Scrittura illeggibili, periodi che danno il nervoso

In Sei pezzi da mille, Ellroy schiaccia il piede sull'acceleratore. Rompe ossa. Spacca culi.
Uomini e donne vivono la Vita. Uomini come Ward Littell, come le Grand Pierre Bondurant, come Wayne Tedrow Jr. Donne come Jane-Arden Smith, Barb Jahelka, Janice Lukens.
Uomini e donne che vivono la Vita davanti ai tuoi occhi, pagina dopo pagina.
Basterebbe solo questo.
E poi c'è lo stile.
Quale scrittore degli ultimi cinquant'anni può vantarsi di aver letteralmente inventato uno stile di scrittura?
Ti frastorna, ti prende a schiaffi, ti ossessiona.
Proprio come il romanzo.

superata la possibilità abbandono

E' dura questa quasi prima esperienza nel genere, immediatamente chiara è solo la collocazione spazio-temporale iniziale: Dallas, 22 novembre 1963. Ho già letto e riletto alcune decine di pagine che ora sono segnate a margine, sottolineate e già sciupate e inizio a capire che forse le figure principali, a parte i morti, sono Wayne Tedrow, Ward Littell e Pete Bondurant ma anche le loro (o non proprio loro) donne lo sono, forse, e inizio anche a capire che qui la normalità è essere sporchi, corrotti, ladri, mafiosi, assassini, drogati, spacciatori, papponi, puttane (uomini e donne) di professione o d'animo, mercenari, doppiogiochisti, ammazzati, insomma poliziotti, politici, consiglieri, 'bracci destri', imprenditori.
E' il complotto, è l'altro livello della realtà, quello che l'uomo comune può fingere di ignorare o credere che non sia così diffuso mentre anche lui sta arraffando. E' un alternarsi di dati storici e di finzione, e l'insieme è molto credibile. Pagine e pagine scritte come fossero promemoria o appunti presi a fine giornata sull'agenda di casa, frasi spezzettate, continui rimandi, eppure tutto torna, gli incastri funzionano

Ellroy's take on the LBJ years focuses on CIA-sponsored heroin smuggling from Laos and Vietnam, and the COINTELPRO operations against Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin. As with American Tabloid, it's not strictly historically accurate, but it's probably closer to the truth than most of us would like to admit. It's a compelling pulp history, and it makes for compulsive reading (or in my case, listening. Craig Wasson does a great job narrating the audiobook).

That said, this is definitely weaker than American Tabloid, and probably weaker than the L.A. Quartet as well. Ellroy loses control of the telegraphic prose technique he used more judiciously in his previous novels, leading to entire pages filled with "See Dick Run. Run, Dick. Run."-style sentences. The cumulative effect is more exhausting than it is hard-boiled.

There's also a problem of structure. Much of the story is about the surviving operators from American Tabloid getting manipulated and outwitted by the even bigger and meaner operators in the FBI and the CIA. It's a smart story arc that captures the feel of the country getting out of control as we barrel towards 1968, but it also requires our protagonists to be largely absent from much of the book's back half. The story, then, is carried by transcripts of long, expository conversations between J. Edgar Hoover and minor characters. New character Wayne Tedrow is more unpleasant than he is compelling, making me miss the slyly opportunistic Kemper Boyd from American Tabloid.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Tightly drawn characters battling for some crude sense of justice and sanity in a world where the world turns a deaf ear to depravity as long as it's on the side of the Law. These later works, though, seem marred by Ellroy's rush to become almost as caricature of himself.

“Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.”

Firstly I should point out that this book is the sequel of "American Tabloid" regarded by many as the basis to the cult movie Pulp Fiction.However, as I can attest, it can be read as a stand alone.

''The Cold Six Thousand,'' depicts an American political underbelly teeming with conspiracy and crime as seen through the eyes of three mid-level operatives: Ward Littell, an F.B.I. agent turned mob lawyer; Pete Bondurant, a hired killer and racket operator; and Wayne Tedrow Jr., a Las Vegas policeman and son of a crooked union leader cum casino owner in the city. The novel begins a few minutes after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and follows its characters as they become embroiled with the burgeoning civil rights movement, the Las Vegas gambling industry and the Vietnamese opium trade, and ends with the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The F.B.I., the Ku Klux Klan, the C.I.A., Cuban political expatriates, J.Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes to name but a few also make an appearance and at some time or other the three main characters will end up working for or with each of these entities -- sometimes several of them at once.

This novel will not teach anybody anything new about any of the events that take place throughout, instead it leans very heavily on the side of the conspiracy theories of the time. It is richly peppered with scenes of violence although this rarely if ever gets gratuitous and plenty of what is no doubt regarded as gangster slang of the time. Many of the sentences are only two or three words long and many are repeated tabloid style yet my copy of this novel is nearly 700 pages long so is a pretty hefty tome.

Now to me the length rather than being it's strength is it's weakness. The tale is just too far reaching and I must admit that on more than one occasion I was tempted to throw in the towel with it however, I did soldier on and complete it. Personally I would have preferred Ellroy concentrated on one historical event rather than so many. Nor did I really find the three main characters with their somewhat convoluted and entwined alliances that convincing, this was particularly true of that of Ward Littell. In the end I felt that it was OK but reads like the author's pet hobby-horse rather than a true work of fiction IMHO and ultimately was left frustrated instead of enlightened by it.

The initial installment in this series, "American Tabloid" was a heady mix of speculative history, celebrity and conspiracy theories. It was not really like anything that I had ever read before, and I found it very enjoyable. There was a healthy does of violence along with all of the glitter, but that made the novel more interesting for me.

"The Cold Six Thousand" has many of the same characters and continues the themes of celebrity and alternative history. However, the violence is greatly increased to the point where it seems gratuitous and overtakes any interest that I had in the plot. Some of the plot elements are interesting and entertaining, but eventually I found myself dreading the next explosion of sadism and violence. I'm going to take a crack at "Blood is a Rover", but may abandon it if it turns out to be one beating and killing after another.

I liked the first book but this seemed lacklustre with no real plot or excitement. I'll read the third as I've already bought it but am bored with the style now which uses 5 sentences where 1 will do as the author just repeats the first part of the sentence numerous times, possibly to fill the book out