James Ellroy & Grace Jones, then Chandler

I finished the book White Jazz by James Ellroy about two years ago.

Sometimes, you just have to put a book down or  bookmark the page, get out  a pen, and write down a  great quote. And sometimes run to a dictionary..

When I finished the chapter, I must've put on a Grace Jones CD.

“Aah, a prod. Christianity’s second string. God bless them. Do you still believe, lad?”

from page 160 of White Jazz:  Dudley Smith to Lt David Klein

My initial reaction:

Catholic arrogance cracking me up smart ass comments ruthless behavior and tithing. Cops, cops, cops cop a feel. A warm leatherette cracks into string purses along stagnant canals near urban blight.

The quote takes me back to my Catholic catechism class when  a nun referred to the kids  who did not attend our school as publics.  I never did grasp the concept that we Catholics were on the #1 team and those Lutherans & Methodists were silly to build churches in our community. I can't recall meeting a Jewish person until I traveled across town to attend a public high school and was perplexed that they were still waiting for their Jesus.

 I need to lapse further into Deism.

Ellroy's Irish LA cops rambled on elsewhere  about puerile interdiction.  After reviewing several sources, I think this was about the silliness of the Catholic Church forbidding clergy to marry.


Post blog quandry: Where's Balzac when you need him? 

11/22/12 

 Just finished Little Sister by Raymond Chandler . It had been awhile since I read it and  Philip Marlowe was more sentimental and cynical about Los Angeles than I remember.  Too bad Chandler didn't write more. Love the way they spelled marihuana with an h--must've been Mexican influences.

11/24/12

 No doubts that Robert Mitchum was the best Marlowe.

3/8/13

 Listening to some mid 1980's  Grace: I'm not perfect but

5/10/13

  Iggy did this song first, then Grace, then both:  Nightclubbing- Iggy & Grace

6/13/13

 I've read most of the short stories in Raymond Chandler's - The Simple Art of Murder and Pickup on Noon Street is as gritty and to the core as noir can be. Language is lean and one gets a vivid picture.  The edition includes an Atlantic Monthly essay Chandler wrote on crime writing, and I enjoyed his critique of Agatha Christie-  "preoccupied with hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish." He adds kind words for Hammett.

Who comes closest today to being similar to Grace Jones & Raymond Chandler? As far as Chandler, maybe Jo Nesbo? As far as Grace, I don't see anyone.

11/12/13

Chandler: "Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency."

12/4/13

Grace song title could be a line in a Chandler or Hammett novel: I've seen that face before

1/20/14

“What is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die.” ― Jo Nesbø, The Snowman

3/1/14

Ides of March in two weeks.  Does a world figure get assassinated? Perhaps near the Black Sea?  Grace covers  Demolition Man

4/23/14

It appears that Nesbo may bring Harry Hole back. His latest work Police was a wild gruesome ride  including Hole marrying Rakel, his ladylove.

4/24/14

For Cindy:  Sweden's Ake Edwardson: Erik Winter series ; Shadow Woman #2, sun & shadow #3, never end #4, frozen tracks #5, sail of stone #6

5/17/14

Dashiell Hammett penned this in The Thin Man

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two."

5/20/14

Hey Cindy : reading #7 in  the Winter series. Room #10. Plenty of nuts & bolts investigating.

5/21/14

I'm almost finished room #10 and feel like I need the family flow charts you needed for Faulkner novels, but it's great to have to pay attention to every word.

5/23/14

I don't re-read passages often, but I'm still a bit confused as to who did what in room 10 as far as Borge, Mario Ney, & Jonas Sandler. Fascinating read.

8/9/14

This blog roams from noir to Grace J . A mellow tune from GJ: Victor should have been a jazz musician

10/27/14

Veering back to Mitchum: In a mid 1970's Village Voice interview with Carrie Rickey, Mitchum explained that the term hipster derived from an opium user laying on his hip when he smoked the pipe.

11/9/14

I read about a third of Complex 90, a book drafted by Mickey Spillane and finished by Max Allen Collins, last night. I enjoyed some of his descriptions of Moscow & NYC in the late 1960s but  was turned off  by Hammer's self absorption and skipping over details. I see why folks were ambivalent about Spillane as a writer, but his Cold War sensibilities  are worth considerering when viewing Putin.

1/11/15

Jo Nesbo's latest ,The Son, reels the reader in immediately. His description of prison life and junkie crooks is stunning. Plenty of book left. BTW, this isn't part of the Harry Hole series.

1/13/15

Somewhat surprised that the ending was slightly happy. Good read- interesting twists. High level of police corruption.

4/8/15

Patti Smith is narrating the new audio edition of Jo Nesbø’s latest thriller Blood on Snow

5/16/15

Couldn't pass up this quote attributed to #RobertMitchum:

When asked what he looked for in a script before accepting a job, he said, “Days off.”

