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Title: White Jazz by James Ellroy ISBN: 0-375-72736-1 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.04 (54 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Pulp On Speed
Comment: Dave Klein's as bad as it gets. B&E's, beatings, murders, erotic fixations on siblings, even slum-lording.
He's a cop.
And he's the main man in James Ellroy's WHITE JAZZ, an new-fashioned pulp tale juiced on speed.
Ellroy's become famous for crackerjack plots, in-your-face bad cops, political backroom boys willing to deal, and a threadbare style north of Hemingway. All these elements are present in WHITE JAZZ.
It's a fast read--sort of like flying through LA at 80 miles per hour (you catch a glimpse of things sailing by, but you never see enough of any one thing to truly take it in). If anything, this is the major problem with the book: you get hyped images but you never slow down long enough to see the view (Klein himself is a bag of unpleasant characteristics, never quite jelling into a character).
This is due to the slash-and-burn style Ellroy deploys here. A master of whip-sharp declarative sentences, in JAZZ Ellroy pares down past the bone into the marrow; the result is often amusingly blunt, but in spots, confusing. The fleshing out of characters is a casualty of the style; sentence fragments do not a human make.
The plot, too, is a bit much. Though it's probably based on actual events, Ellroy might take heed of Tom Clancy's view of fiction vs. reality: "Fiction has to make sense." In JAZZ, every law-enforcement agency is so out of control, credibility is broken about halfway through; the best way to enjoy the second part of the book is to imagine it as a satire.
This is not to say there aren't good things in it. It's never boring, and there are some memorably twisted motivations among the bruises and gore. The final chapter is stinging and almost laugh-out-loud funny.
On the whole, though, it's not a work worthy of the author of AMERICAN TABLOID.
Rating: 4
Summary: Don't Be Put Off - Riff On White Jazz
Comment: Dig: Every book in the L.A. Quartet is a must. Every one of them. Feature you read just one or start in the middle, you're a chump. White Jazz - a great closer. Can't miss.
After reading the first three novels in the series, I was reluctant to read White Jazz. I was scared off hearing so much about Ellroy's deepening usage of staccato prose and unattributed dialogue. I was led to believe the book was almost written in an experimental language. Well, I am writing this review for one purpose: to keep people from being fearful of this amazing book. If you like Ellroy, and if you've enjoyed the quartet thus far, you'll love it.
Is White Jazz my favorite in the series? No. I still prefer L.A. Confidential, followed by The Big Nowhere. But White Jazz is much more evolved than The Black Dahlia. And as brutal and dark as it is, White Jazz has more laughs than all the other quartet novels combined. While the novel's halting presentation doesn't allow you to roll through the pages, that's almost a blessing, because every line is dense with nuance and information. You want to pay attention.
I absolutely recommend reading the series in order, and if you're through L.A. Confidential, you simply must complete the quartet. White Jazz strikes the perfect notes in capping the series, and ties up a few ends along the way. It is beautiful, savage, powerful and stunning.
Feature it's more challenging than a Grisham book. Feature that's a good thing. Dig: No big deal. Don't get scared off. Brass knucks/brain swelling/reading in bed. Big fun - big reward. CRAAAAZY.
Rating: 5
Summary: Simply the best.
Comment: I'm a big fan of a wide variety of fiction. Regardless of genre, I admire bold experimentation with prose technique. It doesn't get any better than Nabokov or Faulkner for me. I also like writers who tell far more conventional stories but do so with a flair for language, like Robertson Davies or, in the detective fiction area, Chandler and Hammett.
The bottom line? Ellroy deserves to rank not only among Chandler and Hammett for quality of his crime fiction, but, with White Jazz, among Nabokov and Faulkner for the style of his language. White Jazz mainlines the experiences of the protagonist straight into your nervous system, white hot and unfiltered. It takes some adjusting. For the first thirty pages or so, my head hurt. Then something clicked and I was utterly blown away. Perhaps the most visceral read I've ever experienced. And aside from the style, the story is a gripping descent into the dark side of human nature, as typified by the crime and police world of 50s La. This is really as good as crime fiction gets, and some of the best writing from any author of the 20th Century.
American Tabloid may be his most satisfying book in a lot of ways, but White Jazz is a work of art. Grim, disturbing art, to be sure, but I find that necessary at times.
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Title: The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy ISBN: 0446674370 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy ISBN: 0446674362 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.99 |
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Title: L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy ISBN: 0446674249 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: American Tabloid by James Ellroy ISBN: 037572737X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Cold Six Thousand: A Novel by James Ellroy ISBN: 037572740X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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