Anyone who uses "elaborate" three times in the space of two paragraphs isn't in the best position to pass judgement on Ellroy's prose style.

Stephanie Zacharek's review of Brian De Palma's disappointing adaptation of "The Black Dahlia" is spot-on: frustrating, incoherent, and weirdly camp. (And the performances? Let us not even speak of the performances.) The preview audience I saw it with was laughing so hard by the time the killer was revealed that it was nearly impossible to hear the dialogue -- a situation made all the more excruciating given that top-notch cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond was onhand for a Q&A session afterwards.

But Zacharek misses the point about Ellroy's writing. Love his fever-dream brand of noir or not, his books aren't three times as thick as Chandler's because he's tripling his character descriptions; they're three times as thick because he's tripling his *plots.* Indeed, his telegraphic prose has only gotten more and more spare over the years, rather than florid. Even if Ellroy's not your cup of tea -- and aside from "The Cold Six Thousand" I generally love him, but fully understand how off-putting he can be -- his novel's not to blame for De Palma's (and screenwriter Josh Friedman's) shallow take on Elizabeth Short's terrible death.

Isn't Ellroy's fifteen minutes up yet?

Interesting start to the review, where we learn that James Ellroy isn't much of a success as a minimalist writer. In fact, a more-than-cursory examination reveals that he isn't a minimalist writer at all. When asked about his style, he describes himself as "anti-minimalist". He constantly uses repeated sentences in his work. We could conclude that this is a stylistic choice, or decide, as the author of this review does, that it's, I dunno, bad copy-editing or something. But anyway, thin books are better than thick books, right?

In this way we discern that GRAVITY'S RAINBOW isn't as good as THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR.

I'm still hoping to find out whether Brian De Palma's movie adaptation is worth seeing, but it looks like I'll have to do so from a more reliable source...

Anyone who uses "considerably" twice in successive sentences isn't in the best position to pass judgement on Ellroy's prose style. Or anyone's.

Stick to reviewing films and save literary analysis for someone else.

you'd better not be so asleep at the switch as to write:

"a lesbian nightclub she occasionally frequented"

right after you cued up everyone's grammar and style radars.

Geez, Stephanie, do you want to rewrite and resubmit?

First of all, five seconds of online research and Zacharek would have learned that The Black Dahlia murder has, in fact, been solved. There is every reason to believe that the killer is Dr. George Hodel. A good summary of the evidence against him at the time and later found after his death (by his son, no less, a cop himself) can be found here:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/4-18-2003-39261.asp

Second of all, I wouldn't blame Swank and Johanssen if their characters come off as stiff, because that is how Ellroy wrote them. It works in the novel because they are both so much less alive than the actual stiff, Betty Short, who we only meet through others' eyes and stories. But I am sad that De Palma chose not to make Short's real story the centerpiece of the film, because it's what makes the book impossible to put down.

I only wish that they had been able to cast Jennifer Connolly as Short; the resemblance is so strong, it's eerie.

Whatever we may think of Zacharek's critical acuity or writing style, I don't think she can be faulted for not buying in to any of the several bogus "solutions" to this case that have emerged in recent years.

Scarface. Carrie. Blow Out (I'll give you that one), Body Double, Untouchables.

"Casualties" and "Carlito's Way" are very good, but they are both very experimental projects for DePalma, who's greatest strength is simple suspense. I don't go to a DePalma movie to learn about the human condition, there are many much better directors for that. Judging DePalma's movie by comparing it to Casualties, is just silly. It's a DePalma movie!

Okay, so this is a rental...

In "Death Becomes Her," an essay by Seth Mnookin on the Black Dahlia at today's Slate, the author writes:

"In 2003, [former LAPD detective Steve Hodel] released 'Black Dahlia Avenger,' in which he claimed that it was his father, Dr. George Hodel, who'd killed Short (possibly in concert with Man Ray and John Huston). Hodel, whose father had been accused and acquitted of incestuous rape by his daughter, also claimed his dad had been a Hannibal Lecter-esque madman who butchered up to a dozen women. He based his case on inconclusive handwriting analysis and a pair of pictures that are almost certainly not of Short that he found in his father's belongings. Because of his résumé, Hodel's theory got even more attention than Knowlton's, and Hodel talked the LAPD into examining what he said was definitive proof of his father's guilt. The police were not convinced."

As far as James Ellroy's writing, I don't think Stephanie Zacharek dislikes him because he's not a minimalist; I think she dislikes him because he's verbose, yet unevocative. I haven't read Ellroy, but if she's right, that seems like a legitimate criticism of any writer.

As for DePalma, I'm a big fan of "Femme Fatale."

In the first place, one does not have to be a good writer in order to recognize bad writing; the accuracy of her statements is not measured by her place next to Shakepeare. Secondly, almost no one has the guts to knock Ellroy, who's the patron saint of popular fiction right now, the one it's "safe" to like and not loose your artistic credibility (no way does a good writer like Stephen King get a similar benefit of the doubt). I'm glad Zachareck spoke her mind, whether she's right or not.

...but I must offer one caveat: Sometimes less is just less.

I'm glad to see that Ms. Zacharek has found a sure way of judging the relative merits of a literary work - you don't need to actually read the work, just get out a tape measure and see how thick it is (I'm tempted to make a joke here, but I'll refrain). Sure many classic hard boiled novels where short and to the point; however that is not the point of Ellroy's work as a writer. He is judged a hard boiled, noir writer by unimaginative critics who lack the skills and tools to understand what he is doing. Yes, many of the tropes of detective fiction exist in Ellroy's work (as do the Hitchcockian elements in DePalma's), but he is about something much different. It could be argued that he is involved the task of deconstructing detective fiction and re-formulating it for the fragmented times we live in. If you follow the thread from Dahlia to White Jazz you see a movement from a relatively conservative (for Ellroy) style of prose to a style where everything falls apart, is fragmented and can no longer hold the conceit of stability or social cohesion; as Yeats said, "the center can not hold." Ellroy is a difficult, often frustrating writer, but quite a brillant one and long after Ms. Zacharek has passed from relavance there will still be people discussing Ellroy and DePalma as true innovators and artists in their own right.