JAMES ELLROY: CRIME PAYS

Nearly a fortnight ago, literary star James Ellroy came to town on a promotional tour for his new book, Crime Wave. The Wednesday before his gig at MIT, he appeared on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. Barely alighted on the hotseat, he announced, with appropriate finger gestures, that the President is hung like a cashew. The Crimson immediately pulled strings and waxed plaintive to get a one-on-one with the celebrated word-wrestler who delivered such literary punches as The Black Dahlia, American Tabloid and L.A. Confidential. Armed for the interview with nonsense and irreverence, The Crimson was taken aback to find a straight and staid character with answers to defeat over populated extremist myth in which we would like to outfit him.

THC: How do you feel about L.A.? Why this love-hate-JE: I don't have a love-hate relationship with L.A. I am from L.A. I was born there in 1948, the year of the rat in Chinese astrology. And I am not being disingenuous here, but if I were born in Montana or Delaware, then I suspect if whatever happened to me happened to me, and I grew up where I grew up, then I would write crime novels about those places. Simply put, I am from L.A. It exerts a hold on me, but it's an influence that I've sought consciously to move beyond....I will forever be associated with L.A., but aside from the occasional journalistic piece about L.A., and aside from satirical, parodistic short fiction about L.A. (the Danny Getchell stories), I will never use L.A. again.

THC: Why is that?

JE: Because I've moved beyond it. Because I don't want to be pigeonholed as a writer, I don't want in any way to be constrained. I want to go out more broadly, and write about the whole of America.

THC: But you have also made a lot of astute observations about the nature of L.A. What are your specific feelings on that?

JE: Well, L.A. is the big league for people who want to be somebody else. That's a little tongue-in-cheek although I think it's true, that L.A. is where you go if you want to be somebody else. And the preponderance of people who want to be somebody else, who live in L.A., have skewed it off the axis of planet earth. I would not want to live in the immediate center, I have no interest in keeping up with popular culture, I enjoy the American midwest, and I'll never live in L.A. again. I haven't lived in L.A. for 18 years.

THC: You seem especially obsessed with a particular era in L.A.'s history, that being the 50s. Why is that?

JE: I'm also observed with L.A. in the 40s My four L.A. Quarter books cover L.A. from 1947 to 1959. Now, in my Underworld USA trilogy, I'm moving out of the era of my childhood, my era of dimly-recalled events, into the era of my cognizance.

THC: Nice.

JE: I'm in 1963 now, when I'm 15 years old, and it's an entirely different ballgame. The grand design of the rest of my career is to recreate twentieth century American history through fiction.

THC: Do you ever feel daunted by not knowing everything that happened in the past?

JE: No. Because I am, with the exception of the non-fiction that I write, in the business of making up the past.

THC: There is a certain myth surrounding the way you write, and that is that you shut yourself away and type away rapidly and obsessively for hours on end-

JE: That's not true. I plan very carefully. I start with political research, I usually hire researchers. I compile many notes on character, plot, venue, historical incident. Then I do a shorthand draft of the entire story, and then I block it out into a formal outline, then I follow that outline down to the most minute detail. You cannot write books as large, as complex, as densely populated as mine, without a detailed outline.

THC: What are some of the stylistic concerns present in your mind when you write?

JE: I want the cleanest, most direct, simplest, most expressive possible language. The violence of the language is directly tailored to the violence of the story that I am telling. I love the American idiom, I love profane American language, I love Yiddish, I love racist argot, I love this whole obscene potpourri of the American tongue, and I love putting it into my books.

THC: How did you grow out of your low period?

JE: I quit drinking and using drugs. I started writing books.

THC: Based on what realization?

JE: That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to lead a decent life, a noncriminal life. That I didn't want to destroy myself, that I wanted to be a productive member of society.

THC: For me at least, there has always been an element of romance in a lifestyle like that, which is not mainstream, which is anti-establishment-

JE: I wanted to join the establishment.I wanted to write books. I wanted to meet women. Iwanted ultimately to get married. I wantedultimately to get married. I wanted to earn money.I am not a member of the counter culture, I neverhave been. I'm impatient with it. I don't likerock and roll. It's institutionalizedrebelliousness to me. I wanted to live square,live right and live right and live productively.And it was only when I decided to put down thedrugs, stupid adventuring and everything else thatI was able to sit down and write books.

THC: What would you say to that portion of yourreaders who might embrace you as a champion ofprecisely that lifestyle just because some of yourcharacters are so flagrantly so.

JE: I'm a Republican.

THC: [shifting uncomfortably]

JE: That's what I would tell them.

THC: Is there any part of you that lives out afantasy through your seedier and more criminalcharacters like Danny Getchell?

JE: Crime to me, dark social history, ebb andflow of dark events, the near psychopathic,semi-psychopathic, the leg-breakers of history area voice for me to express my moral concernsbecause these are men who paid morally for theirdark deeds. I am first and last and always amoralist. They are the means for me to recreatehistory to my own specifications, but I am notthem.There is a definite distinction betweenmost writers and their work. Because the work is,in the end, as it is in my case, a work ofimagination, with the exception of thenon-fiction.

