This discussion began with the question of whether Ellroy was
a good writer or not. Here's my brief thoughts.
----- Original Message ----- From: "JIM DOHERTY" <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
>What Brian implied, and it's a fair point, is that
the
>TOTAL corruption Ellroy shows, in which there is
NO
>character acting from good or noble purposes is
at
>least as far from reality as a presentation
that
>suggests that there is no brutality, corruption,
or
>racism in the ranks of American law
enforcement.
Unfortunately there is no such thing as objective reality.
Like the rest of us, Ellroy can't step outside his own
ideological framework. He has a distrust of people. Somebody
out there killed his mother. Ellroy blames everybody for her
death. In his paranoid world, everybody acts out of
self-interest, everybody is corrupt, everybody is a potential
killer. In terms of establishing whether or not he's a good
writer, it doesn't matter whether the above is true. What
matters is whether or not he presents HIS truth, his
worldview, convincingly.
If he does, and that's what we should be debating, then he's
a good writer.
Al
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