James Ellroy | |
|---|---|
 Ellroy in 2011 | |
| Born | Lee Earle Ellroy (1948-03-04)March 4, 1948 (age 77) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Crime writer,essayist |
| Education | Fairfax High School (expelled) |
| Genre | Crime fiction,historical fiction,mystery fiction,noir fiction |
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Notable works | |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Erika Schickel (sep.) |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch |  United States Army |
| Service years | 1965 (3 months) |
| Website | |
| jamesellroy | |
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an Americancrime fiction writer andessayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammaticprose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short,staccato sentences,[2] and in particular for the novelsThe Black Dahlia (1987) andL.A. Confidential (1990).
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born in Los Angeles. His mother, Geneva Odelia (née Hilliker), was a nurse. His father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager ofRita Hayworth.[3] His parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved toEl Monte, California.[4][5]
At the age of seven, Ellroy saw his mother naked and began to sexually fantasize about her. He struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship with her, and tried to catch glimpses of her nude.[6][7] Ellroy stated that "I lived for naked glimpses. I hated her and lusted for her..."[8]
On June 22, 1958, when Ellroy was 10 years old, his mother was raped and murdered.[8] Ellroy later described his mother as "sharp-tongued [and] bad-tempered",[9] unable to keep a steady job, alcoholic, and sexually promiscuous. His first reaction upon hearing of her death was relief: he could now live with his father, whom he preferred.[10] His father was more permissive and allowed Ellroy to do as he pleased, namely be "left alone to read, to go out and peep through windows, prowl around and sniff the air."[4] The police never found his mother's killer, and the case still remains unsolved. The murder, along with readingThe Badge byJack Webb (a book comprising sensational cases from the files of theLos Angeles Police Department, a birthday gift from his father), were important events of Ellroy's youth.[5][9]
Ellroy's inability to come to terms with the emotions surrounding his mother's murder led him totransfer them onto another murder victim,Elizabeth Short. Nicknamed the "Black Dahlia," Short was a young woman murdered in 1947, her body cut in half and discarded in Los Angeles, in a notorious and unsolved crime. Throughout his youth, Ellroy used Short as a surrogate for his conflicting emotions and desires.[5][11] His confusion and trauma led to a period of intenseclinical depression, from which he recovered only gradually.[5][9]
In 1962, Ellroy began to attendFairfax High School, a predominantly Jewish high school. While in high school, he began to engage in a variety of outrageous acts, many anti-Semitic in nature. He joined theAmerican Nazi Party, purchased Nazi paraphernalia, sang theHorst-Wessel-Lied at school, mailed Nazi pamphlets to girls he liked, openly criticizedJohn F. Kennedy, and ironically advocated for the reinstatement of slavery. His "Crazy Man Act", as Ellroy describes it, was a plea for attention and got him beaten up and eventually expelled from Fairfax High School in 11th grade, after ranting about Nazism in his English class.
Ellroy's father died soon after this, with his father's last words to him being, "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you."[12][13][14]
After being expelled from high school, Ellroy then joined theU.S. Army for a short period of time. On enlisting, Ellroy soon decided he did not belong there and convinced an army psychiatrist he was unfit for combat. He was discharged after three months.[15]
Ellroy credits the public libraries of Los Angeles County as the basis of his writing. He shelved books at the public library. In a speech at the Library of Congress in 2019 he declared: "I am a product of the L.A. County Public Library System."[16] During his teens and 20s, Ellroy drank heavily and abusedBenzedrex inhalers.[17] He was engaged in minor crimes[18] (especially shoplifting, house-breaking, and burglary) and was often homeless. After serving some time in jail and suffering frompneumonia, during which he developed anabscess on his lung "the size of a large man's fist," Ellroy stopped drinking and began working as agolfcaddie while pursuing writing.[9][17] He later said, "Caddying was good tax-free cash and allowed me to get home by 2 p.m. and write books.... I caddied right up to the sale of my fifth book."[19] Ellroy has also summed up his life by saying: "Boy's mother murdered. Boy's life shattered. Boy grows up homeless alcoholic jailbird. Jailbird cleans up and writes his way to salvation. Jailbird becomes the Mad Dog of American Crime Fiction."[20]
On October 4, 1991, Ellroy married writer and critic Helen Knode.[21] The couple moved from California toKansas City in 1995.[22] In 2006, after their divorce, Ellroy returned to Los Angeles.[23] The two later reconciled and moved toDenver, although Ellroy has stated that they live in separate apartments in the same building. He frequently tells interviewers that the issue for him is not monogamy, but cohabitation.[24]
Ellroy joinedAlcoholics Anonymous in the 1970s.[25]
In 1981, Ellroy published his first novel,Brown's Requiem, a detective story drawing on his experiences as a caddie.[26] He then publishedClandestine andSilent Terror (which was later published under the titleKiller on the Road). Ellroy followed these three novels with theLloyd Hopkins Trilogy. The novels are centered on Hopkins, a brilliant but disturbed LAPD robbery-homicide detective, and are set mainly in the 1980s.
