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bashbashbashbash 's review for:
Perfidia
by James Ellroy
Strap in, because I have THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS about this one.
The Audiobook
Let me tell you about the audiobook. Look, I’m an almost obsessive book-finisher. DNFing is hard for me to accept, and when it occurs it’s usually because some large life change (like moving countries) interrupted my reading. I was already a couple of hours into this book when the dodgy accents began, and I ended up feeling like I was trapped in the effing thing — and not just because it was over 28 FUCKING hours. The audiobook reader was called upon to deliver umpteen accents, many cringey, some borderline racist – the Japanese and Chinese accents put my teeth on edge. The scene where Dudley Smith interviews “The Werewolf” is a horrendous nightmare — back and forth, Irish accent, Japanese accent, Irish, Japanese, both cringey and awful.
Look, I get it. The book is long, and there are SO many characters that you need different vocal styles to distinguish them all or else the reader would lost. BUT, if you brought in a full cast to record the book, you’d have to fork out a lot more cash. So, you hire one reader who does a bunch of accents. And hey, some of the characters DO have accents. People have accents! That’s a thing! I happen to hate it when people do “accent humor,” so I was already biased against this audiobook but… man. The audiobook reader does some “Asian accents” to set one’s hair on end. This shit is Charlie Chan and a half. It becomes even more egregious when he does his “Japanese accent” for a Japanese-American character who clearly (from text) speaks English with an American accent. WHY
The Text
I’m beginning to come to terms with the fact that I’m more interested in James Ellroy than in his fiction. Apparently five years ago I gave The Black Dahlia five stars, but most of what I remember about it is that it’s long, and it’s gritty. I like the grit. I like that Ellroy’s vision of the LAPD, and America in general, is very Hammett-esque. It’s grim, it’s corrupt, it uses a thin mask of patriotism to hide murder and profiteering. It's gross and sad and Ellroy gets that. But truth be told, I’m more interested in the style and philosophy of Ellroy’s books than the intricate plotting. In fact, I don't care for the intricate plotting much at all. My favorite of Ellroy’s books is his first memoir, My Dark Places, about his mother’s murder (and his father’s general failure to father him) and the repercussions of that on his life. Ellroy doesn’t pull any punches; his a screw-up and he owns it. That made me love the guy.
It did not, however, drive me to read all of his fiction. So I enter Perfidia with very limited knowledge of the cast of characters, most of whom hardcore Ellroy fans are already acquainted with. Hideo Ashida is a new edition to Ellroy’s main cast of characters, but Kay Lake, the predictably evil Dudley Smith, and real-life (but dull as hell) figure Bill Parker are all familiar figures from previous books. Apparently. I either haven’t read those books or, in the case of characters taken from The Black Dahlia, barely remember them.
Perfidia’s strength is in its deep grasp of history. Ellroy’s done his research on WWII, he’s done his research on the internment of Japanese-Americans, on left-wing agitators of the ‘40s, on Hollywood stars, on LAPD. There are lots of nice historical touches that feel eerily relevant to the 21st Century. The way that many of the right-wing people in the book call FDR “Franklin Double-Cross Rosenfeld” (implying a Jewish conspiracy) recalled the right-wing tendency a few years ago to always interject and emphasize Obama’s middle name. Similarly, the war profiteering in the novel feels uncomfortably relevant right now. You know who didn’t give a shit about interment camps? People who can make money off of them, and off of any kind of xenophobic frenzy. The parallels to ICE prisons are… not imaginary. (Not saying they're intentional on Ellroy's part, more that they're the parallels between the 1940s and now are starkly obvious.) Ellroy sees racism as one of the pawns of capitalist gain. His characters are driven by their prejudices, but moreso by their greed.
