing a novel set during the Civil War. I'm pretty sure I didn't dream that. I thought at the time that it seemed so unlikely it was almost ridiculous. And after the 'Underworld' trilogy wrapped up, he wrote 'Perfidia'... settling back in to the well-worn Ellroy beat of 1940's LA. No Civil War novel. Maybe he was joking. He'd have to abandon that style he's been using for the last quarter century, and I'm not sure he can.
Then again, Elmore Leonard used to move back and forth between Crime and Westerns. The two genres have a lot in common; tough men making hard choices, shooting each other and whatnot. I'll read that Civil War story if it ever turns up, just to gawk at the freak a while, and see what such a creature might look like; but I'm sick of that prose, and the poison dribbling from every sentence fragment. There was some ugly-ass shit going on in the 1960's, but I think a modern-day version of Underworld would be even uglier. As someone who's read most of Ellroy's oeuvre, I feel confident saying that many of the toxins in the Underworld trilogy are Ellroy's own brew. The 'dark places' being charted are indistinguishable from the author's. And... I like it when writers say pretty things, or even better, say nasty things in a pretty way. I haven't read anything by Ellroy in years, and his newest book hasn't made it onto my shelves. The thought of reading 'Perfidia' just doesn't appeal to me. He's still an author I like and respect, but at some point in the last few years, I unconsciously bumped him from 'the list'. That whittled down prose... 'Perfidia' might be nothing but bullet points. Or short hand.
This time the bullseye is on Martin Luther King, as he makes enemies that include a Mormon power-broker and 'Company' connected tough guys selling heroin smuggled in from the ready-to-blow jungles of Southeast Asia, to be sold exclusively to black ghettos. And it's all TRUE. Is it? No, of course not. It's fiction. But... there's truth at the heart of it. Even if Pete Bondurant never existed, someone a lot like him did. Hell, 'American Tabloid' felt like fucking non-fiction.
I'm not someone who buys into conspiracy theories, but nevertheless: Oswald was a CIA asset, Jack Ruby was connected to the mafia, and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't looked closely enough, or they don't want to believe it. This is a story that requires entertaining some ugly possibilities about very important people. It's another dark excursion into the gutters of American history, with Ellroy once again displaying his mastery of stories so vast and complicated, he might be the only writer capable of pulling it off. He manages to beat his prose into something even leaner and denser; it's ugly as hell, and heavier than Osmium.
There are no 'good guys' in Ellroy's America. Even national icons like Kennedy and King are unable to avoid the ever-present cynicism, tainted by the poison Ellroy finds bubbling forth from every crack in the sidewalk. This time out, however, the pace begins to slow; Ellroy seems undaunted by the Osmium-heavy narrative, even as the repetition and pointlessness of the violence and hatred becomes exhausting. It certainly doesn't top 'American Tabloid', but it's still Ellroy in fine form, creating fiction that feels dangerous and true.
P.S.: I remember reading an interview with Ellroy after The Cold Six Thousand was released, and he said he was writing a novel set during the Civil War. I'm pretty sure I didn't dream that. I thought at the time that it seemed so unlikely it was almost ridiculous. And after the 'Underworld' trilogy wrapped up, he wrote 'Perfidia'... settling back in to the well-worn Ellroy beat of 1940's LA. No Civil War novel. Maybe he was joking. He'd have to abandon that style he's been using for the last quarter century, and I'm not sure he can.