He is a self-described recluse who possesses very few technological amenities, including television, and claims never to read contemporary books by other authors, aside fromJoseph Wambaugh'sThe Onion Field, out of concern that they might influence his own.[27] However, this does not mean that Ellroy does not read at all, as he claims inMy Dark Places to have read at least two books a week growing up, eventually shoplifting more to satisfy his love of reading. He then goes on to say that he read works byDashiell Hammett andRaymond Chandler.[28][29]
Hallmarks of his work include dense plotting and a relentlesslypessimistic—albeitmoral—worldview.[30][31] His work has earned Ellroy the nickname "Demon dog of American crime fiction."[32]
Ellroy writes longhand on legal pads rather than on a computer.[33] He prepares elaborate outlines for his books, most of which are several hundred pages long.[31]
Dialogue and narration in Ellroy novels often consists of a "heightened pastiche ofjazz slang, cop patois, creative profanity and drug vernacular" with a particular use of period-appropriateslang.[34] He often employs a sort of telegraphese (stripped-down, staccato-like sentence structures), a style that reaches its apex inThe Cold Six Thousand. Ellroy describes it as a "direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards."[31] This signature style is not the result of a conscious experimentation but of chance and came about when he was asked by his editor to shorten his novelL.A. Confidential by more than one hundred pages. Rather than removing any subplots, Ellroy abbreviated the novel by cutting every unnecessary word from every sentence, creating a unique style of prose.[28] While each sentence on its own is simple, the cumulative effect is a dense,baroque style.[34]
While his early novels earned him a cult following and notice among crime fiction buffs, Ellroy earned much greater success and critical acclaim with theL.A. Quartet—The Black Dahlia,The Big Nowhere,L.A. Confidential, andWhite Jazz.[31] The four novels represent Ellroy's change of style from the tradition of classic modernistnoir fiction of his earlier novels to what has been classified aspostmodernhistoriographic metafiction.[35]The Black Dahlia, for example, fused the real-life murder of Elizabeth Short with a fictional story of two police officers investigating the crime.[36]
In 1995, Ellroy publishedAmerican Tabloid, the first novel in a series informally dubbed the "Underworld USA Trilogy"[30] that Ellroy describes as a "secret history" of the mid-to-late 20th century.[31]Tabloid was namedTIME'sfiction book of the year for 1995. Its follow-up,The Cold Six Thousand, became a bestseller.[30] The final novel,Blood's a Rover, was released on September 22, 2009.
