L.A. Confidential tetralogy, part two: masterful but nauseating...think I'll read the Narnia books instead.
Written: Aug 23 '01 (Updated Aug 24 '01)
Product Rating:
Pros: Interesting take on McCarthyism; well-developed, involving characters.
Cons: The ugliest Ellroy novel. Upsetting end for most of the characters.
The Bottom Line: Ellroy has crafted a near-masterpiece in terms of plot, characters, and especially setting (a hellish L.A.). But it has so much vomit-wrenching foulness it's not worth it.
toby_baldwin's Full Review: James Ellroy - The Big Nowhere
The Big Nowhere, published in 1991, follows The Black Dahlia and is followed by L.A. Confidential and White Jazz in James Ellroy's tetralogy of Los Angeles cops and criminals in the late 1940s to 1950s. It this is told in third-person, but rotates perspective between three protagonists. The subsequent L.A. books and the larger-scope novels about American politics in the 1960s(American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand)--in other words, all of Ellroy's novels since this one, have followed its three-man formula.
I finished reading this last week just after re-reading The Black Dahlia, both of which I hadn't read in seven or eight years. Unlike Dahlia, I didn't remember this one very clearly. Now I'm pretty sure I'd subconsciously blocked it out. And maybe psychological defense mechanisms aren't always such a bad thing. If I had remembered this book being as ugly as it is, I wouldn't have read it. (It's only fair for me to give an example of the kind of ugliness to which I'm referring. I will do that shortly, and I'll warn you before I do.)
This is a nasty, mean-spirited book. I have rated it four stars out of respect for its literary quality. It is an expertly-crafted, emotionally harrowing trip through the well-imagined underbelly of early-1950s Los Angeles, and probably represented a high-water mark for crime fiction when it came out (only to be surpassed in most minds by its better-known sequel). It is still considered by some to be the best Ellroy novel, and is probably the most gut-wrenching (and as any of you who've read Ellroy's books will know, that's a strong statement).
However, the material here simply does not outweigh the slime factor for me. There are three protagonists. Mal Considine, an up-and-coming member of the LAPD brass, is put in charge of an investigation of Communist activities in the film industry (sound familiar?); he wants to make a respectable name for himself because he thinks it will help him in the custody battle with his Czechoslovakian wife for custody of her son, Stefan. Danny Upshaw is a frustrated county sheriff’s deputy in West Hollywood who gets stuck with a string of gruesome homicides that nobody but him seems to want solved. He is a student of forensics and wants to break the case so he can get an assignment as a 'real' homicide detective, and eventually becomes involved in the Red-chasing in exchange for permission to stay on the multiple-murder case. Buzz Meeks, pimp, bodyguard, and bagman for Howard Hughes, enters the Communist investigation for purely financial reasons. He spends most of the book trying to play all sides of every situation solely for his own benefit, but eventually gets pulled into Upshaw's case out of loyalty to him.
I have to give this book its proper respect. So many books and movies are plot-driven, and never make you empathize with the characters; not so here. You can't help becoming emotionally invested in them, and that makes the flood of horrific events and revelations in which the good guys get submerged seem that much less bearable.
Buzz Meeks is portrayed as a risk-taker from the outset. In the latest in a long line of foolhardy decisions, he strikes up an affair with the mistress of Mickey Cohen, a real-life crimelord with heavy LAPD and political connections. Eventually this comes to light, and from then on the sense that Buzz is doomed becomes more and more clear. Note on Buzz Meeks: this character, other than being an ex-cop, bears no relation to the character called Buzz Meeks in Curtis Hanson's 1997 film L.A. Confidential.
WARNING: DISGUSTING DETAILS AHEAD - IF YOU CAN'T TAKE GORY DETAILS, PLEASE SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH. It is clear fairly early on that Upshaw is over-obsessed with his case, and he starts usurping LAPD jurisdiction and taking other risks he considers necessary to solve the case. This element of the story is reminiscent of The Black Dahlia, and is classic Ellroy. But the murder here is uglier than even the actual Black Dahlia murder case. For instance, the first victim in this serial killer's wake has his eyes removed and is raped in the eye sockets. After he is dead, his abdomen and genitals are chewed by what turns out to be a human wearing dentures made of wolverine teeth. The other murders essentially follow this pattern, with variations like severed genitals left sticking out of stab wounds elsewhere on the body. As the case progresses, and after Danny is later assigned to seduce a woman who is a suspect in the communism case, it becomes clear that Danny is in denial of the fact that he is a homosexual. The nasty part of this is that his feelings of arousal are for the killer himself. Most portrayals of homosexuality in fiction offend one end of the political spectrum or the other; once again the self-proclaimed "demon dog" of American fiction has conceived a portrayal that will--and should--offend the sensibilities of just about everyone.
