Ward walked. Ward rocked. Pete rocked harder.
Ward split hairs. Pete split skulls.
Pete came off the Tigre cab rank. Pete gave $400 to Julio D. Julio D acquiesced in exemplar gratitude.
NEWSFLASH: Julio D's an anti-Fidel stooge.
Pete took him down to the breakfast bar. Pete cleared the bar. Pete needed cooking room. Pete dug cooking.
Carlos was waiting. Pete and Carlos played table tennis with Julio D as ball. Julio D squealed to Hoover. Julio D now squealed. Full stop.
Pete unearthed a spatula. Pete buckled his AK47. Pete preferred butt to bullets. Pete split his skull. Brain flew all over the place and decked the walls. Hey Daddy-O! Dig that new Pop Art red and beige wall mural!
Ward wept. Flooze was on other side of the wall making whoopee. Flooze squealed. Flooze ran into room. Dig Pete shooting in panic. Dig crazy Pete shooting in rage. 1947 flashback. Dig Flooze's brains adding a queer layer of Klein blue to the new decor - Cuban rooms were wallpapered on the cheap.
Pete and Carlos engineered a wanton plan. Pete resumed his table tennis game. Pete dragged the two deadbeats into the back garden. Pete doused paraffin. Dig skull table tennis with Julio D's left femur and Flooze's right femur as rackets - together for eternity. They tried the buffalo wing option thereafter. The brainwave was cool. The aftertaste was overly oily.
Ward warbled. Ward killed everyone he loved. It was his belittlement. It was his self-betrayal.
Word from Hoffa: you owe us a debt. Word from Hoffa: make worms consume daddy. Word from Hoffa: worms will have three shots of you nightly otherwise.
Ward shot. Ward slept. Ward shot up again junkie-style. Ward fostered his faith.
Pete whacked Babs. Babs whacked Pete back twentyfold. Hoover more than Hoover could. Their melody was unchained.
Check out the screams on Deeley Plaza. Check out the red spotted suit - Coco the Clown, newly evicted from Camelot.
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Spitshine this prose, and replace the conspiracy mumbo-jumbo with a
small helping of piquish flippancy, and it'd be Elmore Leonard!
Not that I have a problem with Elmore, or Ellroy for that matter.
― Daver, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
I presume that the thread's title suggests that Marcello is attacking
JE. Having a sufficiently distinctive and imitable style to be
pastiched is no sign of a lack of quality. I've written pastiches of
Shakespeare, Hemingway, Wodehouse, Twain and others, and they're all
wonderful and quite easy to mimic.
Ellroy is very good but occasionally overrated by people too easily
impressed by his weaving together of fact and fiction, and by his
real-life back-story.
― Martin Skidmore, Thursday, 6 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Actually I love JE to death, though The Cold Six Thousand does sag
somewhat in the middle - Pete drug-running in Vietnam is just a rerun
of Pete drug-running in Cuba in American Tabloid. Can't wait for the
third part of the trilogy, though.
― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Really? I was wondering how the Cold Six Thousand was, was thinking
of taking it on vacation with me in a couple weeks since it's now out
in paperback. But if it's kind of iffy, maybe it can wait.
― Nicole, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
No, it's definitely worth reading (provided you've read American
Tabloid first, otherwise it won't make sense). It does drag a bit in
the middle and could probably have been profitably shorn of 200 pages
or so, but certainly should be read.
― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)