Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Essays, Repetitive Fictions
Review: Ellroy's collected writings for GQ magazine from 1993�99 are collected in this hodgepodge of essays and three short stories. For those (like me) who've never read Ellory before and want to test the waters of his LA-centric writings, this seems to be as good a place as any. The first three essays are grouped under the theme "Unsolved". The first is about his own mother's murder in an LA suburb of El Monte in 1958 and was expanded into the book My Dark Places. The second recounts the unsolved murder of a woman in El Monte in 1973, and the third retells the death of a smalltime druggie actress in 1963.Next come two "LA Confidential" era stories narrated by Hush-Hush editor Danny Getchell (the Danny Devito character in the film). These stories are virtual carbon copies in terms of subject matter (sex, murder, blackmail, crooked cops, degenerate celebrities) and style (period slang and alliteration galore). While I'll agree that Ellroy's prose is punchy and full of juice, he's over-dependent on alliteration. Once or twice a page is plenty, once or twice a paragraph is overkill. Next is an essay about the life and times of a '50s teen idol accordion player named Dick Contino. This is a fairly interesting piece revealing the fleeting nature of celebrity and the patriotic fervor of the '50s. Ellroy tracked him down and then wrote a 57-page novella with him as the hero narrator. Unfortunately, "Hollywood Shakedown" is exactly like the two previous Hush-hush stories, which if you like that kind of thing is fine I suppose. Personally, I grew to find them tiresome and repetitive. Part of the problem is that all his characters speak the same clipped hard-boiled way in every story. The most egregious case being the accordion player Contino who in his narrative uses plenty of alliteration, exactly as Danny Getchell does in the previous stories. Certain words and phrases crop up over and over throughout the story, becoming more drab with every use, for example, sapphic, tumescent, SIN-sational, to name just the first three that come to mind. The final section is perhaps my favorite, including a sharp essay on O.J. Simpson; an engaging profile of the L.A. County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau; a piece on Curtis Hanson (director of LA Confidential); and best of all, Ellroy's reminiscences about his LA junior high school. This last piece, in which he vividly recreates the world of his youth in early 1960s LA and then organizes a junior high reunion is easily the warmest in the book. This and the O.J. Simpson piece are the only two in the whole book in which one gets a sense of Ellroy as a regular human (in the O.J. piece he's an angry human), albeit one still perhaps unhealthily obsessed with the past. All in all, the collection certainly doesn't inspire me to pursue Ellroy's fiction, but I am interested in reading more of his essays.
Rating:
Summary: Super
Review: For openers only - Elloy, like no other writer captures the true essence of the lizard pit (Los Angeles). His other books are nothing short of "movies for the mind", circa LA 1950. Read them - go there. Don Ross Bangkok Thailand
Rating: 
Summary: Too disjointed to be entertaining...
Review: I am a huge Ellroy fan. I have read nearly every one of his books, but this one just didn't cut it. The haphazard approach of putting together his essays on popular culture and hollywood with some short fiction based on a few of his characters from the LA Quartet was too much. I couldn't get focused on any of the fiction, and the long winded diatribes on the vaccuousness of celebrityism in LA (talk about an easy target), together with an endless, hyper-syllabic dissertation on why the O.J. trial was a circus (really?) made me long for the end. Don't even check it out of the library...
Rating:
Summary: Too disjointed to be entertaining...
Review: I am a huge Ellroy fan. I have read nearly every one of his books, but this one just didn't cut it. The haphazard approach of putting together his essays on popular culture and hollywood with some short fiction based on a few of his characters from the LA Quartet was too much. I couldn't get focused on any of the fiction, and the long winded diatribes on the vaccuousness of celebrityism in LA (talk about an easy target), together with an endless, hyper-syllabic dissertation on why the O.J. trial was a circus (really?) made me long for the end. Don't even check it out of the library...
Rating: 
Summary: awesome book on acid
Review: I bought this book the day it came out. I read most of the articles before in GQ, but they are still hilarious. Also interesting is next month's new Getchell story, a fine sermon on the sleaze of Frank Sinatra, it even condemns Hubert Humphrey for the sake of some sinsational alliteration
Rating:
Summary: Keep them coming
Review: I can't get enough of this guy. The short stories included are great, the true crime is better.
Rating: 
Summary: Great but Not Ellroy's Best
Review: I hadn't read any of these pieces before, and I dug most of them, especially "Body Dumps" and "Hush-Hush." Occassionally, the repetition that comes from each of these stories being originally published seperately becomes tiresome (He mentions his mother's death in almost every nonfiction piece). Not quite as good as The Black Dahlia or My Dark Places, but Ellroy's still the best in the biz.
Rating:
Summary: Some great, some ok, but all pure Ellroy...
Review: James Ellroy, after only 3 books, has taken his place among my most favorite writers. Ellroy's collection of fiction and non-ficiton is a mixed bag, but mostly excellent. The best essay is "Let's Twist Again," a return to his junior high days. I expected something more elegiac and less upbeat, but the change of tone suits the peace. In fact, it is one of the best pieces I have ever read about those forgotten Jr. High years. Frankly, the weakest piece is the Sinatra crime story--TiJuana, Mon Amour. There was nothing much new it in it and the other long short stories, esp. the Dick Contino piece were better. Danny Getchell as a narrator is better in short bursts. There are more mediations on his mother's murder, but even if you have read "My Dark Places" they add a bit of perspective. I loved his piece on the LA Confidential movie/Curtis Hanson, the piece of the Sheriff's Homicide Department, and the OJ Simpson story. As an avowed OJ junkie, I love to read anything new on it. Perhaps not his strongest work, but certainly worth a read if you enjoy his work. Sadly, the introduction is written by the late Art Cooper of GQ, who many of us still miss.
Rating:
Summary: Some great, some ok, but all pure Ellroy...
Review: James Ellroy, after only 3 books, has taken his place among my most favorite writers. Ellroy's collection of fiction and non-ficiton is a mixed bag, but mostly excellent. The best essay is "Let's Twist Again," a return to his junior high days. I expected something more elegiac and less upbeat, but the change of tone suits the peace. In fact, it is one of the best pieces I have ever read about those forgotten Jr. High years. Frankly, the weakest piece is the Sinatra crime story--TiJuana, Mon Amour. There was nothing much new it in it and the other long short stories, esp. the Dick Contino piece were better. Danny Getchell as a narrator is better in short bursts. There are more mediations on his mother's murder, but even if you have read "My Dark Places" they add a bit of perspective. I loved his piece on the LA Confidential movie/Curtis Hanson, the piece of the Sheriff's Homicide Department, and the OJ Simpson story. As an avowed OJ junkie, I love to read anything new on it. Perhaps not his strongest work, but certainly worth a read if you enjoy his work. Sadly, the introduction is written by the late Art Cooper of GQ, who many of us still miss.
Rating:
Summary: Inconsistent, but fun...
Review: Over the past few months, i've devoured every one of Ellroy's books that I could get my hands on. However, the only pieces here that I felt stood out where the "Hush Hush" and "Dick Contino" stories.
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