First off, many thanks to Adam Greenfield for turning me on to James Ellroy. Every now and then, you’re handed a book that knocks you over and after you get up off the floor, you see the world a little differently. American Tabloid is one of those. Here’s what it says on the back:

The ’50s are finished. Zealous young lawyer Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office. J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new Communist nation…

The intersection of Kennedy, Hoover, Hughes, communism, and a nation doing the twist provides the perfect set piece for Ellroy’s fascination with power, violence, and the dark matter that makes American history tick.

American Tabloid is all about tone and Ellroy plugs into the lizard brainpan of America, cranks the volume to eleven, and proves that tone goes a very long way. It goes far beyond ‘hardboiled’, approaching some kind of nail-spitting telegraph style that almost crushes the eye with its relentless staccato rhythm. There are no paragraphs, there is no flow, just eighty-point headline chatter that becomes nearly zen:

Bullshit flowed bilateral. Banister’s office was submerged in right-wing rebop. Guy said the Klan bombed some churches. Boyd’s Clip Castro Team was all-time elite. Dougie Frank Lockhart was one elite gun runner.

Pete said Wilfred Wilfredo Delsol fucked Santo Junior on a dope deal. The fucker got fucked back by fucker or fuckers unknown. Banister sipped bourbon. Pete goosed the charade along. Say, Guy, what have you heard about this? Guy said he heard bubkes. No shit, Sherlock — this line of talk is all shuck and jive.

New Orleans was hot. The office sucked in heat. Guy sat behind his desk and peeled sweat off his forehead with a switchblade.

Like Hemingway on mescaline. In Ellroy’s world, people don’t get stoned, they’re zorched. And if something needs doing, they’ll bring along a shotgun packed with rock salt. An unhinged cousin to Delillo’s Libra and Stone’s JFK, American Tabloid draws yet another nervy fable from the killing of a president. In Ellroy’s hands, however, there is no sentimentality about the loss of innocence or conspiratorial mapping of political grudges. Instead, there are suitcases of money, truckloads of big H and the unsettling suggestion that, in the end, history is written by a handful of confused men fueled by greed and not much sleep. Ellroy’s vision might be closest to the truth.

The last sentence of American Tabloid is absolutely chilling. I find myself opening the book and reading that last page again and again. Now I’m tracking down The Cold Six Thousand and LA Confidential and I’ve noticed a curious thing: Ellroy’s big novels live in the ghettos of genre, filed under Mystery/Thriller/Detective.

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The Paris Sisters – I Love How You Love Me
Gregmark Records, 1961
Here’s a beautiful time piece for shifting from fifties into the sixties: a halcyon ballroom crawl that’s perfect for floating along empty boulevards in the dead of night. Another Phil Spector production, the Paris Sisters were a San Francisco trio, one of whom later worked on The Price is Right. “I Love How You Love Me” hit #5 in 1961.