You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.09 AVERAGE
3.09 AVERAGE
Everything you would expect from Ellroy, and some people will not like that. As a memoir it is guilty of navel-gazing, it's obsessive, it's egoistic. It's also brave, stark, enthralling and, as always, stylish. Has another author ever laid bare their weaknesses and flaws in such minute and compulsive detail?
I truly enjoy what I've read of James Ellroy's fiction: there is little doubt that The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, and LA Confidential are truly stunning crime novels. Even White Jazz, which concludes Ellroy's First LA Quartet, is rather bold, though some of its stunts are a little too on-the-nose.
In The Hilliker Curse, Ellroy brings the same style of writing that holds together his fiction to a memoir, one that, at first glance, seems like a meditation of some kind. That viewpoint is slowly and steadily demolished by the most turgid recollection of a life (mis)led. Ellroy seems to take great pleasure in vividly describing his ill-spent youth, and his adoption of the very public persona he is now infamous for robs the book of any staying quality it might have had.
It'll be interesting to visit My Dark Places, Ellroy's interaction with his mother's unsolved rape-and-murder, but if it's anything like The Hilliker Curse, one'll just have to settle for his grand-standing on video rather than consume deliberately pulpy reimaginings of his life.
In The Hilliker Curse, Ellroy brings the same style of writing that holds together his fiction to a memoir, one that, at first glance, seems like a meditation of some kind. That viewpoint is slowly and steadily demolished by the most turgid recollection of a life (mis)led. Ellroy seems to take great pleasure in vividly describing his ill-spent youth, and his adoption of the very public persona he is now infamous for robs the book of any staying quality it might have had.
It'll be interesting to visit My Dark Places, Ellroy's interaction with his mother's unsolved rape-and-murder, but if it's anything like The Hilliker Curse, one'll just have to settle for his grand-standing on video rather than consume deliberately pulpy reimaginings of his life.
Hard on the heels of my reading of My Dark Places comes this, a second exploration of the role of women in author James Ellroy's life.
You probably won't want to read it if you're sick of jacking-off-and-peeping stories. Because - though they're not as explicitly described as elsewhere - they're here. That and darkened-room fantasising. The short book reeks of control; of others, of self, and the lack thereof.
Ideally, this should be read in concert with My Dark Places. That book explains the importance of the murder of Ellroy's mother, and its effect on his life. The Hilliker Curse moves past the mechanics of the death and into how his relationships with women have played out over the years. True, his mother is looming, forever, but this installment looks at how her shadow touches her son's interactions with women.
(Protip: they generally don't end well.)
The author is candid, though. He recounts destructions wrought by his own shitty behaviour with unflinching honesty. There's a sense of regret and of fear - particularly when discussing panic attacks while on tour. It's a portrait - much more than in My Dark Places - of collapse, where that book is a recitation of focus and construction. This is a guy with money, success, and a collapsing life. Yet he never plays the sympathy card, and his masochism is never presented as admirable. It just is.
One part which interested was the role Beethoven plays in Ellroy's life. It could be vanity, equating oneself with one of the Greatest Artists (and Arseholes) Who Ever Lived, but I think here it's a whole kindred-spirit thing. Beethoven had his 'Immortal Beloved' and Ellroy has his fantasy women: all separate, yet all curiously interchangeable. I like the image of the two men being arseholes together, a brotherhood of bastards.
I wonder if Ellroy's planning another volume of autobiographical work? This one was a pleasant surprise, given the gruelling nature of My Dark Places, and it'd be interesting to see whether the LOVE LOVE LOVE notes of the newish relationship at the end of the book hold out, or whether it's back to dark rooms and self-abuse.
Either way, it'd be entertaining and horrifying in equal measure.
You probably won't want to read it if you're sick of jacking-off-and-peeping stories. Because - though they're not as explicitly described as elsewhere - they're here. That and darkened-room fantasising. The short book reeks of control; of others, of self, and the lack thereof.
Ideally, this should be read in concert with My Dark Places. That book explains the importance of the murder of Ellroy's mother, and its effect on his life. The Hilliker Curse moves past the mechanics of the death and into how his relationships with women have played out over the years. True, his mother is looming, forever, but this installment looks at how her shadow touches her son's interactions with women.
(Protip: they generally don't end well.)
The author is candid, though. He recounts destructions wrought by his own shitty behaviour with unflinching honesty. There's a sense of regret and of fear - particularly when discussing panic attacks while on tour. It's a portrait - much more than in My Dark Places - of collapse, where that book is a recitation of focus and construction. This is a guy with money, success, and a collapsing life. Yet he never plays the sympathy card, and his masochism is never presented as admirable. It just is.
