Excellent

A little bit too long as a follow up to American Tabloid. Some of the characters remain. It's a snapshot of American politics and history in the 1960's with some fiction thrown in for good measure

La prima volta che fatico, ma tanto tanto, a finire un Ellroy, e non a causa del contenuto. Va bene sperimentare, ma senza sintassi si va oltre il grado zero del romanzo.

Not quite as compelling as part one of the trilogy which dealt with the JFK assassination. This follows the same characters in the years leading up to the Dr King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, both of which the characters are involved with. Elroy though isn't as convincing that he knows the backstage logistics of these killings as he was with JFK. Once again we get an America governed by the Mafia and rogue CIA agents with Hoover as insane hate-filled puppet master.

American Tabloid ends with Pete Bourdant watching Barbara do a rendition of "Unchained Melody" in some Dallas lunchtime geek joint on a particularly historical November morning in 1963. The novel ends with Pete watching and waiting for the screams to start.

The Cold Six Thousand picks up earlier that morning with a new character Wayne Tedrow Jr. flying from Vegas to Dallas to hunt down a black (sorry I can't bring myself to use a more PC term nor can I bring myself to put the N word in the review, although it works better to capture the whole feeling of the book) pimp and kill him for shiving a mobbed up black jack dealer. He discovers on landing in Dallas that JFK is dead and by a series of collusions Wayne passes from being a cop being used for mob justice to an agent in capital H History.

The reader never sees Kennedy get it.

American Tabloid is a lot of things, but one could say that it's the story of why Kennedy gets it in Dallas. I'd say this is only a minor point to the book, and American Tabloid is really not a historical novel at all, but an American Tragedy in the classical sense of the term Tragedy. This Tragedy continues in The Cold Six Thousand.

The first novel is the killing of JFK. The second is dealing with the aftermath.

At the center of both novels are a bunch of morally suspect men. They are Right-Wingers, Hate Mongers, Conservatives, Dope Runners, Extortionists, they are Mobbed Up, Klanned Up, Feds and Mercenaries. None of them are nice people, or people one would want to have any sympathy for. On the surface they are all evil people, doing very awful and violent things, but in a murky gray area where one feels like they can't be flat out condemned. Like the characters on the TV show The Wire there are no real good guys and bad guys here, but an ever shifting landscape of personality, where the people transcend beyond a cookie cutter image and take on a complex reality.

These are some amazing characters.

At the heart of the first two novels (and probably the third), is a conservative presence trying to hold back the tide of progress. They are grasping for a time that maybe never even existed before the first book starts in the late 1950's. The Mob trying to reclaim their casinos in Cuba and harking back to a time when the government turned a blind eye to them, before RFK got a big fucking hard-on for them. Hoover and Howard Hughes trying to hold back the progress of equality, and dreaming of a white old boys country. The various actors in the drama, with their own pet projects, their own dreams and schemes that they are willing to do anything to see succeed. This assorted brand of reactionaries ironically can be seen as the agents of progress, the people who in their attempts to freeze the clock of time are pushing the hands forward faster.

How much of this story is true? I have no idea. Ellroy is convincing in his grand totalizing vision of the era, and while it's convincing to me, it's not necessarily a vision of history that one wants. If Ellroy is telling the truth, than what we know as contemporary America has been built on the grounds of a moral abyss and only the continued reactionary manufacturing of illusions of truth keep the whole fucking thing from collapsing upon itself.

I've rambled enough. If you want to read this as a review, then I recommend you read this fucking book.

Tried very hard but couldn't finish this one (on vacation, no less). Much more fragmented and hard to digest than the brilliant American Tabloid. Has been on hiatus for almost 2 years now. Reminds me of White Jazz, and not in a good way. Heard mixed things about Blood's A Rover, but not in the mood to try it anytime soon.

E come Ellroy: Elettrizzante. Esplosivo. Estenuante. Non si può certo definire letteratura da ombrellone, questa: non è solo una collezione di scalpi quella dei "ragazzi di Dallas", pedine reduci dell'attentato a JFK, ma una fitta ragnatela di intercettazioni, documenti, intrallazzi che cuce insieme la caccia all'uomo di una vendetta personale e vari densissimi plot "para-storici" - in pieno stile Ellroy - tra Cuba, il Vietnam, Las Vegas, il sottobosco bifolco razzista e le oscure manovre del potere tra mafia ed FBI.
Non è una lettura semplice, il sangue appiccica le pagine, il punto di vista è quello della parte marcia e l'interpunzione ha il ritmo di una raffica di mitra. Per sua stessa definizione Ellroy ha qui usato uno stile "diretto, a frasi mozze, imperativo, che ti colpisce dritto alle palle", funzionale a descrivere il torbido ambiente reazionario di quei pesantissimi anni '60.
Continuo a restare sbalordito per l'estrema disinvoltura con cui questo scrittore plasma la materia storica più oscura, retaggio dei complottisti più incalliti, giocando a sporcare i personaggi pubblici dell'epoca in maniera a dir poco spudorata. E' un pazzo, gli va riconosciuto: bisogna essere ellroyani per amarlo, e io insanamente lo sono.

While this book is not even close to the scope and depth of American Tabloid, it is still a good read.

n  Rustin smiled. “Do you hate him?”
“No.”
“After what he put you through?”
“I find it hard to hate people who are that true to themselves.”n

I don’t even know who could write a book like this, except Ellroy’s written more than one. I dig his humanity in the midst of humanity doing despicable things.

Allow me to pat myself on the back a few times for finishing this novel. I made a firm decision to finish at least one of James Ellroy’s novels after I saw him giving a rather provoking speech here in Amsterdam a few years ago. I think that Ellroy likes to shoot sentences from his hip like a shotgun and he certainly succeeds in doing that. I cannot say that I find four words sentences very attractive and they are getting really tiresome after a few hundred pages, but I must admit that they do convey action. Well, Mr. Ellroy, if you are annoyed at me if you would happen to read this review, I would like to remind you of your really rude greeting of the Amsterdam audience. Not that I did not have to grin at your totally inappropriate address and acting like a provocateur throughout, but perhaps 98% of the audience could not appreciate it. I am sure that you have a big following of dedictated readers and I think I can understand that, but your books are not for me.

Another breathtaking, snarled novel by Ellroy, filled with phenomenally unlikeable people doing despicable things, and you can't stop reading it. Starts with the Kennedy assassination in Dallas and goes on to police corruption in Vegas, the mob, Cuba, the start of the war in Vietnam, sexual shenanigans, racism and the civil rights movement, Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes, in other words, every damn thing that happened in 1963 and '64... I love this dirty poetry, so for an extra treat, I'm listening to it on tape.

I picked the wrong book to finish off my Reader's Challenge this year. With a slow moving plot and almost 700 pages, this book took a awhile to read.

With all that said, it's not a bad book. Ellroy writes well, well enough that I've read seven of his books and just bought another. And this book takes us through tumultuous events in the sixties with a fair degree of accuracy and plenty of speculation.

The writing style on this book is a mixed bag of eloquent passages, bland narrative and quasi-beat style. The word 'boocoo' (author's spelling) comes up boocoo times. Racist and politically incorrect vernacular of the era populates most of the novel. Ellroy seems to dislike his characters, both historical figures and fictional protagonists.

For those wanting to sample Ellroy, try his LA series, which includes the excellent 'LA Confidential'.

2nd reading.