After publishingAmerican Tabloid, Ellroy began amemoir,My Dark Places, based on his memories of his mother's murder, the unconventional relationship he had with her, and his investigation of the crime.[9] In the memoir, Ellroy mentions that his mother's murder received littlenews coverage because the media were still fixated on the stabbing death of mobsterJohnny Stompanato, who was dating actressLana Turner.Frank C. Girardot, a reporter forThe San Gabriel Valley Tribune, accessed files on Geneva Hilliker Ellroy's murder from detectives with Los Angeles Police Department.[9] Based on thecold case file, Ellroy and investigator Bill Stoner worked the case but gave up after 15 months, believing any suspects to be dead.[9] After the final pages ofMy Dark Places, a contact page is provided, stating: "The investigation continues. Information on the case can be forwarded to Detective Stoner either through the toll-free number, 1-800-717-6517, or his e-mail address, detstoner@earthlink.net."[37] In 2008,The Library of America selected the essay "My Mother's Killer" fromMy Dark Places for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Ellroy is currently writing a "Second L.A. Quartet" taking place during theSecond World War, with some characters from the firstL.A. Quartet and theUnderworld USA Trilogy reappearing in younger depictions. The first book,Perfidia, was released on September 9, 2014.[38][39][40][41] The second book is titledThis Storm,[42] which had a release date of May 14, 2019.[43] It was released on May 30, 2019, in the United Kingdom, and June 4, 2019, in the United States.
AWaterstones exclusive limited edition ofPerfidia was published two days after its initial release and included an essay by Ellroy titled "Ellroy's History—Then and Now".[44]. EllroydedicatedPerfidia "To Lisa Stafford". Theepigraph is "Envy thou not the oppressor, And choose none of his ways" fromProverbs 3:31.
In collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Museum and Glynn Martin, the museum'sexecutive director, Ellroy releasedLAPD '53 on May 19, 2015.[45] Photography from the museum's archives are presented alongside Ellroy's writings about crime and law enforcement during that era.
In the fall of 2017, Ellroy investigated the murder ofSal Mineo. Reminiscent of how he investigated his mother's unsolved murder, Ellroy worked with Glynn Martin, an ex-LAPD officer, the LAPD Museum's current executive director, and co-author ofLAPD '53. Ellroy wrote about this investigation forThe Hollywood Reporter in digital form on December 21, 2018, and it also appeared in published form in the December 18, 2018, issue ofThe Hollywood Reporter magazine.[46]
Early in January 2019, Ellroy posted news on jamesellroy.net, writing: "I'm digitally illiterate, so you’ve got to gas on the fact that I'm breakingbaaaaaaaaad from tradition, in order to post this announcement."[47] Ellroy posted that he had been inducted into theEveryman's Library series.[48] Three Everyman's Library editions have been reprinted:The L.A. Quartet,[49]The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I[50] andThe Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume II.[51] The release dates for these editions, as well asThis Storm: A Novel, was June 4, 2019.[52] Ellroy added, "Stay stirringly tuned to this website for further updates", and simply signed the finished postEllroy, inserting a dog's pawprint below it.[53][54]
In 2022 Ellroy, a long-time fan ofChester Himes, wrote the introduction to Himes's classicA Rage in Harlem. In his hard-bitten style, Ellroy raves that"'A Rage in Harlem' features a mind-mauling array of chump-change hustles, lurid larcenies, and malicious mischief."The novel was originally published in France in 1958 where it won France's "Grand Prix de Littérature Policière", and was most recently re-published by Vintage Books.
In 2023, at theLA Times Festival of Books, Ellroy revealed, in light of his latest bookThe Enchanters and his editors' response to it, that he had abandoned his previous plans to write a "Second L.A. Quartet" and would instead turn it into aquintet, withThe Enchanters being the third of five books in the series. The later books in the series will be set in the 1960s and will tie back in to the World War II setting,Japanese internment and the immediate post-war setting initially established inPerfidia andThis Storm.[55]
In media appearances, Ellroy has adopted an outsized, stylized public persona of hard-boilednihilism and self-reflexive subversiveness.[31] He frequently begins public appearances with a monologue such as:
Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the demon dog with the hog-log, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. These books will leave you reamed, steamed and drycleaned, tie-dyed, swept to the side, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed. These are books for the whole fuckin' family, if the name of your family is Manson.[56][57]
Another aspect of his public persona involves an almost comically grand assessment of his work and his place in literature. For example, he toldThe New York Times: "I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific whatTolstoy is to the Russian novel and whatBeethoven is to music."[58]
Structurally, several of Ellroy's books, such asThe Big Nowhere,L.A. Confidential,American Tabloid, andThe Cold Six Thousand, have three disparatepoints of view through different characters, with chapters alternating between them. Starting withThe Black Dahlia, Ellroy's novels have mostly been historical dramas about the relationship between corruption and law enforcement.[36]
A predominant theme of Ellroy's work is the myth of "closure". "Closure is bullshit",[59] Ellroy often remarks, "and I would love to find the man who invented closure and shove a giant closure plaque up his ass."[60] In his works characters often die or vanish quickly before otherwise traditional closure points in order to capitalize this idea.
