Mailer & Ellroy

[The Great Quail]

I see a lot of criticism for Mailer's fiction. I personally enjoyed "The
Naked and the Dead," which I admit is the only Mailer novel I've read.
(Though I do want to read "Harlot's Ghost" one of these days.)

But what about his nonfiction? I think "Armies of the Night" and "Miami and
the Siege of Chicago" are amazing books, and it pains me somewhat to see
Mailer disparaged so quickly here....

I also love Ellroy, and think that "American Tabloid" and "Cold Six
Thousand"in particular are great books -- not Nobel Prize quality
literature, but nevertheless, remarkably written, joyfully alive, and
extraordinarily entertaining.

And yeah, Ellroy's mother was murdered, but not nearly as gruesomely as the
Dahlia. He writes all about it in his nonfiction book, "My Dark Places."

Re: the movie -- if only David Fincher were still directing!

Um...done with the random thoughts....

--Quail