The Andrew Extravaganza

It happened during one of my three semesters spent with Rhodia: shopping at Hastings, a discount book--only 3.99, I had the money and the time. So I bought L.A. Confidential in book form. The movie was perfect and typically the book is better so it seemed like a good idea. I never got around to reading it though; in fact, I don't even remember reading a single page.

I'm very close to finishing John Irving's The Water Method Man (perhaps I'll write an entry about it at some point), so I decided to check out L.A. Confidential; I'd see if it would be a good book to place in the queue. Within the first few pages I realized the challenge will be great, perhaps more so than if I were to resume my reading of A Tale of Two Cities.

Ellroy writes with an economy of words. Consider the following:

1."He'd [Buzz Meeks] been running a week; he'd spent fifty-six grand staying alive: cars, hideouts at four and five thousand a night--risk rates--the innkeepers knew Mickey C. was after him for heisting his dope summit and his woman, the L.A. Police wanted him for killing one of their own."

2."The last string of rooms stood empty; Meeks got his satchel, plopped it down just inside unit 12: front/courtyard view, a mattress on box springs spilling kapok, not bad for a last American flop."

Ellroy uses both the semi-colon and the colon--early and often. I think even John Irving, a known lover of the lost art that is the semi-colon, would find Ellroy's usage to be ostentatious. That being said, the biggest obstacle will be the colons. I will admit that they create a certain rythym, one that would be hard to achieve otherwise, but I find them distracting (like the all caps type used for Owen Meany's dialogue in Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany).

At this point I'm not sure if I will keep James Ellroy on the shelf or not. There's a Half Price Books on F.M. 1960 near Stuebner-Airline; I'm hoping to find a cheap copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany. Perhaps if I make it through on try number two then I might have the discipline necessary to take on the halting punctuation. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I will just cut my losses and accept the movie version as the only viable option.