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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
"Your future is in Los Angeles, son. I can get you on the police force. You can fuck movie stars and create mischief."
Oh boy, and mischief he did create.
Since I watched the film adaption of L.A. Confidential, I always like to picture James Cromwell in my mind whenever I read a sentence starting or ending with "... lad."
May one go so far as perceiving this novel as a manifesto for Dudley L. Smith?!
A 700+ bulk recapturing three weeks in the year 1941. Starting the day prior to Pearl Harbor, this novel has the murder of a Japanese family at its centre. Within these 700+ pages we will meet a ton of characters of which I only remembered a few and muddled up the rest. Of which the most intriguing for me was the Dudster himself. A figure who will be of importance in Ellroy's other novels. Among the other interesting characters were Hideo Ashida, Kay Lake, and W. Parker. Honstly, the rest of the cast I couldn't really tell apart. Over long stretches I've lost track of what was going on and why... yet, I kept reading...
Muddled in the immense cast of characters is, what I've found typical for Ellroy, a lot of eugenics combined with cutting people, operating on people, smut, and generally the exploitation of people by opportunistic war profiteers with Dudley L. Smith leading the way. I liked to learn more about his character. While I learned to hate Dudley in previous novels, I kind of grew fond of him in this work despite his obvious predilection for eugenics, smut, opium, film-stars, hounds, all the while pretending to be a loving and caring husband and father of a family we so rarely read about.
It's the typical Ellroy. If you come with the expectation to collect all the crumbs that will eventually lead to the revelation of the culprit, you'll be in for a disappointment. When the murder / person responsible for the killing was revealed to me almost 10 pages before the end, I had to look the character up again in order to get a glimpse of what the hell is going on. And even now I couldn't quite explain it in detail. But what the hell, it is the journey that that took me to this place that was rewarding. Moreover, I'm not an expert on 1940s US war hysteria / Pearl-Harbor / the-Japs-are-to-blame-racist sentiment, but I had the impression that it was captured quite well in this work.
Oh boy, and mischief he did create.
Since I watched the film adaption of L.A. Confidential, I always like to picture James Cromwell in my mind whenever I read a sentence starting or ending with "... lad."
May one go so far as perceiving this novel as a manifesto for Dudley L. Smith?!
A 700+ bulk recapturing three weeks in the year 1941. Starting the day prior to Pearl Harbor, this novel has the murder of a Japanese family at its centre. Within these 700+ pages we will meet a ton of characters of which I only remembered a few and muddled up the rest. Of which the most intriguing for me was the Dudster himself. A figure who will be of importance in Ellroy's other novels. Among the other interesting characters were Hideo Ashida, Kay Lake, and W. Parker. Honstly, the rest of the cast I couldn't really tell apart. Over long stretches I've lost track of what was going on and why... yet, I kept reading...
Muddled in the immense cast of characters is, what I've found typical for Ellroy, a lot of eugenics combined with cutting people, operating on people, smut, and generally the exploitation of people by opportunistic war profiteers with Dudley L. Smith leading the way. I liked to learn more about his character. While I learned to hate Dudley in previous novels, I kind of grew fond of him in this work despite his obvious predilection for eugenics, smut, opium, film-stars, hounds, all the while pretending to be a loving and caring husband and father of a family we so rarely read about.
It's the typical Ellroy. If you come with the expectation to collect all the crumbs that will eventually lead to the revelation of the culprit, you'll be in for a disappointment. When the murder / person responsible for the killing was revealed to me almost 10 pages before the end, I had to look the character up again in order to get a glimpse of what the hell is going on. And even now I couldn't quite explain it in detail. But what the hell, it is the journey that that took me to this place that was rewarding. Moreover, I'm not an expert on 1940s US war hysteria / Pearl-Harbor / the-Japs-are-to-blame-racist sentiment, but I had the impression that it was captured quite well in this work.
I wanted to like this, because I loved the author's American Tabloid trilogy so much. Unfortunately, this felt like history-nerd masturbation and an idiot plot mashed up with race-hatred and a steady parade of fan service, for fans that I suspect don't really exist. Dudley Smith as a lead character? Creepy as shit, if you ask me.
Much of this novel felt intended to shock me. The racial epithets, eugenics, right-wing loonie propaganda, etc. are all completely out of control in this one; it all makes The Cold Six Thousand look tame as hell, and that book opens with a sentence that contains the n-word.
In fact, at times this novel descended to the level of one of Tarantino's monologues, as an excuse for a white writer to spew forbidden words. Ellroy already had some of that tendency, but when it was ameliorated by an attempted at plot, it felt slightly less icky, even when the plot jumps the rails and goes horribly wrong in every conceivable way, as I believe it did in the novel version of L.A. Confidential and The Big Nowhere, or when the plot becomes a densely-packed labyrinth of WTF, as I believe it did with White Jazz.
Even worse, there are parts of Perfidia that harken back to the wooden non-prose of Brown's Requiem, where it felt obvious to me that Ellroy was fumbling his way through the creative process. It's like watching an incredibly, INCREDIBLY drunk man struggle to take his dick out at a urinal, having to watch as he says, "Fuck it" and just pisses all over himself instead... then turns around and propositions you. How's that for graphic?
In Perfidia, the racism, opportunism, corruption, and general moral foulness is much denser even than in the American Tabloid series, which I found brilliant. But even more disgusting is the fanboy portrayal of William H. Parker, a real-life police chief the author clearly admires so much he makes him a sweet little choirboy with one fatal flaw -- he drinks. Sorry, that's not a flaw dude; it's Ward Littell. Except Littell had much more to him than Ellroy's Parker.
But it's the plot where this novel really goes wrong. Plotwise, it reads like L.A. Confidential scarfed Ex-Lax and crapped The Big Nowhere all over White Jazz, then ate the whole mess with a cheap metal spoon, and then barfed it all over 100 randomly-selected pages from Hollywood Babylon and The Winds of War. Honestly, I'm still kind of unclear on whodunnit, and more importantly I never once gave a flying fuck. In fact, I barely remember what was dun.
It's a damn shame, too, because this novel features Ellroy's (potential) first nonwhite protagonist, who also happens to be queer. Sadly, Hideo Ashida (who is a minor, off-stage throwaway character in The Black Dahlia) ends up being an als0-ran in his own book, as Dudley Smith and real-life future LAPD Chief William H. Parker take center stage alongside dull-as-dirt interstitials FROM KAY LAKE'S DIARY. Guess what? Kay Lake writes exactly like James Ellroy, only weepier. Ashida alternately serves as the frustrating proto-whisper of an interesting character and a bizarrely homophobic burlesque. There are no characters I found even remotely sympathetic. Kay Lake is ridiculous. William H. Parker is boring. Dudley Smith is a transparent opportunity for the author to live out his masturbatory Mary Sue fantasies. Ashida is barely there. There are literally dozens of supporting characters; they're all promising as areas of reader interest at one point or another, and they all suck balls in the end.
I have a sense of what James Ellroy is after here, but he didn't even begin to approach it. Instead, what was once brilliant writing seems to be disintegrating into the author's own shortcomings as a human being.
Ultimately, I have no idea how the guy who wrote The Black Dahlia and American Tabloid could ever write something this bad.
Much of this novel felt intended to shock me. The racial epithets, eugenics, right-wing loonie propaganda, etc. are all completely out of control in this one; it all makes The Cold Six Thousand look tame as hell, and that book opens with a sentence that contains the n-word.
In fact, at times this novel descended to the level of one of Tarantino's monologues, as an excuse for a white writer to spew forbidden words. Ellroy already had some of that tendency, but when it was ameliorated by an attempted at plot, it felt slightly less icky, even when the plot jumps the rails and goes horribly wrong in every conceivable way, as I believe it did in the novel version of L.A. Confidential and The Big Nowhere, or when the plot becomes a densely-packed labyrinth of WTF, as I believe it did with White Jazz.
Even worse, there are parts of Perfidia that harken back to the wooden non-prose of Brown's Requiem, where it felt obvious to me that Ellroy was fumbling his way through the creative process. It's like watching an incredibly, INCREDIBLY drunk man struggle to take his dick out at a urinal, having to watch as he says, "Fuck it" and just pisses all over himself instead... then turns around and propositions you. How's that for graphic?
In Perfidia, the racism, opportunism, corruption, and general moral foulness is much denser even than in the American Tabloid series, which I found brilliant. But even more disgusting is the fanboy portrayal of William H. Parker, a real-life police chief the author clearly admires so much he makes him a sweet little choirboy with one fatal flaw -- he drinks. Sorry, that's not a flaw dude; it's Ward Littell. Except Littell had much more to him than Ellroy's Parker.
But it's the plot where this novel really goes wrong. Plotwise, it reads like L.A. Confidential scarfed Ex-Lax and crapped The Big Nowhere all over White Jazz, then ate the whole mess with a cheap metal spoon, and then barfed it all over 100 randomly-selected pages from Hollywood Babylon and The Winds of War. Honestly, I'm still kind of unclear on whodunnit, and more importantly I never once gave a flying fuck. In fact, I barely remember what was dun.
