L'homme qui rit

Sun, Jun 17, 2007

I read James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia a few days ago and was struck by his reference to Hugo and the comprachicos. I believe that Rimbaud also identified the mutilated rictus as a metaphor for the artist, and the reader may infer substantial self-loathing from the excessively lurid details in Ellroy’s presentation.

D. S. Neff’s “Anoedipal Fiction: Schizoanalysis and The Black Dahlia” (Poetics Today 18.3 jstor) is a theoretically rich reading of the novel.