Then again, Elmore Leonard used to move back and forth between Crime and Westerns. The two genres have a lot in common; tough men making hard choices, shooting each other and whatnot. I'll read that Civil War story if it ever turns up, just to gawk at the freak a while, and see what such a creature might look like; but I'm sick of that prose, and the poison dribbling from every sentence fragment. There was some ugly-ass shit going on in the 1960's, but I think a modern-day version of Underworld would be even uglier. As someone who's read most of Ellroy's oeuvre, I feel confident saying that many of the toxins in the Underworld trilogy are Ellroy's own brew. The 'dark places' being charted are indistinguishable from the author's. And... I like it when writers say pretty things, or even better, say nasty things in a pretty way. I haven't read anything by Ellroy in years, and his newest book hasn't made it onto my shelves. The thought of reading 'Perfidia' just doesn't appeal to me. He's still an author I like and respect, but at some point in the last few years, I unconsciously bumped him from 'the list'. That whittled down prose... 'Perfidia' might be nothing but bullet points. Or short hand.
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The Cold Six Thousand is part two of James Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy. The first book, American Tabloid, written in part in “tabloid” style, feels somewhat similar to Ellroy’s look at corruption in the LAPD of the forties and fifties, in his LA Quartet, when tabloids and a sort of "yellow journalism" dominated. In The Cold Six Thousand Ellroy says he developed a rather different style to fit his view of the sixties, short, punchy sentences:
“The style I developed for The Cold Six Thousand is a direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards. It was appropriate for that book, and that book only, because it's the 1960s. It's largely the story of reactionaries in America during that time, largely a novel of racism and thus the racial invective, and the overall bluntness and ugliness of the language”--Ellroy
Here I adapt the opening of my American Tabloid review:
“America was never innocent.”
“It's time to demythologise an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.”
American Tabloid, and now its part two, The Cold Six Thousand, are two of four big books by major authors I’ve read in the last twelve months or so focused on what they would all agree is a key event in twentieth-century American/world politics, the killing of JFK: 11/22/63 by Stephen King; Libra by Don DeLillo, and these 1995 and 2001 publishing and award-winning sensations by the author of The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. A turning point in American history, they'd all agree.
The first two books of this trilogy feel like a combination of The People’s History of the United States and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but far more propulsive, with a bit of Cormac McCathy’s Blood Meridian-style ultra violence thrown in, something like being body-punched with those tough, staccato sentences, but, I don't know, even standing here, beaten up, I’m still somehow admiring him for his pugilistic skills. Ellroy is maybe the most cynical writer I know this side of Celine, but he's also politically astute. Ultimately angry, not despairing. Anti-romantic, assuredly, on the issue of Making America Great Again.
So American Tabloid ends with the killing of JFK, and The Cold Six Thousand picks up just after that moment, and is about the five year aftermath, including the mopping up and cover-up of the assassination by the slimy FBI rogues that are the main (fictional) characters, led by J Edgar Hoover. Ellroy then takes us through the civil rights movement and its ever-attendant racist pushback, and the continued right wing focus on Commies/Commies/Commies, including the military build-up in Vietnam, and ending in the killing of MLK and RFK. It’s an ugly period, especially through the lens of Ellroy. I mean, most people, on the right and left, do not think the killing of JFK, MLK and RFK--three liberal activists-- were random acts committed by solo crazy people. Ellroy’s vision may be dark, and it's (historical) fiction, but it seems more reasonable than the Warren Commission report on the Assassination of JFK. This book comes ten years after Oliver Stone's JFK, and is just as ambitious but more credible to me.
From the publishers: “On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their job: to clean up the JFK hit’s loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop with family ties to the lunatic right; Ward J. Littell, a defrocked FBI man turned underworld mouthpiece; and Pete Bondurant, a dope-runner and hit-man who serves as the mob’s emissary to the anti-Castro underground." The web they weave spreads to the (intended) take-over of Vegas by Howard Hughes (and Wayne Tedrow’s father, Wayne, Sr., a corrupt and violent Mormon). Plots get cooked up in connection to defaming and then killing MLK, who is over time seen as increasingly a Commie, looking at issues of economic injustice and not just racial equality. Jimmy Hoffa makes his way into it; he hated RFK’s anti-mob stance: Let's get rid of him. Hoover hated MLK’s focus on racial justice and King’s fomenting civil unrest and rioting: Let's get rid of him. There’s a solid anti-gay theme running through a lot of this narrative, too.
