Author: Nathan Ashman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498565816
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
James Ellroy is an acclaimed yet controversial popular novelist. Since the publication of his first novel Brown’s Requiem in 1981, Ellroy’s eccentric “Demon Dog” persona and his highly stylized, often pornographically violent crime novels have continued to polarize both public and academic opinion. This book addresses the voyeuristic dimensions of Ellroy’s fiction, one of the most significant yet underexplored issues in his work. Focusing exclusively on Ellroy’s two collections of epic noir fiction, The L.A. Quartet and The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, it critically reflects on a vivid preoccupation with eyes, visual culture, and visual technologies that spans across both these bodies of work. Using a combination of psychoanalysis and postmodern and cultural theory, Nathan Ashman argues that Ellroy’s fiction traces the development of the voyeur from a deviant and perverse “peeping tom” into a recognizable, contemporary “social type,” a paranoid and obsessive viewer who is a product of the decentered and hallucinatory ”cinematic” world that he inhabits. In particular, James Ellroy and Voyeur Fiction illuminates a convergence between voyeurism and recurring patterns of “ocularcentric crisis” in Ellroy’s texts, as characters become continually unable to understand or interpret through vision. Alongside a thematic analysis of obsessive watching, Ashman also argues that Ellroy’s works—particularly his later novels—are themselves voyeuristic, implicating the reader in these broader narrative patterns of both visual and epistemophilic obsession.
James Ellroy and Voyeur Fiction
Author: Nathan Ashman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498565816
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
James Ellroy is an acclaimed yet controversial popular novelist. Since the publication of his first novel Brown’s Requiem in 1981, Ellroy’s eccentric “Demon Dog” persona and his highly stylized, often pornographically violent crime novels have continued to polarize both public and academic opinion. This book addresses the voyeuristic dimensions of Ellroy’s fiction, one of the most significant yet underexplored issues in his work. Focusing exclusively on Ellroy’s two collections of epic noir fiction, The L.A. Quartet and The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, it critically reflects on a vivid preoccupation with eyes, visual culture, and visual technologies that spans across both these bodies of work. Using a combination of psychoanalysis and postmodern and cultural theory, Nathan Ashman argues that Ellroy’s fiction traces the development of the voyeur from a deviant and perverse “peeping tom” into a recognizable, contemporary “social type,” a paranoid and obsessive viewer who is a product of the decentered and hallucinatory ”cinematic” world that he inhabits. In particular, James Ellroy and Voyeur Fiction illuminates a convergence between voyeurism and recurring patterns of “ocularcentric crisis” in Ellroy’s texts, as characters become continually unable to understand or interpret through vision. Alongside a thematic analysis of obsessive watching, Ashman also argues that Ellroy’s works—particularly his later novels—are themselves voyeuristic, implicating the reader in these broader narrative patterns of both visual and epistemophilic obsession.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498565816
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
James Ellroy is an acclaimed yet controversial popular novelist. Since the publication of his first novel Brown’s Requiem in 1981, Ellroy’s eccentric “Demon Dog” persona and his highly stylized, often pornographically violent crime novels have continued to polarize both public and academic opinion. This book addresses the voyeuristic dimensions of Ellroy’s fiction, one of the most significant yet underexplored issues in his work. Focusing exclusively on Ellroy’s two collections of epic noir fiction, The L.A. Quartet and The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, it critically reflects on a vivid preoccupation with eyes, visual culture, and visual technologies that spans across both these bodies of work. Using a combination of psychoanalysis and postmodern and cultural theory, Nathan Ashman argues that Ellroy’s fiction traces the development of the voyeur from a deviant and perverse “peeping tom” into a recognizable, contemporary “social type,” a paranoid and obsessive viewer who is a product of the decentered and hallucinatory ”cinematic” world that he inhabits. In particular, James Ellroy and Voyeur Fiction illuminates a convergence between voyeurism and recurring patterns of “ocularcentric crisis” in Ellroy’s texts, as characters become continually unable to understand or interpret through vision. Alongside a thematic analysis of obsessive watching, Ashman also argues that Ellroy’s works—particularly his later novels—are themselves voyeuristic, implicating the reader in these broader narrative patterns of both visual and epistemophilic obsession.
