Your questions answered by James Ellroy
Hey peepers and prowlers! The one and only James Ellroy was our Reading group author for May and joined us for a webchat after a month spent reading his classic American Tabloid.
He came in to answer your questions about happy endings, his favourite authors and much more – scroll through his answers below.
Alas, James has to head off
Thanks to you all for your great questions and to James for sharing his time with us!
(He’s also going to be at the Southbank Centre in London tonight and heading around the UK later in the week. Complete tour dates available at jamesellroy.net)
Join us tomorrow to hear what our Reading group theme for June is!
TonyPeyser says:
Hey James: I recall your once saying that in your youth you shoplifted from Chevalier’s Books in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park district.
Decades later, you’re still here and it is, too.
Isn’t it time you returned to the scene of the crime and did a reading?
Guardian contributor Dear Tony,
Is your wife or mom Joan Peyser, who wrote the groovy biography of Leonard Bernstein, if so it would be a gas that you're writing to me.
(Yes, I am going to be there on June 11 at 7pm.)
igotwormz says:
Hi James. Love your work. Here’s my question... At the beginning of LA Confidential Buzz Meeks is apparently murdered by Dudley Smith. However, in the short story ‘Since I Don’t Have You’, Meeks is alive in old age. How did he perform such a remarkable escape?
Guardian contributor
'HBO has had the option on American Tabloid for 25 years'
kmill68 says:
I would love for HBO to pick up either American Tabloid or LA Confidential. Actuaally any of your books. What are the chances of something like that happening?
Guardian contributor Somewhere between slim and none, and slim just left town. HBO has had the option on American Tabloid for 25 years - but the odds on any single optioned book property ever seeing the light of day are somewhere between slim and none - and slim just left town, again.
'It helped that I was having a nervous breakdown while writing The Cold Six Thousand'
Archiboldie says:
Hi James. Big fan of your work. The Cold Six Thousand is one of the most thrilling books ever written. My question is about the cadence of the writing in that book and sequels. For myself as a reader, the stop-start created a sense of urgency and anxiety, and hardness around the characters and their actions. I wanted to understand if this was your objective, or you had another objective in mind. How did you come to use that style?
Please write another series about the current crop of politicians!
Guardian contributor Great question!!!!!
1 - The style of The Cold Six Thousand, my most extreme book, is perfectly suited to the exposition of endemic craziness in the American 1960s. And - why mince words? - it helped that I was having a nervous breakdown at the time.
Guardian contributor
'Pete and Barb's cat also survives and is still alive to this day at the age of 58'
Rachel Waites says:
Pete and Barb are one of the greatest literary couples of all time (in my humble opinion). What made you give them a happy ending? What’s so special about Pete?
Guardian contributor Great question!!!!! Given the overall darkness of Pete and Barb's last appearance in my books - The Cold Six Thousand - given the carnage and sorrowing loss at the end of that book - somebody's got to have a happy ending - may I also add that Pete and Barb's cat also survives and is still alive to this day at the age of 58 - which makes it the world's oldest cat.
'Pete Bondurant and I are kaput'
NotKeegan says:
James, I asked you five years ago in Manchester if we’d ever see Pete Bondurant in your books again. You then asked me what I knew about his war service, to which I replied that he was with the Marines on Saipan. You smiled and said “more will be revealed”.
With that in mind, will the Pacific war play a large part in the rest of your new LA Quartet? Will we see Pete B survive those 14 Banzai charges?
Guardian contributor Pete B and I are kaput. I am not inclined to include him in the second LA Quartet. He has been super-annuated, pink-slipped, rendered redundant, P45-ed, by the real life character Homer Jackson and a fictional character who will appear in the third volume.
ID5829869 says:
When signing a book for me, you wrote “Doom Drives” - does doom drive you?
Guardian contributor Doom does not drive me. I have signed a lot of books "doom drives", "blood of the rabid pitbull", "fear this book", and "feel the heat of hideous obsessions". The most valuable signed book in the Ellroy canon, that numerous collectors have sought for years is a signed copy of The Black Dahlia, inscribed to a woman I met at a reading at a Westwood California bookstore in 1987, requesting that she call me at my hotel and leaving the phone number of the hotel itself. There's only one of these.
PS: She never called.
doctordan says:
Mr Ellroy, as an avid reader my entire life I can safely say you are my all-time favorite author. In Perfidia you re-opened storylines from the original quartet, such as creating a connection between Elizabeth Short and Dudley Smith.
Since the timeline for the new quartet goes until 1945, do you plan to write additional books set in the post WW-II era that addresses things like what Dudley was up to during the Black Dahlia investigation? Also, have you ever considered writing a book that serves as a final conclusion for the various quartets and trilogies? I’m specifically thinking of the epilogue to White Jazz with Dave Klein ready to come back to LA decades later...
