James Ellroy, Youth Pastor
In this interview with Time Magazine, James Ellroy says something that has always really bugged me- not because it is wrong, but because it is intuitively correct in a way that continually evades me.
Around the 2:20 mark he begins talking about his latest work, The Hilliker Curse, and says this :
“It is full of alliteration and profanity, and thus, it exemplifies the sacred and the profane.”
The line between profanity and the profane is easy enough to follow by root word (pro-fanum, outside the temple, as in unclean, a heathen, just like you, you little cocksucker.) But that isn’t the part that got stuck in my craw. Alliteration and holiness, sacredness… Again, I don’t question the validity of the statement (years of Holy, Holy, Holy serve as ironclad reinforcement.) But from where did he get this idea?
Modern Bible translations are pretty short on poetic devices for a number of reasons (none of them good). Original Bible texts also are low on alliteration as Greek and Hebrew are not first-sound-emphasis languages, generally speaking, so we look to translations. There are several Biblical devices called a figura etymologica, in which the same root word occurs more than once in a sentence with two different words- See “fight the good fight” in Timothy or “Let me tell you of this dream I dreamed” in Genesis 37, KJV or older. These specimens are artifacts of the original construction of the ancient languages, but there are other, more intentional examples, like “safe and sound” and “make merry” in the story of the Prodigal Son, both of which are slight liberties on the translation. And let us never forget “hardened his heart”…
Also of likely interest is alliteration in early Biblical texts that were both translated loosely, meaning not literally, and did not originate from a set phrase already in English. The below image is taken from a paper titled “Alliteration in English Bible Translations” by Richard Dury, where I gathered much of my information, and supplemented it where I could with my personal or common knowledge.
What does this lead us to with Ellroy? Well, thinking on this issue led my back to my first and favorite of his works, White Jazz. I noticed something interesting about the way his newstitles, clippings, and reports are woven throughout the narrative. “Real” news- straight news- often contains no alliteration or dramatic devices, simply the facts, a simulacra of what could have been a real newspaper headline. But the fictional & beloved sleaze rag “Hush Hush”- well, this headline occurs not far into the story of White Jazz.
“MISANTHROPIC MICKEY SLIPS, SLIDES,AND NOSEDIVES SINCE PAROLE”
Alliteration, then, is the Ellrovian language of truth, no matter how invective-charged, ugly, or disreputable its source may be. And in that world truth is beauty, truth is sacred, truth is the secret sauce of the shady side of the underworld… what we can all dig about the dark sides of him, and us.