THC: What do you perceive is the persona thatthe popular press has made you out to be?

JE: A wild man. I have a wild imagination. Iknow how to perform in front of a crowd. That'sfive percent of it. Specifically, when I go on abook tour, I feel like an animal that's beenuncaged.

THC: Are you slightly psychopathic?

JE: No. I am contemplative. I'm hardworking.I'm meticulous, I'm diligent, I have a veryfinely-attuned conscience

THC: How do you feel about L.A.? Why this love-hate-JE: I don't have a love-hate relationship with L.A. I am from L.A. I was born there in 1948, the year of the rat in Chinese astrology. And I am not being disingenuous here, but if I were born in Montana or Delaware, then I suspect if whatever happened to me happened to me, and I grew up where I grew up, then I would write crime novels about those places. Simply put, I am from L.A. It exerts a hold on me, but it's an influence that I've sought consciously to move beyond....I will forever be associated with L.A., but aside from the occasional journalistic piece about L.A., and aside from satirical, parodistic short fiction about L.A. (the Danny Getchell stories), I will never use L.A. again.

THC: Why is that?

JE: Because I've moved beyond it. Because I don't want to be pigeonholed as a writer, I don't want in any way to be constrained. I want to go out more broadly, and write about the whole of America.

THC: But you have also made a lot of astute observations about the nature of L.A. What are your specific feelings on that?

JE: Well, L.A. is the big league for people who want to be somebody else. That's a little tongue-in-cheek although I think it's true, that L.A. is where you go if you want to be somebody else. And the preponderance of people who want to be somebody else, who live in L.A., have skewed it off the axis of planet earth. I would not want to live in the immediate center, I have no interest in keeping up with popular culture, I enjoy the American midwest, and I'll never live in L.A. again. I haven't lived in L.A. for 18 years.

THC: You seem especially obsessed with a particular era in L.A.'s history, that being the 50s. Why is that?

JE: I'm also observed with L.A. in the 40s My four L.A. Quarter books cover L.A. from 1947 to 1959. Now, in my Underworld USA trilogy, I'm moving out of the era of my childhood, my era of dimly-recalled events, into the era of my cognizance.

THC: Nice.

JE: I'm in 1963 now, when I'm 15 years old, and it's an entirely different ballgame. The grand design of the rest of my career is to recreate twentieth century American history through fiction.

THC: Do you ever feel daunted by not knowing everything that happened in the past?

JE: No. Because I am, with the exception of the non-fiction that I write, in the business of making up the past.

THC: There is a certain myth surrounding the way you write, and that is that you shut yourself away and type away rapidly and obsessively for hours on end-

JE: That's not true. I plan very carefully. I start with political research, I usually hire researchers. I compile many notes on character, plot, venue, historical incident. Then I do a shorthand draft of the entire story, and then I block it out into a formal outline, then I follow that outline down to the most minute detail. You cannot write books as large, as complex, as densely populated as mine, without a detailed outline.

THC: What are some of the stylistic concerns present in your mind when you write?

JE: I want the cleanest, most direct, simplest, most expressive possible language. The violence of the language is directly tailored to the violence of the story that I am telling. I love the American idiom, I love profane American language, I love Yiddish, I love racist argot, I love this whole obscene potpourri of the American tongue, and I love putting it into my books.

THC: How did you grow out of your low period?

JE: I quit drinking and using drugs. I started writing books.

THC: Based on what realization?

JE: That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to lead a decent life, a noncriminal life. That I didn't want to destroy myself, that I wanted to be a productive member of society.

THC: For me at least, there has always been an element of romance in a lifestyle like that, which is not mainstream, which is anti-establishment-

JE: I wanted to join the establishment.I wanted to write books. I wanted to meet women. Iwanted ultimately to get married. I wantedultimately to get married. I wanted to earn money.I am not a member of the counter culture, I neverhave been. I'm impatient with it. I don't likerock and roll. It's institutionalizedrebelliousness to me. I wanted to live square,live right and live right and live productively.And it was only when I decided to put down thedrugs, stupid adventuring and everything else thatI was able to sit down and write books.

THC: What would you say to that portion of yourreaders who might embrace you as a champion ofprecisely that lifestyle just because some of yourcharacters are so flagrantly so.

JE: I'm a Republican.

THC: [shifting uncomfortably]

JE: That's what I would tell them.

THC: Is there any part of you that lives out afantasy through your seedier and more criminalcharacters like Danny Getchell?

JE: Crime to me, dark social history, ebb andflow of dark events, the near psychopathic,semi-psychopathic, the leg-breakers of history area voice for me to express my moral concernsbecause these are men who paid morally for theirdark deeds. I am first and last and always amoralist. They are the means for me to recreatehistory to my own specifications, but I am notthem.There is a definite distinction betweenmost writers and their work. Because the work is,in the end, as it is in my case, a work ofimagination, with the exception of thenon-fiction.

THC: What do you perceive is the persona thatthe popular press has made you out to be?