Ellroy has claimed that he is done writing noir crime novels.[18] "I write big political books now," he says. "I want to write about LA exclusively for the rest of my career. I don't know where and when."[61]
On April 29, 2015, Ellroy andLois Duncan were the Grandmasters at the 2015Edgar Awards.[62]
Ellroy has frequently espousedconservative political views.[31][63] In 2019, Ellroy described himself as anti-totalitarian, conservative, and aTory, adding "Underneath my profane exterior, I'm very concerned with decorum, with probity, with morality, and I have a painfully developed conscience. I despise unconscionable acts, whoever is perpetrating them."[64]
In a 2009 interview, Ellroy said that in the 1960s and 1970s "I was never a peacemaker; I was a fuck-you right-winger." He has also been an outspoken and unquestioning admirer of theLos Angeles Police Department (despite his explicit depictions of brutality and corruption of the department in his novels), dismissing its flaws as aberrations. He has said that theRodney King beating andRampart police scandals were overblown by abiased media.[65] Nevertheless, like other aspects of his persona, he often deliberately obscures where his public persona ends and his actual views begin. When asked about his "right-wing tendencies", he told an interviewer, "Right-wing tendencies? I do that to fuck with people."[66] Similarly, in the filmFeast of Death, his (now ex-) wife describes his politics as "bullshit", an assessment to which Ellroy responds only with a knowing smile.[22] Privately, Ellroy opposes thedeath penalty.[67]
In 2001, Ellroy stated that he is opposed to gun control. In the2000 presidential election, Ellroy voted forGeorge W. Bush "because I wanted to repudiateGore and Clintonism and nobody hatesBill Clinton more than me..."[68] In 2009, he called Bush a "slimeball and the most disastrous American president in recent times." He stated that he voted forBarack Obama,[66] though later denied doing so, while adding that most of his statements on modern politics are willful misrepresentations.[69]
Ellroy has frequently shared his thoughts on politicians and political candidates. He has calledHillary Clinton a "bull dyke in a pantsuit", comparedJohn McCain toMr. Magoo,Joe Biden toDaffy Duck, and said that "Obama looks like a f---ing lemur, a little rodent-like creature, a marsupial or something."[70][71] He has praised PresidentRonald Reagan on several occasions, calling him a "titanic human being."[72] On PresidentDonald Trump, Ellroy stated that he "doesn't have the charm of a true, world-class dictator", but also understands his appeal, as "He's the big 'fuck you' to all pieties."[73]
In 2022, Ellroy stated that he no longer followed contemporary politics.[25]
Following his parents' divorce, Ellroy was sent to a Dutch Lutheran Church by his mother every Sunday. In 2004, Ellroy had stated "I had a Christian upbringing of sorts, Lutheran. I don't go to church. I can't say I'm a Christian."[74]
However, in 2013, Ellroy stated "I'm a Christian. I'm not an Evangelical Christian, but God and religious spiritual feelings always guided me during the worst moments of my life, and I don't for a moment doubt it."[75] In 2014, Ellroy stated that "I'm a Christian. I believe we are all one soul united in God", adding that he is "conservative and theocratic".[76]
Ellroy has stated that his faith has influenced his novels, describing them as "stories of redemption."[66] He described his 2021 novelWidespread Panic as "very much a Christian novel."[77]
Several of Ellroy's works have been adapted to film, includingBlood on the Moon (adapted asCop),L.A. Confidential,Brown's Requiem,Killer on the Road/Silent Terror (adapted asStay Clean), andThe Black Dahlia. In each instance, screenplays based on Ellroy's work were written by other screenwriters.
