He's certainly worth reading in spite of...
Sucking?
Carlos yukked and slapped the table. His wine glass capsized. Pepper chunks flew. Olive oil spritzed.
In fairness, anyone can suck sometimes and anyone can be a douchebag sometimes, but when you sustain and combine the two, it's hard to take a consistently sucky douchebag (like Ellroy) seriously.
As I said before, Bukowski has nothing to do with my opinion of the guy. I heard Ellroy on the radio and didn't know who was speaking until later, so I came the conclusion blind, so to speak. He is,
unquestionably, a pompous, egomaniacal douchebag. And the small sample of his "writing" that I have seen (from three different books) is comically bad. Just awful, stinky, bad-creative-writing-class
shit, like the quote above.
There's nothing wrong with being entertained by
shit once in a while, we all partake in one way or another, so don't get your holiday knickers in a twist. But call it what it is.