James Ellroy - American Tabloid

Acclaim for James Ellroys
American Tabloid

Thoroughly engrossing. A graphically violent, profane expression of personal and political corruption. The books prose is spare and minimalist, so hard-boiled you could bounce it off the sidewalk.

Houston Chronicle

American Tabloid should be read for the feel of the period, for its authors peculiarly brutal genius, and for the way his unique prose illuminates a brutal time.

San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle

One hellishly exciting ride.

Detroit Free Press

Ellroy sprays declarative sentences like machine-gun bullets, blasting to kingdom come all notions of justice, heroism, and simple decency.

Entertainment Weekly

A style so hard-boiled it scorches the pot.

New York magazine

Powerful. The plot runs on high-octane violence. One emerges breathless, shaken, and ready to change ones view of recent American history.

The Sunday Telegraph (London)

[A] frenetic, explosive thriller.

The Sunday Times (London)

James Ellroy
American Tabloid

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novelsThe Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazzwere international bestsellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazines Novel of the Year for 1995; his memoir My Dark Places was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. He lives in Kansas City.

Also by James Ellroy

Hollywood Nocturnes

L.A. Confidential

The Big Nowhere

The Black Dahlia

Killer on the Road

Suicide Hill

Because the Night

Blood on the Moon

Clandestine

Browns Requiem

White Jazz

My Dark Places

Crime Wave

The Cold Six Thousand

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2001

Copyright 1995 by James Ellroy

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1995. Subsequently published in paperback by Fawcett Columbine, an imprint of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1996 and 1997.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Ellroy, James, [date]
American tabloid: a novel / by James Ellroy.1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79843-5
I. Title.
PS3555.L6274A8 1995
813.54dc20 94-42898
CIP

www.vintagebooks.com

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To
NAT SOBEL

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You cant ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You cant lose what you lacked at conception.

Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.

The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He talked a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.

Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. Its time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.

They were rogue cops and shakedown artists. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.

Its time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. Its time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.

Heres to them.