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A novel for everyone who grew up in the 1960s
Book Review
By Derryll White
Ellroy, James (2023). The Enchanters.
Freddy Otash, ‘King of the Hollywood Private Eyes’, was hired by Jimmy Hoffa to get the dirt on Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bobbie. It’s 1962. James Ellroy takes the reader deep into the back lots and cribs of Hollywood. “It’s Hollywood, baby. Everybody knows everybody – and they all brag about it.”
Ellroy has a unique way of writing – abbreviated, intense and demanding full attention from the reader. He takes Los Angeles and turns it into something Raymond Chandler never dreamed of – darker and more laden with mystery, murder and always Monroe.
Most readers will remember the wonderful, contrived photo of Marilyn caught above a sidewalk exhaust grill, skirt up to her waist and insane feminine appeal! That is not James Ellroy’s Marilyn. And JFK looking so dashing and decisive, working for world peace and the American way and instilling in everyone a belief in youth and unbridled success. That is not Ellroy’s JFK.
The novel reads as though it is the untold history of Camelot. You know, the imaginary place of power and perfection that John and Bobby and Jackie and the Kennedy family foisted onto a yearning American populace. Well, check out Lowell Farr, Palisades High School Junior and the embodiment of the simmering ‘60s. James Ellis takes the reader so far past the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll of the ‘60s, into a world of hurt and pain driven by exploitation and economic gain.
This is truly a novel everyone who grew up in the 1960s, or heard stories about the era, should read. Like Freddie Otash, it might all be real.
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Excerpts from the novel:
HOLLYWOOD – “She is. I mean she and Jeanne worked call jobs after the war and she must have known that type then, and she knows lots of people in The Life now, because half of the grips and stuntmen and studio types are in The Life, in one form or another. Marilyn’s been around Fox for years and Fox and dickhead criminals go way back to the ‘30s. You’ve got Willie Broff, Ben Siegel, Mickey Cohen’s guys. Union guys like the Aadland brothers – smut peddlers, kidnap brokers, white slavers – fringe guys like that. It’s Hollywood, baby. Everybody knows everybody – and they all brag about it.”
SIDEBAR – De River bloviated. He cited the great courage it took for creative people to engage the world on its own cruel terms and overcome the self-pampering of the artist. He discussed the importance of disguise, of deliberately denuding one’s good looks, 0f establishing covert means of communication. He cited the Russian theater masters who lived their own versions of cult and criminality under the threat of Stalin’s show trials and the head Red’s capricious will to slaughter. The perpetration of revisionist art led to official censure, torture and death. American artists had it soft. Cultivated criminality could work for them – but only if they committed properly bold crimes.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