My Dark Places
Author: James Ellroy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448134080
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
America's greatest crime writer investigates his mother's murder. On 21 June 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy left her home in California. She was found strangled the next day. Her ten year-old son James had been with her estranged husband all weekend and was informed of her death on his return. Her murderer was never found, but her death had an enduring effect on her son - he spent his teens and early adult years as a wino, petty burglar and derelict. Only later, through his obsession with crime fiction, triggered by his mother's murder, did Ellroy begin to delve into his past. Shortly after the publication of his groundbreaking novel WHITE JAZZ, he determined to return to Los Angeles and, with the help of veteran detective Bill Stoner, attempt to solve the 38-year-old killing. The result is one of the few classics of crime non-fiction and autobiography to appear in the last few decades; a hypnotic trip to America's underbelly and one man's tortured soul.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448134080
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
America's greatest crime writer investigates his mother's murder. On 21 June 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy left her home in California. She was found strangled the next day. Her ten year-old son James had been with her estranged husband all weekend and was informed of her death on his return. Her murderer was never found, but her death had an enduring effect on her son - he spent his teens and early adult years as a wino, petty burglar and derelict. Only later, through his obsession with crime fiction, triggered by his mother's murder, did Ellroy begin to delve into his past. Shortly after the publication of his groundbreaking novel WHITE JAZZ, he determined to return to Los Angeles and, with the help of veteran detective Bill Stoner, attempt to solve the 38-year-old killing. The result is one of the few classics of crime non-fiction and autobiography to appear in the last few decades; a hypnotic trip to America's underbelly and one man's tortured soul.
The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 2 Volumes
Author: Patrick O'Donnell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119431719
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1607
Book Description
Fresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as a vision of what may come. It perfectly balances analysis, summary, and critique for an illuminating treatment of the subject matter. This collection also includes: An exciting mix of established and emerging contributors from around the world discussing central and cutting-edge topics in American fiction studies Focused, critical explorations of authors and subjects of critical importance to American fiction Topics that reflect the energies and tendencies of contemporary American fiction from the forty years between 1980 and 2020 The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020 is a must-have resource for undergraduate and graduate students of American literature, English, creative writing, and fiction studies. It will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars seeking an authoritative array of contributions on both established and newer authors of contemporary fiction.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119431719
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1607
Book Description
Fresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as a vision of what may come. It perfectly balances analysis, summary, and critique for an illuminating treatment of the subject matter. This collection also includes: An exciting mix of established and emerging contributors from around the world discussing central and cutting-edge topics in American fiction studies Focused, critical explorations of authors and subjects of critical importance to American fiction Topics that reflect the energies and tendencies of contemporary American fiction from the forty years between 1980 and 2020 The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020 is a must-have resource for undergraduate and graduate students of American literature, English, creative writing, and fiction studies. It will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars seeking an authoritative array of contributions on both established and newer authors of contemporary fiction.
The Hilliker Curse
Author: James Ellroy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409023419
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Book Description
A raw, explicit memoir as high-intensity and riveting as any of Ellroy's novels. The theme: the author's obsessive pursuit of women. America's greatest living crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir-as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels-about his obsessive search for "atonement in women." The year was 1958.Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name.Her son, James, was ten years old.He hated and lusted for his mother and "summoned her dead." She was murdered three months later. The Hilliker Curse is a predator's confession, a treatise on guilt and the power of malediction, and above all a cri de cœur. Ellroy unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, his nervous breakdown and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her. A layered narrative of time and place, emotion and insight, sexuality and spiritual quest, The Hilliker Curse is a brilliant, soul-baring revelation of self.It is unlike any memoir you have ever read.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409023419
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Book Description
A raw, explicit memoir as high-intensity and riveting as any of Ellroy's novels. The theme: the author's obsessive pursuit of women. America's greatest living crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir-as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels-about his obsessive search for "atonement in women." The year was 1958.Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name.Her son, James, was ten years old.He hated and lusted for his mother and "summoned her dead." She was murdered three months later. The Hilliker Curse is a predator's confession, a treatise on guilt and the power of malediction, and above all a cri de cœur. Ellroy unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, his nervous breakdown and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her. A layered narrative of time and place, emotion and insight, sexuality and spiritual quest, The Hilliker Curse is a brilliant, soul-baring revelation of self.It is unlike any memoir you have ever read.
Clues: A Journal of Detection, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Fall 2020)
Author: Elizabeth Foxwell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476641455
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
For over two decades, Clues has included the best scholarship on mystery and detective fiction. With a combination of academic essays and nonfiction book reviews, it covers all aspects of mystery and detective fiction material in print, television and movies. As the only American scholarly journal on mystery fiction, Clues is essential reading for literature and film students and researchers; popular culture aficionados; librarians; and mystery authors, fans and critics around the globe.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476641455
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
For over two decades, Clues has included the best scholarship on mystery and detective fiction. With a combination of academic essays and nonfiction book reviews, it covers all aspects of mystery and detective fiction material in print, television and movies. As the only American scholarly journal on mystery fiction, Clues is essential reading for literature and film students and researchers; popular culture aficionados; librarians; and mystery authors, fans and critics around the globe.