Perfidia also has a great crowd scene that could be ripped from Day of the Locust, a chillingly accurate portrayal of coerced false confession, and a sordid and compelling (if not particularly believably delivered) ending. Bette Davis, although virtually irrelevant to the plot, plays an extended role. At its best, Perfidia recalls the bleakness of The Maltese Falcon and the dark critique of WWII hysteria in Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means. I only really like books about WWII that are about how bleak and traumatic the war was (none of this British rah-rah heroism garbage, thanks), and at times, Perfidia fits the bill.
However. Perfidia’s MASSIVE GLARING weakness is that it’s a book that clocks in at nearly 800 pages, but only half those pages are engaging. The reader has had to plow through a LOT of dreck to get to the good stuff named above. There are so many pointless events. So many returns to the Watanabe household. So many drinks pounded, or abstained from, so many visits with a Catholic bishop, and a young filthy JFK. So many characters I don’t even really remember (who is Elmer again? And the guy in the purple sweater… when do we even SEE him before the reveal? I literally can’t remember.). So many random nights out listening to Dot Rothstein go on and bloody on about how she “scraped” this or that Starlet.
And speaking of Dot. Look. Dot was a sort of fascinating addition to the book initially, until I realized that basically the only queer characters in the book are Dot — an unlicensed abortion doctor who “scrapes” starlets and apparently eats them out while they’re under anesthesia; Hideo Ashida, who despite appearing promising at the start of the novel, sadly remains sexless and tortured for the duration of the book, and gets to do very little beyond double-crosses and the obfuscation of evidence; and a random cast of background gay men and lesbians who do various illicit things (like all butches peeping on starlets getting… abortions? Because that’s definitely what Hollywood lesbians were into in the ‘40s?). Look, I get it, people in Ellroy novels are seedy and terrible no matter who they are, but this particular portrayal struck a sour note with me, so luridly and inaccurately as it was written. It’s weird to compare Ellroy to Sarah Waters, but I kept thinking about how different this portrayal of queer characters was to those in The Night Watch, a historical novel of WWII London. There is plenty of misery and horror in the Waters novel, but her queer characters aren’t just spectacle. That is all.
I started this book just as I was watching the Netflix series Hollywood. I thought they both got things wrong, but each did so in the opposite way. Hollywood pretends that the world was never as nasty as it was — everything is sunshine and rainbows and representation. Ellroy’s portrayal of LA is appropriately nasty, but so over-the-top in the other direction. It feels strange to write a sentence like, “The racial slurs begin to wear on the ear,” but it’s true. I feel like my father complaining about people in moves cursing, but honestly, for fuck’s sake, I get it, LAPD is corrupt and racist, but this is 28 hours worth of audiobook, please, spare my fucking ears, sir. (And there are more complaints about the audio below! Just wait!) Yet there are also a bunch of white characters in the book who hate the internment. Some of them make moves to take actionlike Kay and Claire’s move, which is shut down by the Feds , and many just stand around feeling mad about it and doing nothing, which, honestly, feels very realistic (and again, eerily accurate at predicting the present moment. But then there’s the weird scene at the end, when Bill Parker beats up a guy because Bill is upset about the internment, and I get it, life has been hard on old Billy and he’s just realized he’s going to protect a murderer in order to further his own career, but the beating take a strange tone of white virtue as Bill Parker yells, “no internment” while smashing a guy’s face into pulp . White virtue aesthetics (even accidental ones) were not something I expected from Ellroy.
Anyway, it’s a mixed bag. I feel like somewhere in this book is a really good novel of say, 300 pages (and minus “Whiskey” boring fuck Bill Parker), but I’m not sure Perfidia is worth the slog through the other 400 pages. Despite curiosity about the characters’ trajectories (like… will Hideo Ashida ever get to screw another man? Will the Dudster really spring him and his family from an internment camp? etc.), I can’t face reading This Storm (over 500 pages) or listening to it on audiobook (same reader! No thanks!). I do think this was a weird but not inappropriate segue into my next two reads: [b: When the Emperor Was Divine|764073|When the Emperor Was Divine|Julie Otsuka|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368314069l/764073._SY75_.jpg|2592921] and [b: How Fascism Works|38255329|How Fascism Works The Politics of Us and Them|Jason Stanley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1587653031l/38255329._SY75_.jpg|59936391]. Perfidia is for Ellroy megafans, those who are closely familiar with his most beloved characters, I think this is a must-read. Everyone else can give it a miss.
