On 'The Enchanters' by James Ellroy

Thwarted intellectual, victim of the Hollywood patriarchy, the ultimate method actor — Marilyn Monroe has been reimagined in many ways in recent years. Younger generations perhaps know her better as a tragic figure of myth than as a movie star. For some viewers, the subtler Monroe of Niagara, River of No Return and The Misfits now overshadows the bombshell of The Seven-Year Itch and Gentleman Prefer Blondes. It’s fair to say her legacy is up for grabs. James Ellroy’s The Enchanters arrives to put that legacy right back where it used to be — in the zone of kink, innuendo, sex, gossip and scandal. Ellroy is not Jacqueline Rose or Joyce Carol Oates, out to reclaim Monroe as a feminist icon. Instead he uses her sudden death in 1962 and the mystery around it to conjure a lost LA of unapologetic glamour and unrepentant greed: the last seedy days of the studio system, the underbelly of Camelot (West Coast branch). Needless to say, nothing in this novel is sacred, nor can passages be quoted at any length in a family newspaper.