While he has frequently been disappointed by these adaptations (such asCop), he was very complimentary ofCurtis Hanson andBrian Helgeland's screenplay forL.A. Confidential at the time of its release.[78] In succeeding years, however, his comments have been more reserved:
L.A. Confidential, the movie, is the best thing that happened to me in my career that I hadabsolutely nothing to do with. It was a fluke—and a wonderful one—and it isnever going to happen again—a movie of that quality.
Here's my final comment onL.A. Confidential, the movie: I go to a video store inPrairie Village, Kansas. The youngsters who work there know me as the guy who wroteL.A. Confidential. They tell all the little old ladies who come in there to get their G-rated family flick. They come up to me, they say, "OOOO... you wroteL.A. Confidential... Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful movie. I saw it four times. You don't see storytelling like that on the screen anymore." ...I smile, I say, "Yes, it's a wonderful movie, and a salutary adaptation of my wonderful novel. But listen, Granny: You love the movie.Did you go out and buy the book?" And Granny invariably says, "Well, no, I didn't." And I say to Granny, "Then what the fuck good are you to me?"[22]
Shortly after viewing three hours of unedited footage[79] forBrian De Palma's adaptation ofThe Black Dahlia, Ellroy wrote an essay, "Hillikers", praising De Palma and his film.[80] Ultimately, nearly an hour was removed from the final cut. Of the released film, Ellroy told theSeattle Post-Intelligencer, "Look, you're not going to get me to say anything negative about the movie, so you might as well give up."[34] He had, however, mocked the film's director, cast, and production design before it was filmed.[57]
Ellroy co-wrote the original screenplay for the 2008 filmStreet Kings but refused to do any publicity for the finished film.[34]
In September 2008,Daily Variety reported thatHBO, along withTom Hanks's production company,Playtone, was developingAmerican Tabloid andThe Cold Six Thousand for either a miniseries or ongoing series.[81]
In a September 2009 interview, Ellroy himself stated, "All movie adaptations of my books are dead."[82] In a November 2012 interview, when asked about how movie adaptations distort his books, he remarked, "[Film studios] can do whatever the [fuck] they want as long as they pay me."[41] As of 2023, Ellroy refuses to answer any questions about both the film adaptions of his books or the scripts he wrote in the 2000s.[83]
In an October 2017 interview withThe New York Times, Tom Hanks stated he would be interested in playing the part of Lloyd Hopkins if a film or stage adaptation was put into production.[84]
In February 2024, it was reported Ellroy had signed on with Hollywood talent agencyUTA and that producers were shopping around a film adaption of his then-latest novelThe Enchanters.[85]
Dear readers, Ellroy fans, and seditious sustainers of the American literary tradition: This is James Ellroy—the Demon Dog of American Literature himself—baying at you from his posh pad at an undisclosed location in the American West/Near Midwest. As you may know, I'm digitally illiterate, so you've got to gas on the fact that I'm breaking baaaaaaaaad from tradition, in order to post this announcement.
I've been inducted into the prongingly prestigious Everyman's Library. I'm now in the achingly august company of hotshots like Albert Camus, John Updike, Chinua Achebe, Katherine Mansfield, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and the kooly contemporary Joan Didion and Salman Rushdie—kats who, of kourse, I've never read.
Why mince words, kats? June 4, 2019 announces my confounding canonization in the hellaciously hallowed halls of the Great American Novelist Brigade!!!!!
The Demon Dog will be putting his pustulent pawprint on yet more kalamitous kommuniques. Stay stirringly tuned to this website for further updates.
Works byJames Ellroy | |
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| Stand-alone |
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| Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy |
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| L.A. Quartet |
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| Underworld USA Trilogy |
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| The L.A. Quintet |
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| Fred Otash series |
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| Short story collections |
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| Non-fiction |
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| Original screenplays |
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| Film adaptations |
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