The Audiobook
Let me tell you about the audiobook. Look, I’m an almost obsessive book-finisher. DNFing is hard for me to accept, and when it occurs it’s usually because some large life change (like moving countries) interrupted my reading. I was already a couple of hours into this book when the dodgy accents began, and I ended up feeling like I was trapped in the effing thing — and not just because it was over 28 FUCKING hours. The audiobook reader was called upon to deliver umpteen accents, many cringey, some borderline racist – the Japanese and Chinese accents put my teeth on edge. The scene where Dudley Smith interviews “The Werewolf” is a horrendous nightmare — back and forth, Irish accent, Japanese accent, Irish, Japanese, both cringey and awful.
Look, I get it. The book is long, and there are SO many characters that you need different vocal styles to distinguish them all or else the reader would lost. BUT, if you brought in a full cast to record the book, you’d have to fork out a lot more cash. So, you hire one reader who does a bunch of accents. And hey, some of the characters DO have accents. People have accents! That’s a thing! I happen to hate it when people do “accent humor,” so I was already biased against this audiobook but… man. The audiobook reader does some “Asian accents” to set one’s hair on end. This shit is Charlie Chan and a half. It becomes even more egregious when he does his “Japanese accent” for a Japanese-American character who clearly (from text) speaks English with an American accent. WHY
The Text
I’m beginning to come to terms with the fact that I’m more interested in James Ellroy than in his fiction. Apparently five years ago I gave The Black Dahlia five stars, but most of what I remember about it is that it’s long, and it’s gritty. I like the grit. I like that Ellroy’s vision of the LAPD, and America in general, is very Hammett-esque. It’s grim, it’s corrupt, it uses a thin mask of patriotism to hide murder and profiteering. It's gross and sad and Ellroy gets that. But truth be told, I’m more interested in the style and philosophy of Ellroy’s books than the intricate plotting. In fact, I don't care for the intricate plotting much at all. My favorite of Ellroy’s books is his first memoir, My Dark Places, about his mother’s murder (and his father’s general failure to father him) and the repercussions of that on his life. Ellroy doesn’t pull any punches; his a screw-up and he owns it. That made me love the guy.
It did not, however, drive me to read all of his fiction. So I enter Perfidia with very limited knowledge of the cast of characters, most of whom hardcore Ellroy fans are already acquainted with. Hideo Ashida is a new edition to Ellroy’s main cast of characters, but Kay Lake, the predictably evil Dudley Smith, and real-life (but dull as hell) figure Bill Parker are all familiar figures from previous books. Apparently. I either haven’t read those books or, in the case of characters taken from The Black Dahlia, barely remember them.
Perfidia’s strength is in its deep grasp of history. Ellroy’s done his research on WWII, he’s done his research on the internment of Japanese-Americans, on left-wing agitators of the ‘40s, on Hollywood stars, on LAPD. There are lots of nice historical touches that feel eerily relevant to the 21st Century. The way that many of the right-wing people in the book call FDR “Franklin Double-Cross Rosenfeld” (implying a Jewish conspiracy) recalled the right-wing tendency a few years ago to always interject and emphasize Obama’s middle name. Similarly, the war profiteering in the novel feels uncomfortably relevant right now. You know who didn’t give a shit about interment camps? People who can make money off of them, and off of any kind of xenophobic frenzy. The parallels to ICE prisons are… not imaginary. (Not saying they're intentional on Ellroy's part, more that they're the parallels between the 1940s and now are starkly obvious.) Ellroy sees racism as one of the pawns of capitalist gain. His characters are driven by their prejudices, but moreso by their greed.
