assorted questions

[Ralph Howard]

Diana writes:


> Has anyone read _My Dark Places_ by James Ellroy?  It struck me as the
> non-fiction version of _V_.

    <Several interesting and erudite questions relating to Faulkner,
     humor, retail outlets, and Kafka sniped> 

> - Diana (the non-Paglian brand of feminist).
> 

I am most of the way through _My Dark Places_ and, while the _V._
connection did not occur to me, I would like to recommend Ellroy as a
very interesting writer.  Some of his books (_The Black Dahlia_, _The
Big Nowhere_ and the stylistically very different _White Jazz_) give
LA in the '50's very much the same feel as TRP's Zone.  He is also
just about as good TRP in inducing paranoia, but his version of Them
has names (for example Howard Hughes, and others in the movie
industry, that used the Red Scare to bust unions).  Ellroy claims that
in _While Jazz_ that he was in part trying to do a prose version of
jazz, and so it is at least a little relevant to the recent discussion
on the variations on the Kenosha Kid.

As to humor in _As I Lay Dying_ I remember it had me laughing out loud
several times.  But I did not read it as a jaded undergraduate.  I did
read _Moby Dick_ in my youth and, to the great embarrassment to my
present self, did not see any humor in it.  It would be interesting if
we could see how how Diana's students felt about humor in Faulkner ten
years from now.

Ralph


-- 
Ralph Howard                    Phone:  (803) 777-2913 
Department of Mathematics       Fax:    (803) 777-3783 
University of South Carolina    e-mail: howard at math.sc.edu
Columbia, SC 29208 USA          http://www.math.sc.edu/~howard/