Around the death of Marilyn Monroe, James Ellroy created a frenetic and melancholic fresco in the humidity of the summer of 1962 in the heart of the corrupt City.
If you have lost sight of the author of L.A. Confidential or from American Tabloid and you wonder if the incomparable James Ellroy bites againthis seventeenth novel – not counting his memoirs, short stories and essays – is for you. And if you are a faithful American, that Treachery -first volume of his Los Angeles quintet including The Enchanters is the third part- reconciled you with the animal, this new delivery is also for you. Quite simply because we find in this very relative sequence of The coming storm, the outstanding stylist that is Ellroy through his usual favorites (basically, History, crime, corruption, etc.) and his burning writinge, seething and enraged through a complex romantic architecture and fiction articulated around a specific fact, the death of Marilyn Monroe on August 4, 1962 in Los Angeles, around which characters who have existed revolve.
Ultra-black comedy and ten acts
The big star of the novel, with all due respect to the fans of the actress whom the writer destroys with a sulphate machine with totally assumed jubilation, is that damn Freddy Otash who almost single-handedly embodies all the vices of Los Angeles and whose funeral, on October 9, 1992, opens The Enchanters. Ce almost fictional double by James Ellroy, met in the trilogy Underworld USA or in General panic, was or would have served as inspiration for the character of Jack Gittes -Jack Nicholson in Chinatown by Polanski- and is caught between several fires including that of the Kennedy Brothers, panicked at the idea of “files” which have been lying around in the cupboards since the death of the star. Adds the disappearance of a B series actress probably kidnapped, a sexual predator nicknamed the Satyr who preys on single women, a Los Angeles Police Department on the run like a headless hen and other Ellroyian “fantasies” like sexual scandal and blackmail a la I’ve got you, you’ve got me by the goatee.
The most disturbing thing when we are confronted with a book of such density, hypnotic prose and a labyrinthine story, it is to agree to be patient before all the pieces of the puzzle fit together and to enjoy the present moment and the dazzlingness of writing. In the present case, The Enchantersan ultra-black comedy in ten acts, will lower the curtain during its final round entitled Fucking games.
It is also possible to think that James Ellroy, who wanted to write a popular novel of the sixties, also made and loucedé a tribute to one of the fathers of hard-boiled, Dashiell Hammett. Between Butte, Montana, The red harvest and Los Angeles Enchantersthe rot is the same. Which also refers – love story lost in advance included – to the first works of James Ellroy which are Brown’s Requiem et Clandestine, the melancholy breath in addition
