Fake History Lessons

I love getting lost in a mad fictional world, and I love finding out about the world's equally bizarre history, but I worry that by reading historical fiction I'm giving myself a very warped version of the truth. James Ellroy has been one of my favourite authors since I read the magnificent LA Quartet (four books that include LA Confidential) a few years ago, and recently I finally got around to reading American Tabloid, a sprawl through the lives of shady American secret police in the years preceding the Kennedy assassination. Tabloid's three main characters are fictitious FBI/ CIA men, all drawn towards organised crime to varying degrees, but the novel also features JFK, Bobby Kennedy, J Edgar Hoover, and Jimmy Hoffa, amongst other notable sixties movers and shakers. My problem is that I immersed myself so much in the novel that the womanising, party animal JFK of Tabloid is in my head now the man himself, however close or far that depiction is from real life, and to my mind the assassination was a devilish Mafia conspiracy, despite all the evidence to the contrary. More than messing with historical facts, it's more my perception of people that gets warped by reading these books, like finishing Wolf Hall and thinking you've got a really good idea of what Thomas Cromwell was really like.

James Ellroy is an amazing, exciting writer, his style like classic hard-boiled detective fiction but with a dense layer of overblown historical fantasy plastered over the top. American Tabloid spins a staggering web of deception that often leaves you in a muddle as to who's working for who, and who's double-crossing someone else, against the backdrop of one of the most puzzling and thrilling episodes in American history. It's the first part of a trilogy itself, and I can't wait to see what false facts and half-truths the next two books stuff my head with. I can't believe that more of Ellroy's work hasn't been filmed, especially considering LA Confidential was such a hit. His stuff is perfect for adaptation, very Boardwalk Empire-esque, and all of the action is right there on the page, you'd barely even need a script. Apparently, James Franco is currently working on a film version of American Tabloid. If it's anywhere near as good as the book it'll be amazing.