James Ellroy in The
Big Nowhere (1988) plunges his readers into the world of Los Angeles in the
1950s. The immersion is almost
total. No editorial asides or hints let
the reader know that the casual and endemic racism and homophobia of the
characters is aberrant. In 1950s Los
Angeles it is normal, and even those characters who seem the most virtuous
embrace racism and homophobia openly.
This makes the book a challenge because it is difficult to separate the
hatreds of 1950s LA from the positions the book itself takes. The perspective
of distance and seventy-five years make the book’s positions clear, but it is
the reader who has to infer what they are.
Few books I’ve read give a more sordid and ambiguous account
of human nature. Only Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia (1987) exceeds this one
in darkness.
Two contending events are at the center of this book. 1950 is the beginning of the McCarthy era, of
the Red Scare in Hollywood. LA police
are investigating possible connections of an entertainment union to the
Communist Party. The Teamsters (who have
major ties to organized crime, including the mobster Mickey Cohen) hope to
replace the entertainment union: they are conspiring with the LAPD. Another is a series of brutal murders of
homosexuals. Although these strands at
first seem separate, they soon intertwine in a surprising way.
Ellroy portrays LAPD officers who are ambitious, committed
to combatting crime, corrupt, and murderous, in various combinations. Even the characters who seem most admirable
are imperfect. He also gives us people
who are deeply immersed in the underworld, who have many crimes in their
histories, who are capable of love, loyalty, and moral behavior. Every character in this novel is
compromised—by virtue, by corruption.
My old professor Matthew Bruccolli is quoted in one of the
blurb reviews for this novel as noting the connection between good literature
and good social history. He views The Big Nowhere as both. I’m tempted to
label this novel as a major literary achievement. It’s powerful, deep and unrelenting in its
portrait of LA in 1950 (and by extension of the United States). Its characters are vivid and rounded. Its narrative method—alternating chapters
devoted in turn to each of the three main characters—works well and builds
suspense and interest. The dialogue is
realistic and the most effective way Ellroy illuminates the consciousness of
1950s America (his use of dialogue at moments recalled the crime novels of
George V. Higgins). It’s more vivid than Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939).
The identity of the murderer is the main focus of the novel.
In the final chapters Ellroy unravels
the mystery by resorting to long narrative revelations, in particular given by
a psychiatrist who has talked with the murderer, and by police officers telling
each other what they know. The novel falters
here—up to this point it has gradually brought out the strands and details of
the mystery rather than dumping them all in the readers’ lap at the last
moment.
The hoodlum, former policeman, and mob stooge Buzz Meeks is
the most interesting character in the novel.
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