The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology
Author: Nathan Ashman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000984516
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology is the first comprehensive examination of crime fiction and ecocriticism. Across 33 innovative chapters from leading international scholars, this Handbook considers an emergent field of contemporary crime narratives that are actively responding to a diverse assemblage of global environmental concerns, whilst also opening up ‘classic’ crime fictions and writers to new ecocritical perspectives. Rigorously engaged with cutting-edge critical trends, it places the familiar staples of crime fiction scholarship – from thematic to formal approaches – in conversation with a number of urgent ecological theories and ideas, covering subjects such as environmental security, environmental justice, slow violence, ecofeminism and animal studies. The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology is an essential introduction to this new and dynamic research field for both students and scholars alike.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000984516
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology is the first comprehensive examination of crime fiction and ecocriticism. Across 33 innovative chapters from leading international scholars, this Handbook considers an emergent field of contemporary crime narratives that are actively responding to a diverse assemblage of global environmental concerns, whilst also opening up ‘classic’ crime fictions and writers to new ecocritical perspectives. Rigorously engaged with cutting-edge critical trends, it places the familiar staples of crime fiction scholarship – from thematic to formal approaches – in conversation with a number of urgent ecological theories and ideas, covering subjects such as environmental security, environmental justice, slow violence, ecofeminism and animal studies. The Routledge Handbook of Crime Fiction and Ecology is an essential introduction to this new and dynamic research field for both students and scholars alike.
White Jazz
Author: James Ellroy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448108624
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
Best-selling crime fiction author James Ellroy returns with the fourth in his LA Quartet. Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boom town at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein: in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time...
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448108624
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
Best-selling crime fiction author James Ellroy returns with the fourth in his LA Quartet. Los Angeles, 1958: a city on the make. A boom town at the edge of a new era ripe for plunder. Lieutenant Dave Klein: in turn a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord, mob killer. Klein stands at the centre of a complex web of plots where violence and death will intersect. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time...
The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction
Author: Lucy Andrew
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030749894
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030749894
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.
Animals in Detective Fiction
Author: Ruth Hawthorn
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031092414
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
This book explores the vast array of animals that populate detective fiction. If the genre begins, as is widely supposed, with Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), then detective fiction’s very first culprit is an animal. Animals, moreover, consistently appear as victims, clues, and companions, while the abstract conception of animality is closely tied to the idea of criminality. Although it is often described as an essentially conservative form, detective fiction can unsettle the binary of human and animal to intersect with developing concerns in animal studies: animal agency, the ethical complexities of human/animal interaction, the politics and literary aesthetics of violence, and animal metaphor. Gathering its 14 essays into sections on ontologies, ethics, politics, and forms, Animals in Detective Fiction provides a compelling and nuanced analysis of the central role creatures play in this enduringly popular and continually morphing literary form.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031092414
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
This book explores the vast array of animals that populate detective fiction. If the genre begins, as is widely supposed, with Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), then detective fiction’s very first culprit is an animal. Animals, moreover, consistently appear as victims, clues, and companions, while the abstract conception of animality is closely tied to the idea of criminality. Although it is often described as an essentially conservative form, detective fiction can unsettle the binary of human and animal to intersect with developing concerns in animal studies: animal agency, the ethical complexities of human/animal interaction, the politics and literary aesthetics of violence, and animal metaphor. Gathering its 14 essays into sections on ontologies, ethics, politics, and forms, Animals in Detective Fiction provides a compelling and nuanced analysis of the central role creatures play in this enduringly popular and continually morphing literary form.
Perfidia
Author: James Ellroy
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307946673
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 721
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Los Angeles. December, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. War fever and racial hatred grip the city. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. LAPD captain William H. Parker is superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith—Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. Kay Lake is a twenty-one-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that brilliantly illuminates these four driven souls—comrades, rivals, lovers, history’s pawns. Here, Ellroy gives us the party at the edge of the abyss and the precipice of America’s ascendance. Perfidia is that moment, spellbindingly captured.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307946673
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 721
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Los Angeles. December, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. War fever and racial hatred grip the city. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. LAPD captain William H. Parker is superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith—Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a police chemist and the only Japanese on the L.A. cop payroll. Kay Lake is a twenty-one-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. The investigation throws them together and rips them apart. The crime becomes a political storm center that brilliantly illuminates these four driven souls—comrades, rivals, lovers, history’s pawns. Here, Ellroy gives us the party at the edge of the abyss and the precipice of America’s ascendance. Perfidia is that moment, spellbindingly captured.