Volume 42, Number 8 · May 11, 1995
Low Lifes
By Luc Sante
American Tabloid
by James Ellroy
Knopf, 576 pp., $25.00
James Ellroy is a crime writer of unusual range and ambition. Actually, to call him a crime writer is perhaps to take hold of the wrong end of the stick; for Ellroy, crime is an underlying reality, not an exceptional circumstance. He views the history of the United States in the twentieth century as something like an extended caper novel—'the story of bad white men,' as he has put it[1]—and he clearly intends to be the Balzac of this epic.
Review, 3037 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |