Three Significant American Crime Novels
James Ellroy
Similarly,
the obsessional aspects may thrill the reader and may be closer to the
partly repressed and sometimes brutal sexuality of the period than is
obvious now but they sometimes appear hysterical. The trajectory of the
book from procedural to theatrical seems more like a loss of control in
the author than a carefully planned artistic endeavour - it may,
however, be the latter. But, these caveats aside, the book is a
great read, filled with fine writing and incident. Only the reasonable
convention that you do not spoil the story for others stops me from
providing more details.
The central character, the morally
compromised and rather ordinary boxer-cop Bucky Bleichard, is believable
and likable despite his flaws. He is run ragged by others throughout
the novel but, to be fair, we don't see the twists and turns any more
than he does. Part of the hysteria perhaps lies in the fact that Ellroy
must make sure that the reader does not see those twists and turns
unless he has a mind of exceptional cynicism, deviousness and, possibly,
cruelty. Most of us don't. As for the writing, there are
brilliant set-pieces throughout and I can't mention the later ones for
fear of the plot - but you could start with the description of the
Bleichart-Blanchard boxing match in Chapter Four. Boxing matches have
always been precisely described because they became popular through
radio and this required precision but this is, nevertheless, a version described from the inside.
The plot may be
hysterical and some of the behaviour of the characters extreme and not
entirely sane but the actual characterisation is brilliant. These are
(mostly) real people and there are a lot of them. You are immersed in a
world of cops who are in the front-line of an economic frontier city and
whose methods and psychology are derived as much from past war service
and redirected patriotism as from any other consideration. One
important credible aspect of the book is the way Ellroy positions
policing in 1940s California as situated half-way between the frontier
imposition of law and order of the older West and the sort of
disciplined urban policing in America we often see today. It is a
macho buddy culture which is as defining of the male as the small town
might be defining of the family, one in which migration, sex, drugs and
corruption are all in the process of being corralled into some sort of
order by what amounts at times to a superior form of thug - although the
decent man doing a tough job is equally represented, not in our 'hero'
but in the higher-ranking officer Russ Millard and others.
Behind
the police lies an uneasy relationship (as indistinct as in a Chandler
novel) of official order with the other force maintaining order in the
street - the businessmen-gangsters, the big business of disorder which
is as interested in taming the street as the cops. America in the
twentieth century is the history of big community compromising with big
private enterprise for the sake of order. Policing is no exception -
the morality and consequences of this are for another time and place but
this novel is another chapter in a much longer tale. The book is highly
recommended despite the caveats which could just be me being precious about
credibility and continuity of mood. It could be that Ellroy has shown
some genius in taking the Hammett-Chandler model and setting it in a
realist police procedural of its time but, if so, perhaps he has been an
edge too clever by half. By the end, the plot is resolved in every
mechanical detail but some of the soul of the first half has dissipated.
Sociologically and culturally though, it is an important book. Easy Rawlins might be, on the surface, just a dark skinned migrant version of Philip Marlowe, but the black experience of America has to be told and a reliance on 'Roots' is not going to be enough if white Americans are to understand the perspective of others who call themselves by the same name of 'American' but who have a very different historical experience. Sadly, Americans go too far in thinking the experiences of Easy Rawlins to be peculiarly black - peasants, working class people and other migrants of every colour have much the same experience as Easy because the issues are about class and power and not colour of skin. An accident of history and 'black' potentates would have enslaved 'white' people as the North African slavers did long before the main Atlantic slave trade emerged.
As someone of (originally) working class stock who got a top notch education through the welfare state in its prime, I can testify to the discomfort a young man feels when introduced to a world of codes designed to turn him into something he is not. I can also testify to the ability of those who have a stake in the system to bully those who have not, simply because of where they stand in the game of power - how much worse it was for people who, in an otherwise free society, could be marked out at thirty paces before they had even opened their mouth. Still, Mosley is not here to talk about history in the round but to write of the specific experience of blacks in 1940s California, those who migrated from the pauper American South to get jobs in the burgeoning military-industrial complex where labour demands based on fat Cold War government contracts required willing and easily replaced low wage but skilled workers (as in the auto industry of Detroit).
Where Mosley does score, beyond the intricately plotted but fairly standard Chandleresque crime story, is in reproducing the psychological bullying that underpinned white dominance of black culture, where half the job of social control was being done by the black community itself who had little choice in the matter. Black Americans seem to have adopted an uneasy combination of isolationist quasi-criminality alongside a troubled determination to keep their heads down in an attempt to find solace in a small degree of prosperity and respectability. The character of Easy Rawlins is designed to show how difficult it was to avoid straddling these two worlds - which helpfully gives him a stronger back drop for his troubled internal morality than the existentialist Mr. Marlowe.
Neither mode of social being, criminality or respectability, had blacks (not African Americans at this stage in history but 'blacks') seeking to be noticed by whites in this period so the criminals preyed on their own rather than bring down the sledgehammer of white policing, while respectable souls were forced into compromises with their integrity to avoid contact with a culture whose power was far more arbitrary than it should have been according to its own standards. The roots of aggressive black pride and criminal defiance that emerged later in the 1970s were sown in the 1940s. Bluntly, observing the treatment of black Americans in the book, whitey really had it coming to him ...
This is why Mosley is worth reading - not for the jolly crime novel aspect (though that is entertaining enough) but the accumulating insight into a culture of anxiety and fear which, to his great credit, Mosley does not over-play. The book is the more effective for being understated and, to his credit, any temptation to grandstand that might have arisen amongst angry lesser minds is firmly resisted.
On this score, the novel has a major flaw - the completely romantic
and absurd relationship between the hero, Jack Foley, an aging bank
robber who does not want to do the time for his crimes, and a somewhat
stereotyped daddy's girl female Federal Marshal. The central scene in
this relationship is just the fantasy of a late middle aged male and
little more than that, even if it evokes that fantasy with consummate
skill. But I relented on the basis that the ridiculousness of it
only requires the same suspension of disbelief that any 'classic'
Hollywood romantic crime movie might require.
The referencing of
the legend of Dillinger and to 'Bonnie & Clyde' and other genre
films shows a certain sad knowingness about the role of the outlaw myth
in American individualism that points up all the better to the reader
the harsh reality of blundering third rate minds trying to grab what
they can within a chaotic system. A lot of male readers will
part-identify with Jack Foley (and is that not a quintessential
masculine outlaw name!?) from the perspective of those who had to compromise with that system for
the sake of security.
The outcome is a nice little morality tale for the Middle American male - if you conformed, you made the right choice in the end even if you never got to feel as alive as Jack must have done when he was younger. Whatever the use made of thrillers like these by Hollywood, their cultural role is a fundamentally conservative one, albeit with a nod to the radical freedom that is just around the corner and for which most men pine so long as there are no costs or consequences. It took time to appreciate Elmore Leonard's genius in this book as the plot was being set up but by the end there was no doubt of it.