It's a damn shame, too, because this novel features Ellroy's (potential) first nonwhite protagonist, who also happens to be queer. Sadly, Hideo Ashida (who is a minor, off-stage throwaway character in The Black Dahlia) ends up being an als0-ran in his own book, as Dudley Smith and real-life future LAPD Chief William H. Parker take center stage alongside dull-as-dirt interstitials FROM KAY LAKE'S DIARY. Guess what? Kay Lake writes exactly like James Ellroy, only weepier. Ashida alternately serves as the frustrating proto-whisper of an interesting character and a bizarrely homophobic burlesque. There are no characters I found even remotely sympathetic. Kay Lake is ridiculous. William H. Parker is boring. Dudley Smith is a transparent opportunity for the author to live out his masturbatory Mary Sue fantasies. Ashida is barely there. There are literally dozens of supporting characters; they're all promising as areas of reader interest at one point or another, and they all suck balls in the end.
I have a sense of what James Ellroy is after here, but he didn't even begin to approach it. Instead, what was once brilliant writing seems to be disintegrating into the author's own shortcomings as a human being.
Ultimately, I have no idea how the guy who wrote The Black Dahlia and American Tabloid could ever write something this bad.
812 pagine e solo due settimane per narrarci come l'America cambia dopo l'attacco di Pearl Harbor. I personaggi sono gli stessi, Los Angeles anche, eppure manca qualcosa.
Sembrerebbe che, nell'immenso prologo della Tetralogia di Los Angeles, Ellroy abbia lasciato da parte la violenza per concentrarsi sulle critiche ai Repubblicani che tanto ama e rappresenta.
Non a caso più si è coerenti e più si critichi ciò che si è ed Ellroy lo dimostra ancora una volta. Qualche nota di disappunto la si trova in Hideo Ashida, giapponese "nel mezzo" dell'attacco a Pearl Harbor e rappresentato soltanto come esperto CSI, tolta una parentesi romantica.
Dargli meno stelle sarebbe stupido ma mi domando se davvero la vena di violenza cruda in Ellroy sia svanita e divenuta solo una pesante critica al sistema in cui vive.
Sembrerebbe che, nell'immenso prologo della Tetralogia di Los Angeles, Ellroy abbia lasciato da parte la violenza per concentrarsi sulle critiche ai Repubblicani che tanto ama e rappresenta.
Non a caso più si è coerenti e più si critichi ciò che si è ed Ellroy lo dimostra ancora una volta. Qualche nota di disappunto la si trova in Hideo Ashida, giapponese "nel mezzo" dell'attacco a Pearl Harbor e rappresentato soltanto come esperto CSI, tolta una parentesi romantica.
Dargli meno stelle sarebbe stupido ma mi domando se davvero la vena di violenza cruda in Ellroy sia svanita e divenuta solo una pesante critica al sistema in cui vive.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Murder, Lesbophobia
despite my best intentions, I really enjoy reading James Ellroy. They novels are so hateful that it makes me uncomfortable, but damned if I don't like reading it. This one though had a resolution that didn't thrill me, and too many characters for my liking. But those are minor complaints.
There is so much racist stuff in here, which probably isn't a surprise if you've read anything of Ellroy's before. However, in case you haven't, there you are: racist (and sexist &c.) stuff all over.
I preferred this to L.A. Confidential (review here), but not enough for another star. The advantages are pretty much all in the character of Kay Lake, with some support by Hideo Ashida.
Gross murders happen, Dudley Smith is a slippery horror, everyone says and thinks and does terrible things. Hooray!
I preferred this to L.A. Confidential (review here), but not enough for another star. The advantages are pretty much all in the character of Kay Lake, with some support by Hideo Ashida.
Gross murders happen, Dudley Smith is a slippery horror, everyone says and thinks and does terrible things. Hooray!
Perfidia is the first Ellroy novel I've read. Overall, I was overwhelmed by the number of of characters in the novel and underwhelmed by its ending. It took 100+ pages for the story to really come together in any fashion and, quite frankly, I found a lot of the sub-storylines unnecessary to advance the main storyline. The premise is good, it just could have been more succinctly executed.
It's been a while since I was last enveloped in the world of James Ellroy's Los Angeles, which, if you've never read any of his books, is kind of like Westeros except more violent.