One part which interested was the role Beethoven plays in Ellroy's life. It could be vanity, equating oneself with one of the Greatest Artists (and Arseholes) Who Ever Lived, but I think here it's a whole kindred-spirit thing. Beethoven had his 'Immortal Beloved' and Ellroy has his fantasy women: all separate, yet all curiously interchangeable. I like the image of the two men being arseholes together, a brotherhood of bastards.
I wonder if Ellroy's planning another volume of autobiographical work? This one was a pleasant surprise, given the gruelling nature of My Dark Places, and it'd be interesting to see whether the LOVE LOVE LOVE notes of the newish relationship at the end of the book hold out, or whether it's back to dark rooms and self-abuse.
Either way, it'd be entertaining and horrifying in equal measure.
Nú veit ég ekki alveg af hverju ég las þessa bók. Líklega árátta mín að klára hluti. Ég las My Dark Places og þó ég hefði ekki verið rosalega hrifinn þá ákvað ég að lesa þessa líka.
Bók er sjálfsævisögulegt rúnk. Það er eiginlega ekki hægt að lýsa því öðruvísi. Bókin fjallar um konurnar í lífi hans. Áhugaverðustu punktarnir varða það hvernig hann blekkti sjálfan sig til þess að halda að þessar konur gætu á einhvern hátt bjargað honum. Gert hann heilann.
En í heild var þetta varla þess virði. Tiltölulega stutt reyndar og þess vegna nennti ég þessu.
Bók er sjálfsævisögulegt rúnk. Það er eiginlega ekki hægt að lýsa því öðruvísi. Bókin fjallar um konurnar í lífi hans. Áhugaverðustu punktarnir varða það hvernig hann blekkti sjálfan sig til þess að halda að þessar konur gætu á einhvern hátt bjargað honum. Gert hann heilann.
En í heild var þetta varla þess virði. Tiltölulega stutt reyndar og þess vegna nennti ég þessu.
"The word MORE summarized my private agenda. It was sexual compulsion fueled by a terror of human contact and the forfeit of mental control. I could brood, peep, stalk, think and self-narrate. I could not act."
- James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse
Probably 3.5 stars. It is funky, narcissistic, bizarre, transgressive, beautiful and brutal. It is Oedipus chasing the memory of his dead mother in the faces and windows of random women. It isn't a book I'd recommend to my wife or my mother, but it was fascinating and really did carry a certain amount of redemption and hope. Ellroy is one of the handful of living writers I actually give a damn about meeting some day. I'd certainly not want my daughter or wife or mother to meet him, however. Many writers who I adore I have no drive or motivation to meet. None. Ellroy is an artist I want to road trip with.
His voice, his openness both resonate strongly with me. I really think Ellroy is one of the handful of genre writers (King, le Carré, etc) that will be read in 300+ years. So, I guess this book will be a bit of a help for future PhD writers in further dissecting Ellroy's novels. He is both a dark room and an open book. He captures something about the 20th century and himself in every book he writes and seems to leave blood, sweat, and semen on every page.
There is something beautiful about the scar that is left when a scab is picked away. Some of the lines from this very exhibitionist memoir hit me hard and left a mark:
1. "The absence of a narrative line left me weightless. I didn't know what it meant then. I'll ascribe meaning now."
2. "I always get what I want. It comes slow or fast and always costs a great deal."
3. "My always-present self-absorption veered to vacancy."
4. "Opportunists ruthlessly cling to emergent imagery and people."
5. "I was having it both ways. I was mending fences I intended to jump."
Anyway, I've written more tonight than I wanted or intended.
- James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse
Probably 3.5 stars. It is funky, narcissistic, bizarre, transgressive, beautiful and brutal. It is Oedipus chasing the memory of his dead mother in the faces and windows of random women. It isn't a book I'd recommend to my wife or my mother, but it was fascinating and really did carry a certain amount of redemption and hope. Ellroy is one of the handful of living writers I actually give a damn about meeting some day. I'd certainly not want my daughter or wife or mother to meet him, however. Many writers who I adore I have no drive or motivation to meet. None. Ellroy is an artist I want to road trip with.
His voice, his openness both resonate strongly with me. I really think Ellroy is one of the handful of genre writers (King, le Carré, etc) that will be read in 300+ years. So, I guess this book will be a bit of a help for future PhD writers in further dissecting Ellroy's novels. He is both a dark room and an open book. He captures something about the 20th century and himself in every book he writes and seems to leave blood, sweat, and semen on every page.
There is something beautiful about the scar that is left when a scab is picked away. Some of the lines from this very exhibitionist memoir hit me hard and left a mark:
1. "The absence of a narrative line left me weightless. I didn't know what it meant then. I'll ascribe meaning now."
2. "I always get what I want. It comes slow or fast and always costs a great deal."
3. "My always-present self-absorption veered to vacancy."
4. "Opportunists ruthlessly cling to emergent imagery and people."
5. "I was having it both ways. I was mending fences I intended to jump."
Anyway, I've written more tonight than I wanted or intended.