Liverpool. 1996. Two white guys. Crime heads. Chandler. Hammett. Jim Thompson. Wanted something contemporary. Lawrence Block. Maybe? Scoped Waterstones. Blackwells. Charity shops. Oxfam. White Jazz? Demon Dog of Crime? What is this? £4.99 and a packet of Twix. 2 pints of bitter. Golden Virginia tobacco and a packet of Rizlas.
Home. Shoes off. Outside, the night rages. But, you know, quietly.
I open the book. Da fuck? Murder. Savagery. Mayhem. A quartet? The LA Quartet, I learn. Too late. This is the last one. Another comes free with GQ Magazine. The Big Nowhere. Violence, sex, depraved. The stuff you need a shower. After you read. You want to have a shower inside your head though. Get that out. You race through the novels. This time in the right order. Take no prisoners. You pop Rolos and slug mugs of tea. Ah!
The Spice Girls and Oasis on TV. But you’re in Los Angleses where serial killers think in italics. And everyone effs and jeffs like it’s goin’ out of fashion. Flipping heck, you think. Blimey. And the violence. Faces are slashed. Ears cut off. Nipples twisted. Groins stomped on. Heads mushed in. Elbows poked. Hair pulled. Spines turned this way and that. Buttocks flicked.
No one’s happy. No one’s in love. Everyone is obsessed. The women all look like someone else and seem austere and beautiful. And then succumb. Reveal hidden depths of submission to male fantasy. Nutty these gals. People scream; sometimes cry. Weep. Go crazy. No one eats Twix, or Rolos. No one has a cup of tea. They smoke stick and jab themselves with heroin needles. Though they don’t seem to enjoy it much. They howl. Go crazy. There are no heroes. Except for the hero. Who does terrible things. But is still the hero. Because he’s white.
Sexual perversion abounds. Real people get involved. Famous people. Real names. Daring! The defencelessly dead get pummelled by libel. Starlets are raped postmortem. Film stars are outed hither and yon. Homophobia would be the accusation if it wasn’t for the author’s ragin’ hard-on being in the way. Making the claim if not moot, mute.
Oh and the racism. The n-word covers the pages like spittle on a hate tract. Every other slur, like piss sprinkles on the outhouse floor, each one offering a curvy window reflecting a miniature reflection of the author’s tiny dripping member. The author liked to play Nazi at school, go on racist rants — a cry for attention, he says. Argued they should reinstate slavery — he was being ironic, he says. These liberals, they hate the truth tellers.
But it’s bullshit. Sylvia Plath knew it. All the liberals love a fascist. Otherwise, whither Bill Maher? Especially a literary one. Ezra Poundshop over here. Mouthing the slurs as they read. Happy to live in the trousers of a pornographer for a while, someone who “tells it how it is” — even if his Los Angeles is as realistic as Narnia.
Everyone I know who reads him is a white man.
The demon dog rants. The Quartet complete, American Tabloid charts continues the outward expanse. Maybe his best book. Followed by The Cold Three Thousand, maybe his worst. Every sentence three. Words long.
By now he’s done the circuit of the media and become its darling and pet rabid Rottweiler. He’s photographed with a Rottweiler in case we missed the point. He wrings his murdered mother dry over a memoir, a series of essays, a novel and a documentary, tying her to the Black Dahlia murder. They make a good movie. LA Confidential. And a bad movie. The Black Dahlia.
Blood’s a Rover, I read. Perfidia, I read. This Storm, I read. Widespread Panic, I read. The Enchantress, I read. I don’t think I’ll bother with Red Sheet. None of them are good. They all give me the same Ellroy jolt. His books don’t have humans in them. They have interchangeable fantasy figures. No one has a real life. No one eats a Twix. Has a cup of tea. A genuine emotion. They’re all just fuel for the churn of the author’s nihilistic sixth form alt-right shock-jock politics. The OCD repetition of tried and tested writing techniques that beginning to read like typing techniques and the faux be-bop hip-speak. White jazz indeed.
Some’ll say: yeah but he hates fascists too. Woo-hoo!
But I don’t think so.
A plague on both your houses isn’t above politics. It’s another political position. Everyone is corrupt — means I can fuck everything up. It’s the purge, baby. A free for all. A pseudo-sophistication for those who don’t want to think too much. It’s the ultra-violence of a man who’s never been in a fight. Inventing straw men to batter with baseball bats and tire irons.
Maybe it’s demon dog shit. But in the end. It’s still dog shit.
John Bleasdale:
Connery: A Novel The Magic Hours: the Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick by John Bleasdale Host and Producer of the Writers on Film Podcast
