Tomes: American Tabloid

American Tabloid by James Ellroy


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read American Tabloid years ago as a student in Australia. I re-read it recently, largely to re-familiarize myself with the sleazy, murky world of Ellroy's USA Underworld Trilogy, before I tackle his just published 3rd and final installment Blood's A Rover.

Long time readers of Ellroy's books will quickly find out that the USA Underworld books are merely the author painting his hellish world view on a wider canvas; American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand are basically the crime and grime of his magnificent LA Quartet(The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere,LA Confidential and White Jazz) extrapolated to Nation Wide scale.

As Ellroy states in his biting Foreward:"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets".

Tabloid sets out to prove Ellroy's maxim that President John F Kennedy "got whacked at the optimum moment assure his saintlihood" and seeks to "dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall".

"They were rogue cops and shakedown artists. They were wire-tappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers."

Tabloid is Ellroy's revision of American History, and like LA Confidential, predicated on a 3 Man character arc: Thuggish and violent Pete Bondurant, Handsome, opportunistic and money-loving Kemper Boyd and the conflicted, guilt-wracked Ward Littell.

To even try to encapsulate American Tabloid's labyrinthine plot within the confines of a review is foolhardy; storylines intersect, interests collide, combustible partnerships are formed and then brutally sundered.

Shakedown artist, pimp and strong arm man Bondurant supplies dope to an increasingly bizarre Howard Hughes while facilitating hits for Teamster Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, who is under investigation, along with the Mafia he's neck deep in collussion with by a crusading Robert Kennedy, whose McClellan Committee is infiltrated by Kemper Boyd on orders from a Machievellian J. Edgar Hoover convinced the committee's very existence is a slap in the face of the FBI.

Littell, worshipping Bobby Kennedy and his crusade, clandestinely hunts for the Mob's Achilles Heel: a set of Union Pension Fund books detailing illicit transactions of monies to finance numerous Mob-sanctioned enterprises with usurious interest rates charged to lenders, a fund liberally skimmed by Teamster Boss Hoffa for his own underhanded dealings.

Ellroy's clipped,staccato, rapid-fire, slang-coated and hugely profane prose and various epistolary devices (transcripts of phone conversations/memos/Newspaper articles)turbo charges a narrative that sees Bondurant and Boyd get co-opted then consumed by the CIA-Mob funded recruitment and training of a cadre of anti-Castro Cubans for the launch of the disastrous Bay Of Pigs invasion, chronicles the fall and then remarkable ascent of Littell as the Mob's and Howard Hughes' top lawyer even while it hurtles towards the inevitable downfall of Hoover's pet Agent and Kennedy Lover Kemper Boyd.

At the centre of this convoluted spider web of a narrative sits King Tarantula Hoover, the Underworld Trilogy's Primary Villain,as deliciously evil a creation as Ellroy's other Dastardly Wicked Character, rogue cop Dudley Smith in the LA Quartet along with the ubiquitous presence of the Mob/Outfit/La Cosa Nostra and it's Chief Heads Sam "Mo" "Momo" Giancana, Johnny Rosselli, Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante.

Tabloid isn't for those whose idea of a fun read isn't spending 500-odd pages with a uniformly unpleasant set of characters and aren't prepared for some of the most unflattering potrayals of certain historic personages in American History (Hoover-Cunningly Manipulative, Jack Kennedy-Sexually Voracious, Robert Kennedy-Obsessively Driven, Jimmy Hoffa-Foam At The Mouth Sociopathic, Howard Hughes-Reclusive and Germ-Phobic)not to mention oodles of blood-curdling violence, which in patented Ellroy style, is pornographic bordering on the surreal : "Sal burned a man to death with a blowtorch. The man's wife came home unexpectedly. Sal shoved a gasoline-soaked rag in her mouth and ignited it. He said she died shooting flames like a dragon."

My second read of Tabloid was as feverish as the first. Ellroy creates an American hell-hole of deception, violence, back-stabbing, political chicanery and racism that functions like a morphine shot to the veins. I was on a Sleaze high for a week and having turned the last page, am starting to experience withdrawal symptoms. Which is probably why I'm reaching for The Cold Six Thousand directly after writing this.

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