So this was the sixties, when racism was rampant and white nationalism (via the KKK and other orgs) reigned; anti-Communism reigned--America first! And gays were also hated. Hate proliferates, fomented by guys like Hoover. So glad we got over that and we no longer have any racism, homophobia and anti-communism/socialism anymore and we can all live without hate and divisiveness.
Anyway, it's one wild, at times exhilarating, sometimes exhausting ride. I kept imagining that if you listened to it at, say, +1.25 speed you might just have a stroke or begin having seizures. It’s so driven and angry. But it is a very very well-written trip through the most scary (and ridiculous) parts of the sixties. Real world horror.
Here’s an interview with Ellroy, who is sometimes referred to as a "demon dog" of literature:
https://crimereads.com/hungry-like-a-...
When I was reading this song ran through my head by Dion, “Abraham, Martin and John,”, which is way more sentimental than Ellroy has ever been, but I still like the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwn8h...
“The style I developed for The Cold Six Thousand is a direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards. It was appropriate for that book, and that book only, because it's the 1960s. It's largely the story of reactionaries in America during that time, largely a novel of racism and thus the racial invective, and the overall bluntness and ugliness of the language”--Ellroy
Here I adapt the opening of my American Tabloid review:
“America was never innocent.”
“It's time to demythologise an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.”
American Tabloid, and now its part two, The Cold Six Thousand, are two of four big books by major authors I’ve read in the last twelve months or so focused on what they would all agree is a key event in twentieth-century American/world politics, the killing of JFK: 11/22/63 by Stephen King; Libra by Don DeLillo, and these 1995 and 2001 publishing and award-winning sensations by the author of The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. A turning point in American history, they'd all agree.
The first two books of this trilogy feel like a combination of The People’s History of the United States and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but far more propulsive, with a bit of Cormac McCathy’s Blood Meridian-style ultra violence thrown in, something like being body-punched with those tough, staccato sentences, but, I don't know, even standing here, beaten up, I’m still somehow admiring him for his pugilistic skills. Ellroy is maybe the most cynical writer I know this side of Celine, but he's also politically astute. Ultimately angry, not despairing. Anti-romantic, assuredly, on the issue of Making America Great Again.
So American Tabloid ends with the killing of JFK, and The Cold Six Thousand picks up just after that moment, and is about the five year aftermath, including the mopping up and cover-up of the assassination by the slimy FBI rogues that are the main (fictional) characters, led by J Edgar Hoover. Ellroy then takes us through the civil rights movement and its ever-attendant racist pushback, and the continued right wing focus on Commies/Commies/Commies, including the military build-up in Vietnam, and ending in the killing of MLK and RFK. It’s an ugly period, especially through the lens of Ellroy. I mean, most people, on the right and left, do not think the killing of JFK, MLK and RFK--three liberal activists-- were random acts committed by solo crazy people. Ellroy’s vision may be dark, and it's (historical) fiction, but it seems more reasonable than the Warren Commission report on the Assassination of JFK. This book comes ten years after Oliver Stone's JFK, and is just as ambitious but more credible to me.
From the publishers: “On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their job: to clean up the JFK hit’s loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop with family ties to the lunatic right; Ward J. Littell, a defrocked FBI man turned underworld mouthpiece; and Pete Bondurant, a dope-runner and hit-man who serves as the mob’s emissary to the anti-Castro underground." The web they weave spreads to the (intended) take-over of Vegas by Howard Hughes (and Wayne Tedrow’s father, Wayne, Sr., a corrupt and violent Mormon). Plots get cooked up in connection to defaming and then killing MLK, who is over time seen as increasingly a Commie, looking at issues of economic injustice and not just racial equality. Jimmy Hoffa makes his way into it; he hated RFK’s anti-mob stance: Let's get rid of him. Hoover hated MLK’s focus on racial justice and King’s fomenting civil unrest and rioting: Let's get rid of him. There’s a solid anti-gay theme running through a lot of this narrative, too.