Perfidia is a long time coming for me -- I knew it'd be a big commitment, but I knew also what I'd be in for. I might even feel bad for the people who perhaps had picked this up thinking it was just a Joseph Kanon-esque murder mystery set against the backdrop of Pearl Harbour and the beginning of the US intervention into WWII, which... no, it's not, really. It's a tale of a murder set against the backdrop of Pearl Harbour and the beginning of the US intervention into WWII, and how that murder case illustrates a massive and horrific collusive conspiracy of racial eugenics, internment, power grabs, backstabbing betrayals, and general evil.
Or in other words: standard Ellroy plot.
I remember just a week or two ago when there was that new dumb Twitter discourse arguing that problematic content in fiction should be removed lest it reflect actual problematic thoughts on the part of the author. Well, as usual I chose basically to ignore this new cry for a return to Hays Code-era puritanical censorship, but the one thing that went through my head with every insane tweet of these I saw was: Wow... imagine if these people read a page of James Ellroy.
Because, of course, as always, Ellroy does not hold back. But you'd have to be completely blind of context to not know what he's accomplishing -- as he states in the introduction of American Tabloid: "America was never innocent [...] You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception."
Ellroy's goal is to demythologize the myth of American valour, and that goal is what makes his books as shocking and disturbing as they are -- not disturbing just from his fiction's constant racial epithets, intense violence, and random drop-ins by incest and pedophilia, but also in their almost complete lack of traditional heroism. There's almost no one to "root" for in Perfidia -- just as in his other books, an attempt on the part of the reader to feel close to or empathise with any one character will be their own foible when that character inevitably does something horrific or falls deeper into the circles of moral degradation along with everyone else.
But that's okay. You almost know at the outset that this will not be a story of redemption or resolve -- the fact that almost every character in the story is either alive in later installments of the series or based on actual historical personages means you know that almost none of them will really be affected or punished by the events of the plot. And in a way, that's more effective than any traditional literary punishment a crime novel could resolve with: if ever you've really wondered how the white patriarchy has ruled and subjugated for so long, here it is. Here is a catalogue of all their evils and their cutthroat dominances of Shakespearean magnitude.
Perfidia is a long time coming for me -- I knew it'd be a big commitment, but I knew also what I'd be in for. I might even feel bad for the people who perhaps had picked this up thinking it was just a Joseph Kanon-esque murder mystery set against the backdrop of Pearl Harbour and the beginning of the US intervention into WWII, which... no, it's not, really. It's a tale of a murder set against the backdrop of Pearl Harbour and the beginning of the US intervention into WWII, and how that murder case illustrates a massive and horrific collusive conspiracy of racial eugenics, internment, power grabs, backstabbing betrayals, and general evil.
Or in other words: standard Ellroy plot.
I remember just a week or two ago when there was that new dumb Twitter discourse arguing that problematic content in fiction should be removed lest it reflect actual problematic thoughts on the part of the author. Well, as usual I chose basically to ignore this new cry for a return to Hays Code-era puritanical censorship, but the one thing that went through my head with every insane tweet of these I saw was: Wow... imagine if these people read a page of James Ellroy.
Because, of course, as always, Ellroy does not hold back. But you'd have to be completely blind of context to not know what he's accomplishing -- as he states in the introduction of American Tabloid: "America was never innocent [...] You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception."
Ellroy's goal is to demythologize the myth of American valour, and that goal is what makes his books as shocking and disturbing as they are -- not disturbing just from his fiction's constant racial epithets, intense violence, and random drop-ins by incest and pedophilia, but also in their almost complete lack of traditional heroism. There's almost no one to "root" for in Perfidia -- just as in his other books, an attempt on the part of the reader to feel close to or empathise with any one character will be their own foible when that character inevitably does something horrific or falls deeper into the circles of moral degradation along with everyone else.
But that's okay. You almost know at the outset that this will not be a story of redemption or resolve -- the fact that almost every character in the story is either alive in later installments of the series or based on actual historical personages means you know that almost none of them will really be affected or punished by the events of the plot. And in a way, that's more effective than any traditional literary punishment a crime novel could resolve with: if ever you've really wondered how the white patriarchy has ruled and subjugated for so long, here it is. Here is a catalogue of all their evils and their cutthroat dominances of Shakespearean magnitude.
Fantastic. Makes me want to reread all the Ellroy. Can't wait for the rest of the new LA Quartet.
The best (still writing) crime writer is back on form with his great character - the legend that is Dudley Smith. Delighted that this will form part of a quartet so three more installments to look forward to. This is a great return to form after the wilderness of 'Bloods a rover'. This is highly recommended if you have ever enjoyed a layered crime novel.