You care about Danny, and as he sinks deeper into a world of gore, deception, and violently twisted sexuality, you are taken along for the ride, like it or not, until the bitter end.
I found Mal Considine, however, to be the most gripping character. The accounts of his tender feelings toward his wife's son (by another man) make you want nothing more than for the two of them to be reunited. As the story progresses, in course of Mal doing everything he can to crack either the 'Commie' case of the murder cases in order to gain more 'juice' that will help his quest for Stefan, his cause is, for me, by far the most compelling.
Will the characters succeed? Will Buzz Meeks get away with the girl and flee to another country? Will Danny solve the case and become a well-known detective? Will the Commie witch hunt prove successful and give Mal the juice he needs to win custody of Stefan, or perhaps can he help crack the murder case and gain the same outcome? I honestly didn't remember how the story would end for two of the characters (one of them dies in the prologue to L.A. Confidential, so I knew he was toast). Since this was the beginning of the three-protagonist rotation that has been featured in every Ellroy novel since, I guessed it would follow a similar pattern to the later books. One would die, one would survive but be completely ruined, and another would succeed professionally, but would be completely disillusioned.
Again, that's just about how it usually works out for the trio of Ellroy's protagonists; based on that, I figured one or two of the 'good guys' would win out at least partially in the end of this book. I really wanted that to happen, and for the end to provide the emotional lift to carry me above the river of crap that the story submerged me in. As you can probably tell, I came away hugely disappointed. At one point my wife ran into the living room to see what was wrong--I was shouting in rage at what happened to one of the characters. You know how some movies and books feel like they have an unrealistically happy ending tacked onto them? That's the case here, except the exact opposite. As the bleak events pile up at the end, it starts to feel almost contrived.
The major bad guy here will be familiar to most people: Dudley Smith, the well-connected rogue LAPD lieutenant. Since this comes before Confidential, and he is a major character in that, I don't consider it a spoiler to say he gets away at the end of this one. Although he is initially assigned to the anti-Communist case, it turns out he is misdirecting the investigation in order to cover up a major crime of his own. Just about everyone will go into this story knowing the good guys won't get Dudley Smith; the only suspense there is how many, if any, can keep him from getting them. As an aside on Dudley, he does not die in the end of the L.A. Confidential book like he does in the movie. Although his getting away at the end of this, the first book in which he appears, adds to the overwhelming gloom and pessimism of this story, it is probably good in that Dudley Smith is an excellent character. He is portrayed so smooth, and Ellroy writes his dialogue so well, that you love him and hate him at the same time. He is the smart, savvy kind of villain that people can't get enough of.
Once again, the historical setting (including postwar anti-communism hysteria) is meticulously established in a manner I find very believable. Los Angeles can't have been this dark of a place, but you'll believe it while you read this. In a literary sense, who could complain about this? Some have called it a masterpiece, and I don't consider it too much of a stretch. The average piece of popular fiction that rises to the top of the New York Times charts has nowhere near the depth and detail, not to mention emotional impact, of this book. The characters, plot, setting, and even the message (of people undone by their fatal weaknesses) are all first-rate noir. It's just too noir for me. At some point there has to be a limit of how much nastiness I will subject myself to in appreciation of a piece of art. This novel crosses that line, and that is why I do not recommend it.
P.S. Last night, about a week after finishing Nowhere, I picked up Confidential, the bittersweet end of which has major redemptive value, I think, and has left me in tears both times I read it before. If nothing else, I could know from the start that the outcome would not be as infuriating as was the end of this book. However, as soon as I ran into the first n-word (which came on page one), I knew I'd had enough Ellroy for a while. Just too much ugliness. I think I'll read something nice and innocent like The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis instead.
From the widely acclaimed author of L.A. Confidential comes the absorbing story of three man caught in a massive web of ambition, perversion, and dece...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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