So this was the sixties, when racism was rampant and white nationalism (via the KKK and other orgs) reigned; anti-Communism reigned--America first! And gays were also hated. Hate proliferates, fomented by guys like Hoover. So glad we got over that and we no longer have any racism, homophobia and anti-communism/socialism anymore and we can all live without hate and divisiveness.
Anyway, it's one wild, at times exhilarating, sometimes exhausting ride. I kept imagining that if you listened to it at, say, +1.25 speed you might just have a stroke or begin having seizures. It’s so driven and angry. But it is a very very well-written trip through the most scary (and ridiculous) parts of the sixties. Real world horror.
Here’s an interview with Ellroy, who is sometimes referred to as a "demon dog" of literature:
https://crimereads.com/hungry-like-a-...
When I was reading this song ran through my head by Dion, “Abraham, Martin and John,”, which is way more sentimental than Ellroy has ever been, but I still like the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwn8h...
...
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This volume of James Ellroy’s alternate and hysterical history of the Sixties, stretches from the aftermath of the JFK assassination right up to the death of RFK. That was obviously a turbulent period in American history and it’s not surprising that this book at times feels rushed, as if trying to unpack too much at once. Which in a way is odd, as it also feels at points more style over substance. All of Ellroy’s various literary ticks are given full reign in this volume, to the level that someone not previously inured would probably get remarkably irritated.
Picking up where we left off at the end of ‘American Tabloid’ we’re again with Ward Littell and Pete Bondurant as they make their way through the seamy underbelly of Sixties USA. (Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover and a host of others are also along for the ride.) A new protagonist is added to the central troika, in the form of Wayne Tedrow Jr., who falls further into hate than most. His presence is one of the major flaws in this book, as he isn’t really a character more a collection of anxieties, grudges and murderous impulses. He’s therefore not an easy person to spend page after page with. And since we’ve already seen most of the idealism scraped away from Littell and Bondurant in the previous book, ‘The Cold Six Thousand’ often seems like unpleasant people doing unpleasant things again and again and again.
It’s not an out and out bad book, as Ellroy is far too good a writer to produce something that could be described as awful. But it is a truly misanthropic novel – written by a man who seemingly never saw a hero who didn’t have feet of clay – and substantially flawed by its own bombast.
Well, that’s these two re-read, I will get hold of ‘Blood’s a Rover’ for the first time shortly.
Picking up where we left off at the end of ‘American Tabloid’ we’re again with Ward Littell and Pete Bondurant as they make their way through the seamy underbelly of Sixties USA. (Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover and a host of others are also along for the ride.) A new protagonist is added to the central troika, in the form of Wayne Tedrow Jr., who falls further into hate than most. His presence is one of the major flaws in this book, as he isn’t really a character more a collection of anxieties, grudges and murderous impulses. He’s therefore not an easy person to spend page after page with. And since we’ve already seen most of the idealism scraped away from Littell and Bondurant in the previous book, ‘The Cold Six Thousand’ often seems like unpleasant people doing unpleasant things again and again and again.
It’s not an out and out bad book, as Ellroy is far too good a writer to produce something that could be described as awful. But it is a truly misanthropic novel – written by a man who seemingly never saw a hero who didn’t have feet of clay – and substantially flawed by its own bombast.
Well, that’s these two re-read, I will get hold of ‘Blood’s a Rover’ for the first time shortly.
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Maybe you can, but I can't read a book consisting of three and four word sentences. I made it through perhaps fifteen pages. Here's a sample from page one, with no editing or deleting sentences between: "Kill that coon. Do it good. Take our hit fee. The flight ran smooth. A stew served drinks. She saw his gun. She played up. She asked dumb questions." I bought the book after reading Time magazine's critic rave review. Here's my dumb question: "Why he say that?"
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