Perfidia also has a great crowd scene that could be ripped from Day of the Locust, a chillingly accurate portrayal of coerced false confession, and a sordid and compelling (if not particularly believably delivered) ending. Bette Davis, although virtually irrelevant to the plot, plays an extended role. At its best, Perfidia recalls the bleakness of The Maltese Falcon and the dark critique of WWII hysteria in Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means. I only really like books about WWII that are about how bleak and traumatic the war was (none of this British rah-rah heroism garbage, thanks), and at times, Perfidia fits the bill.
However. Perfidia’s MASSIVE GLARING weakness is that it’s a book that clocks in at nearly 800 pages, but only half those pages are engaging. The reader has had to plow through a LOT of dreck to get to the good stuff named above. There are so many pointless events. So many returns to the Watanabe household. So many drinks pounded, or abstained from, so many visits with a Catholic bishop, and a young filthy JFK. So many characters I don’t even really remember (who is Elmer again? And the guy in the purple sweater… when do we even SEE him before the reveal? I literally can’t remember.). So many random nights out listening to Dot Rothstein go on and bloody on about how she “scraped” this or that Starlet.
And speaking of Dot. Look. Dot was a sort of fascinating addition to the book initially, until I realized that basically the only queer characters in the book are Dot — an unlicensed abortion doctor who “scrapes” starlets and apparently eats them out while they’re under anesthesia; Hideo Ashida, who despite appearing promising at the start of the novel, sadly remains sexless and tortured for the duration of the book, and gets to do very little beyond double-crosses and the obfuscation of evidence; and a random cast of background gay men and lesbians who do various illicit things (like all butches peeping on starlets getting… abortions? Because that’s definitely what Hollywood lesbians were into in the ‘40s?). Look, I get it, people in Ellroy novels are seedy and terrible no matter who they are, but this particular portrayal struck a sour note with me, so luridly and inaccurately as it was written. It’s weird to compare Ellroy to Sarah Waters, but I kept thinking about how different this portrayal of queer characters was to those in The Night Watch, a historical novel of WWII London. There is plenty of misery and horror in the Waters novel, but her queer characters aren’t just spectacle. That is all.
I started this book just as I was watching the Netflix series Hollywood. I thought they both got things wrong, but each did so in the opposite way. Hollywood pretends that the world was never as nasty as it was — everything is sunshine and rainbows and representation. Ellroy’s portrayal of LA is appropriately nasty, but so over-the-top in the other direction. It feels strange to write a sentence like, “The racial slurs begin to wear on the ear,” but it’s true. I feel like my father complaining about people in moves cursing, but honestly, for fuck’s sake, I get it, LAPD is corrupt and racist, but this is 28 hours worth of audiobook, please, spare my fucking ears, sir. (And there are more complaints about the audio below! Just wait!) Yet there are also a bunch of white characters in the book who hate the internment. Some of them make moves to take action
Anyway, it’s a mixed bag. I feel like somewhere in this book is a really good novel of say, 300 pages (and minus “Whiskey” boring fuck Bill Parker), but I’m not sure Perfidia is worth the slog through the other 400 pages. Despite curiosity about the characters’ trajectories (like… will Hideo Ashida ever get to screw another man? Will the Dudster really spring him and his family from an internment camp? etc.), I can’t face reading This Storm (over 500 pages) or listening to it on audiobook (same reader! No thanks!). I do think this was a weird but not inappropriate segue into my next two reads: [b: When the Emperor Was Divine|764073|When the Emperor Was Divine|Julie Otsuka|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368314069l/764073._SY75_.jpg|2592921] and [b: How Fascism Works|38255329|How Fascism Works The Politics of Us and Them|Jason Stanley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1587653031l/38255329._SY75_.jpg|59936391]. Perfidia is for Ellroy megafans, those who are closely familiar with his most beloved characters, I think this is a must-read. Everyone else can give it a miss.