Regard noir sur la Cité des Anges : James Ellroy

Abstract

The myth of Los Angeles, tightly linked to the city’s hugeness and its heart of hearts Hollywood, is to a great extent a creation of the « dark » novel, or « noir ». A sismic territory and modern Sodoma, the so-called « City of Angels » is often depicted as a violent and all impulse driven place, in which the individual yearning for redemption is always destroyed by endemic corruption. The decadent city analyzed in a rather pessimistic way by Mike Davis in his essay Beyond Blade Runner finds in Michael Connelly’s and James Ellroy’s crime fiction a powerful representation. Connelly’s world, with its whimsical main character detective Harry Bosch, possesses a distinct elegiac tone, just as Ellroy’s, both realistic and tragic, turns the city into an allegory of Sin and Evil. The works of Ellroy are nowadays unique in their meticulous and obsessive surveying of L.A.’s various areas, the cruel insight into its sociology and history, the « love and hate » relationship with its architecture. The « black » inquiry pattern is nothing else than a deadly quest of memory, in a self-destructive city that seems doomed to amnesia.

Keywords

• amnesia
• architecture
• decadence
• detective novel
• geography
• hell