Sex and crime, described in sentences containing five words or less

LA Confidential was a present from my boyfriend, a James Ellroy junkie, so the pressure for liking this book was already high. And since I’m a bit of a contrarian (A bit?! my boyfriend would say), I’m predisposed to dislike things that others so vehemently love. I’ll find the holes to poke through, the flaws that are there — whether intentionally placed or not — and I’ll do my best to skewer the book/movie/show that others love so much. Because I’m a bitch. There’s a reason why I was first drawn to Pajiba, and it lies in its original tagline — Scathing Reviews. Bitchy People. This motto properly encapsulates me in my heart of hearts.

Yet every now and then, there are universally beloved works that sneak past my walls of resistance, and this book is one of them. Generally, I have a rule about reading books, especially fiction. The rule is I finish them. So when I started reading LA Confidential, I knew I couldn’t give up on it, despite my trouble with the zig-zagging slang and the curious, seemingly nonsensical wordplay. I hated the short sentences, and the elimination of punctuation, proper grammar and just… words. I hated that I didn’t get it, and I absolutely hated the liberal use of sexual and racial invectives — probably accurate to the period but for my 21st century (Asian, female) ears were difficult to swallow.

Then midway through Part One, my brain clicked and began comprehending the sentences. I didn’t have to reread a paragraph five times to get it, and I started to understand Ellroy’s style, his use of punctuated sentences favored with evocative vocabulary choices. He wrote the way we speak, if we were disillusioned policemen from the 50s. Layers of competing politics, allegiances and context could reside in a single paragraph, and if I wasn’t paying attention, I’d miss it. In a 2009 interview, Ellroy objected to describing his sentences, sometimes comprising only four words, as minimalistic. “Minimalism implies small events, small people, a small story,” he said. “Man, that’s the antithesis of me.”

To read more of my review, go here.