Blood's A Rover

Does this mean it's coming soon? Please?

RathBandu recently informed me this had finally come out. After reading up on it, I have to say I'm a little disappointed.

When I first heard about the book, I read it was going to be Ellroy's first book with female protagonists. Namely, it was going to be told from the perspective of three female friends and would cover events between 1968-1972. Ellroy may well be the most hateful writer I've ever read, and he has never spared women from that hate. Then again, it's not like he's harder on women than he is on blacks, gays, Hispanics, ETC. I am not sure if he is a misogynist, but women are rarely depicted in a sympathetic light in his work. They're often vilified for things that would seem trivial when stacked up against the stuff his male protagonists get away with..... but I was none the less intrigued to see what he'd come up with, and if he'd find it within himself to write with a woman's voice.

I guess I know my answer, because he ditched that idea and Rover is once again about three very bad men. That's fine and all, I'll read it, I was just kind of hoping for something new.


Oh well.

Still though, awesome to see the book come out at last, regardless of what its about. Maybe now he can get cracking on that Harding administration novel I've heard him talk up

"Pantysniffers at Teapot Dome"?

James Ellroy is the literary equivalent to Frank Miller.

I'd be really curious to see it, lol

That is just crazy talk. Miller could not write an Ellroy book if he tried.

He hasn't been good in years and was always a little overrated. He seems to have started to believe his own press in the last few years.

L.A. Confidential is still great, but it was a better movie.

Well everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think Ellroy is brilliant/insane/evil. American Tabloid is a masterpiece, and the LA Quartet is virtually flawless (I found WHITE JAZZ too much to stomach, never finished it)

The level of complexity in those books is just astounding. I don't begrudge him for his inflated sense of self worth. He's earned it (in my very humble opinion, Cameron)

PS: La Confidential is one of the best movies of the 90s, but the book is one of the best books of the century. It's an apples and oranges thing. Can't really compare the two.

Agree with Rath on Ellroy's placement in any kind of cannon for the century (though I think you could make a strong argument for American Tabloid being up there).

Vehemently disagree with Hoken. Kind of sort of agree with Cameron. Saying that he hasn't been good for years is not taking into consideration that before Blood's A Rover, he'd only published one book in the almost decade since Cold Six Thousand, and it was a collection works that you could tell were put out by the publisher just to cash in.

Kate, you couldn't be more wrong on your take of Ellroy with women. There's no way he treats them worse than the men, if anything, they come off as almost eye-rollingly sanctified in their ability to redem the main characters. Also, in Blood's a Rover, without giving too much away, I will say that although it starts out using the same three-men structure as the others, by the end the women come to the forefront.

As to the quality of the book itself, I will say I was bit disappointed at times in how similar it was to the others, and without a giant event (read: assassination) to lead to, it wasn't quite as exciting and epic as the previous two installments. But there was some very good stuff in it, and some out of the fucking blue resolution to some characters that I can't decide if I thought were retarded are brilliant.

Re Rath:--thanks for pointing out that Paris Review article, I'm gonna try and track it down. i saw him live a few months ago, and he puts on a hell of a show. It's glaringly obvious that much of it's an act, as the man claims he never reads, yet managed to spout off, from memory, entire poems by T.S. Elliot, Ann Sexton and Dylan Thomas.

Red Joan is the best part of the book, but it still doesn't save it from being really mediocre.

I'd call it more of a mess than mediocre (I think we had this same exchange on the current reading board), but yeah, Red Joan is the best part, along with SPOILER how Dwight Holly gets taken out (I'm a sucker for a close quarters shootout). I still don't know how to feel abou those fucking birdmen.

Ellroy, like Stephen King, is at a place where he doesn't have to listen to an editor and really should.

I don't know about that, at the reading I saw him at he was pretty emphatic about how involved his editor was in his process. Maybe he just needs a different editor. (Can't compare him to King as I've never read a word of the the latter)

I saw him in San Francisco, and he was talking about how he lived here for a while, which lead to the best line of the night: "I do what I do every time I get divorced, which is move back to L.A."

So I found some excerpts from that review and I couldn't help but share this one:

"I tried to read a Cormac McCarthy book and thought, Why doesn’t this cocksucker use quotation marks? I picked up another Cormac McCarthy book and saw that there were six or seven consecutive pages in Spanish. I didn’t know what it meant. My name isn’t Juan Ellroy, OK?"

Jesus, what a glorious asshole.

"Mediocre". That was my first thought and post after i put this one down as well.

I do love Ellroy like the next guy and hold the L.A. Quartett in highest regards. And American Tabloid was pretty much his peak for me. I enjoyed the Cold Sixthousand but it didn´t make me rave.

But Blood´s a Rover is a weird beast. It does have so many great vintage Ellroy moments and characters. The very beginning is pure adrenalin pumping Michael Mann - the final game plan is breathtaking in it´s audaciousness though it failed to really pick up pace for me. I think the lack of climax (meaning assassination or the like) might very well play a role here. But overall the storylines feel disjointed and some are feeling like needless pandering and going nowhere. Though I have to agree that Ellroy may have well crafted his best female character to date - one that even breaks into the classic Ellroy "Trinity-of-torn Lawmen and Gangsters" structure. Which does feel stale and rehashed at times. Though the shake up in general was something I really appreciated to see him turning his own formula on the head to a certain extent.

It is a worthy bookend for his American Underbelly trilogy though after everything is said and done in my eyes.

Really? Wow. I read an interview where he said the exact opposite a few years ago. That he was done with LA, and had said all he needed to say. American Tabloid was a new direction for him and that kind of book was what he intended to spend the rest of his career writing. I'd be kind of sad to hear he intends to just stick with LA forever

Maybe you're right Z Vasquez. I'd have to go back and do some re-reading. The more I think about it, yes, you're sort of correct about women redeeming the male heroes

I guess in hindsight, I mostly was thinking about the Madeleine Sprague character. I remember being pretty repulsed by her when I read BD a few years ago. She struck me as a very misogynistic literary invention

Those who want to avoid SPOILERS, do not read my post. You should not be reading a thread about a book if you haven't read it anyway.

I finished reading it last week. I had started reading the book when it came out so that means I really had to make an effort to finish it. It's not bad but I felt like Ellroy was spinning his wheels. It's mostly a repeat from the Cold Six Thousand but with lower stakes and plans that literally go nowhere.

Did anyone care about finding Fontonette's killer? Because I sure as shit did not when I got around to page 600.

Wayne and Dwight's did not surprise me at all, after all they'd been in a previous book so of course Ellroy had to kill them. It would've been more of a surprise if Dwight had gotten a happy ending. And Wayne become a commie terrorist and then dead in about 50 pages felt really cheap.

I also did not care about Ellroy writing in another peeper character who you just know from the very first time he's introduced is going to be the lone survivor.

The one thing I really liked was Karen's character who felt real and was surprisingly tender and sweet, yet strong. I would not have thought Ellroy to be capable of writing such a female character.