6/14/15

I'm reading Nesbo's the redeemer (Harry Hole series) out of sequence, but the Croat assassin who started his career crawling under Serbian tanks to install explosives is fascinating

7/5/15

Chandler notes analyzing pulp detective magazines of the 1920s.  Here's a quip from Feb 15 ,1950:

pulp paper never dreamed of posterity 

8/21/15

Keeping it light today: I recall the looks on the new wave kid's face at a Towson, MD record store circa 1981 when he rang up my purchase of the Psychedelic Furs debut album (approval) and the Grace Jones single "pull up to the bumper" (disdain) . My reply was "it's a big world."

10/21/15

Reading Ellroy's Blood on the Moon published in the early 80's.Some rough passages-.he's come a long way.

10/31/15

This could be more myth than fact, but I recall hearing a story of how Mitchum attended  a Halloween party on the Eastern Shore in MD in the  raw lathered with mustard and replied to questions about his costume with : "I'm a hot dog".

11/26/15

You could apply this quote from Maltese Falcon to more than crooks:

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”- Dashiell Hammett

2/12/16

Mitchum quote:

 Every two or three years, I knock off for a while. That way I`m always the new girl in the whorehouse.

9/11/16

to #Hillaryclinton from one of the deplorables -Grace Jones covers a tune and it is for you she's lost control

10/11/16

No politics this morning
“Who was the mad bastard who taught you to drive?"  Jo Nesbø, Nemesis

11/12/16

Grace Jones title everybodyhold still is what I'm asking of the anti-Trump protestors, then read a civics book. BTW, I'm not saying Grace agrees with me.

11/13/16

No politics. Instead lines from Raymond Chandler:

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away."

4/23/17

reading The Flanders Panel by Perez-Reverte, Arturo, an interesting read that has me screaming this #raymondchandler quote, "Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency."

6/4/17

I'm a big fan of  #jonesbo #harryhole series and just finished #thethirst.  My blood related non-spoiler: Too much iron can kill.

11/22/17

“It’s All Right: He Only Died,” a #raymondChandler story that was found in a shoebox donated to University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, has been published by Strand magazine.

6/22/18

#nesbo 's latest lead character Macbeth is potent and erratic, but I still prefer #harryhole

5/26/19

For no particular reason: 

“Sometimes we’re wrong when we think that we know the truth about our parents.” ― Jo Nesbø, The Son

7/15/19

 #Knife, the latest in #harryhole detective fiction series from #Nesbo , is a solid book.  Various parts of story lines of Norway murder investigations are tied to ex-soldiers with PTSD, particularly from NATO tours in Afghanistan.  9k Norwegian soldiers served in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014.

2/2/20

 “She had that fine-drawn intense look that is sometimes neurotic, sometimes sex-hungry, and sometimes just the result of drastic dieting.” ― #RaymondChandler, The Long Goodbye 

1/23/21

#jonesbo 's latest, The Kingdom, is a wild ride through rural Norway and doesn't end up with good guy or gal winning. There aren't any angels in this tale that centers around the bond between two brothers, Roy and Carl. Roy felt his talent was in in "disarming people---- the same way you disarm bombs.".

9/9/21

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Feb 20, 2022

Circling back to Ellroy for a morning jolt: “I am the son of a murdered woman—anybody who'd call my books misogynistic is, frankly, out of their fucking mind."― James Ellroy

The "Wokers" are jokers who cast aspersions based mostly on raw emotion.

June 25, 2023

Kingdom Come, the latest in the Harry Hole series, damn, I'm learning a lot about parasites.

 I enjoyed the character Lucille's comment on Uma Thurman being a Janey come lately on the Weinstein take-down.  "When, for years, you’ve tacitly allowed all those young, hopeful actors to walk into Weinstein’s’ office alone because you with all your millions, by speaking out might—might—miss out on yet another million-dollar role, then I think you should be publicly whipped and spat upon.”  author Jo Nesbo.

Interesting twist "suicide by criminal" ending to Kingdom Come. Hole's dying buddy Aune switches roles and receives the injection of parasites instead Hole. Later, it's morphine from his wife for the finale. 

Sept 2, 2023

Second Murderer, Denise Mina's version of Philip Marlowe, went up and down. At times, he nearly becomes a 2023 social justice guy planted in the 1940s. Other times, she captured Chandler's Marlowe- chicks confused him and always will. Dyke bar scenes stirred up some memories for me. It was set in the 1940s but some things don't change. 

I spent a little too much time in the 1980s-hanging with lesbians and the bi-chicks.😉

Oct 1, 2023

Ellroy's latest, The Enchanters, uses real names. Liz, Marilyn, JFK, Hollyweird, etc, get strafed. I'm unsure how he is avoiding lawsuits. I've read 50 pages.