Guardian contributor This is provocative shit, DoctorDan!!!!! The second quartet will end on VJ day, August 45, there will be no further references in my work to Dave Klein, Dudley Smith, Elizabeth Short. I have vague ideas for a second Underworld USA trilogy - and, why mince words, Doc - the trilogy is predicated on the continuation of my current rude good health because, tragically, we all die sooner or later.
minotaur says:
What other specifically crime writers attract your admiration, and are any of them British such as Eric Ambler?
Guardian contributor What other specifically crime writers attract your admiration, and are any of them British such as Eric Ambler?
I dig Daniel Silva - he's an American author who writes a series about a man who is an assassin for Mossad and a restorer of old masters paintings. I know - it's a ridiculous concept, but I'm gassed on these books, nevertheless. Yeah, I dug the late great Eric Ambler and he brings to life the idea of approaching a border crossing and having your life fall into the shit irrevocably because your name's on some kind of list. I feel this every time I approach passport control. Also, you should dig on the Commander Gideon novels of JJ Marric. Gideon is the head honcho at Scotland Yard, and these are among the best police procedurals ever.
igotwormz says:
Although Blood’s A Rover’s Don Crutchfield is based on a real-life Hollywood PI, is it fair to say that there is also quite a lot of yourself in the character? What was the reason for baking an Ellroy surrogate into the story?
The real life Don Crutchfield passed away in 2016 –- may he rest in peace, we'll see him on the other side. The Crutchfield in Blood's A Rover bore little or no resemblance to the Crutchfield of real life. I have certainly recreated myself for this book - i.e. the window peeping, panty sniffing, quintessential buffoon of the era; Crutchfield is the man who lives to tell you the story of the time; thus, he replicates my task in life.
Updated
'History ended for me in 1972'
dondi asks:
Would you ever write anything set in the 70s or 80s, or do those decades not interest you? If they don’t, how come?
History ended for me in 1972 - at the conclusion of Blood's Rover as we move further into the 70s and 80s, we move further into the public accountability era - so there was too much scrutiny and critique in the air - which limits my realistic ability to tell a story of secret worlds.
François Lachaud says:
I first heard you in Paris (remember the auld Village Voice bookshop?). So pleased to start a new journey through your books in Everyman’s series as ‘This Storm’ bodes. Perfidia brought to my mind Julie London (wrongly, I presume). How do book titles come to your mind?
A thousand and two thanks for more than two decades of thrills, and a nod to Rin Tin Tin.
Irregularly. Perfidia, of course, is a song title; what else could The Black Dhalia be called - other than The Black Dahlia? The Big Nowhere is a phrase that I used to describe the fate of a character in The Black Dahlia.
He even says ‘hello’ with style:
Good evening, peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. This is James Ellroy, coming at you from London - the Queen city of the First World.
Updated
James Ellroy is with us now!
And pictured with our very own Sam Jordison in London. Let’s see what he has to say to your questions!
I’m very pleased to say that the demon dog himself, James Ellroy, will be joining us for a webchat on Monday 27 May at 3pm BST.
This is a great opportunity to put a question to one of the most successful and influential crime writers of our time. We’re fortunate that someone so entertaining will be answering our questions. Not to mention someone with such a fascinating personal story.
While we’ve been reading (and thoroughly enjoying) American Tabloid on the Guardian’s reading group this month, I’ve dived into his extraordinary bibliography, which includes LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia and his latest, This Storm. There is so much I want to know.
For instance: who on earth is this man? The world Ellroy has created is beyond cynical, one of monstrous lusts and brutal cruelty. Betrayal is as everyday as morning coffee and murder is as easy as ordering in a bar. Ellroy’s life seems a little different – “I live a brooding, Beethovian, monastic life,” he says, saying he doesn’t own a mobile phone and still regards FDR as the president. I’m eager to know what is going on in there …
He may have a bombastic public persona, but it’s clear that he is also deeply thoughtful and dedicated to his craft. How many other authors in the past 50 years have forged something as original as his spare, bullet-fast, bullet-hard prose? More to the point, how many others have done it so well, or immersed themselves so completely in a historical period as he has in the US of the 1950s and 60s?
Hopefully we’ll get some of the way to finding out on Monday. If you have a question you’d like to ask Ellroy, please post it in the comments below. He will be with us answering from 3pm BST on 27 May – but feel free to get yours in early.
- James Ellroy will also be appearing at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 27 May. Complete UK tour dates available at jamesellroy.net.
Dear readers,
Until we meet again; goodbye. May the Good Lord bless and keep you.
Ellroy.