blood’s a rover (elroy)

Elroy’s novels always leave me punchdrunk. They’re like going not fifteen rounds, but fifteen rounds for a fortnight. His prose is merciless. His humour is merciless. He is beyond sardonic. He’s a grinning gargoyle, looking down from the cathedral wall at all the sin and venality that occurs beneath the eaves of its supposed sanctified space. Blood’s A Rover doesn’t even have the pay-off of a historical assassination. It skirts Watergate. It delves into arcane B-stories occurring in Vegas, LA, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As though he grew sick of lifting the lid on the obvious and now wants to show you all the other stuff you’ve never even contemplated. The conspiracy headlines only serve to distract from all the other shit that’s going down.

It’s a dense read, in typical Elroy style. Characters flower and fade. Life is short. However, in Blood’s A Rover he perhaps goes further into the moral maze. His key characters here are all, as ever, from the dark side, but each and every one of the three male protagonists finds themselves confronting the moral failings of their chosen side and fighting back. In interviews Elroy insists he’s not a liberal, but let’s take that with a pinch of salt, because he understands that in order to audit the empire’s crimes, you have to be prepared to walk beside the emperor(s) and their adjutants. Which he does. And in so doing, he documents and reveals the moral depravity of a society where greed and cruelty are rewarded with power and privilege.

Nb - discovered this from an old diary entry the other day:

Four in the morning and I’ve set the alarm for 7.30. The writing has been impacted by events this weekend, got next to nothing done. Also not helped that I picked up Elroy’s The Cold Six Thousand the other day, knowing it would probably get in the way, just because his machine gun prose and scale get into your head. Phenomenal book, in its scale. I realise now that he could not include all that detail if he wrote any other way. …But also, as I think I wrote about Tabloid, the work does not have the depth, quite, emotionally. You could say its not trying to, its fundamentally thriller, but you don’t write like that kind of a maniac without wanting to change the world whilst you do it, and have no doubt that Elroy wants to, if only change our perspective of the crooked, fucked-up world he lives in over there. But, forget all that. Tis compelling and fucks with your schedule.

Still off booze and fags.

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How can I call Elroy thin. It’s like saying – I found myself in a thin carcrash. If that’s thin, then it’s double cream fat thin.

the big nowhere (james elroy)

It’s so long ago since I read Elroy’s Underworld trilogy, which offered both a re-imagination and an examination of post-war US politics. One longs for either Elroy himself or another Elroy to analyse the Trumpian world with the same forensic discipline. Most history, as Marias observes, occurs in the shadows, and Elroy is a writer who is not afraid to walk in those shadows and take the reader with him. Perhaps because the trilogy felt so urgent, so necessary, I have resisted his crime novels. The Big Nowhere is the second of his LA Quartet, and whilst it doesn’t do so directly, it still flirts with politics, pulling up the skirts of the US establishment. Elroy writes with an urgency as he documents the way a crime investigation is railroaded by vested interests within the LAPD. There is no space for idealism or even honesty in this venal world. It’s a gripping, coruscating read, which gives a down-to-earth lowdown on what really makes the US tick. He is a writer blessed with a singular, scatty brilliance.