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quirkycynic 's review for:
Perfidia
by James Ellroy
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.