JE: A wild man. I have a wild imagination. Iknow how to perform in front of a crowd. That'sfive percent of it. Specifically, when I go on abook tour, I feel like an animal that's beenuncaged.

THC: Are you slightly psychopathic?

JE: No. I am contemplative. I'm hardworking.I'm meticulous, I'm diligent, I have a veryfinely-attuned conscience

THC: Why is that?

JE: Because I've moved beyond it. Because I don't want to be pigeonholed as a writer, I don't want in any way to be constrained. I want to go out more broadly, and write about the whole of America.

THC: But you have also made a lot of astute observations about the nature of L.A. What are your specific feelings on that?

JE: Well, L.A. is the big league for people who want to be somebody else. That's a little tongue-in-cheek although I think it's true, that L.A. is where you go if you want to be somebody else. And the preponderance of people who want to be somebody else, who live in L.A., have skewed it off the axis of planet earth. I would not want to live in the immediate center, I have no interest in keeping up with popular culture, I enjoy the American midwest, and I'll never live in L.A. again. I haven't lived in L.A. for 18 years.

THC: You seem especially obsessed with a particular era in L.A.'s history, that being the 50s. Why is that?

JE: I'm also observed with L.A. in the 40s My four L.A. Quarter books cover L.A. from 1947 to 1959. Now, in my Underworld USA trilogy, I'm moving out of the era of my childhood, my era of dimly-recalled events, into the era of my cognizance.

THC: Nice.

JE: I'm in 1963 now, when I'm 15 years old, and it's an entirely different ballgame. The grand design of the rest of my career is to recreate twentieth century American history through fiction.

THC: Do you ever feel daunted by not knowing everything that happened in the past?

JE: No. Because I am, with the exception of the non-fiction that I write, in the business of making up the past.

THC: There is a certain myth surrounding the way you write, and that is that you shut yourself away and type away rapidly and obsessively for hours on end-

JE: That's not true. I plan very carefully. I start with political research, I usually hire researchers. I compile many notes on character, plot, venue, historical incident. Then I do a shorthand draft of the entire story, and then I block it out into a formal outline, then I follow that outline down to the most minute detail. You cannot write books as large, as complex, as densely populated as mine, without a detailed outline.

THC: What are some of the stylistic concerns present in your mind when you write?

JE: I want the cleanest, most direct, simplest, most expressive possible language. The violence of the language is directly tailored to the violence of the story that I am telling. I love the American idiom, I love profane American language, I love Yiddish, I love racist argot, I love this whole obscene potpourri of the American tongue, and I love putting it into my books.

THC: How did you grow out of your low period?

JE: I quit drinking and using drugs. I started writing books.

THC: Based on what realization?

JE: That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to lead a decent life, a noncriminal life. That I didn't want to destroy myself, that I wanted to be a productive member of society.

THC: For me at least, there has always been an element of romance in a lifestyle like that, which is not mainstream, which is anti-establishment-

JE: I wanted to join the establishment.I wanted to write books. I wanted to meet women. Iwanted ultimately to get married. I wantedultimately to get married. I wanted to earn money.I am not a member of the counter culture, I neverhave been. I'm impatient with it. I don't likerock and roll. It's institutionalizedrebelliousness to me. I wanted to live square,live right and live right and live productively.And it was only when I decided to put down thedrugs, stupid adventuring and everything else thatI was able to sit down and write books.

THC: What would you say to that portion of yourreaders who might embrace you as a champion ofprecisely that lifestyle just because some of yourcharacters are so flagrantly so.

JE: I'm a Republican.

THC: [shifting uncomfortably]

JE: That's what I would tell them.

THC: Is there any part of you that lives out afantasy through your seedier and more criminalcharacters like Danny Getchell?

JE: Crime to me, dark social history, ebb andflow of dark events, the near psychopathic,semi-psychopathic, the leg-breakers of history area voice for me to express my moral concernsbecause these are men who paid morally for theirdark deeds. I am first and last and always amoralist. They are the means for me to recreatehistory to my own specifications, but I am notthem.There is a definite distinction betweenmost writers and their work. Because the work is,in the end, as it is in my case, a work ofimagination, with the exception of thenon-fiction.

THC: What do you perceive is the persona thatthe popular press has made you out to be?

JE: A wild man. I have a wild imagination. Iknow how to perform in front of a crowd. That'sfive percent of it. Specifically, when I go on abook tour, I feel like an animal that's beenuncaged.

THC: Are you slightly psychopathic?

JE: No. I am contemplative. I'm hardworking.I'm meticulous, I'm diligent, I have a veryfinely-attuned conscience

THC: But you have also made a lot of astute observations about the nature of L.A. What are your specific feelings on that?

JE: Well, L.A. is the big league for people who want to be somebody else. That's a little tongue-in-cheek although I think it's true, that L.A. is where you go if you want to be somebody else. And the preponderance of people who want to be somebody else, who live in L.A., have skewed it off the axis of planet earth. I would not want to live in the immediate center, I have no interest in keeping up with popular culture, I enjoy the American midwest, and I'll never live in L.A. again. I haven't lived in L.A. for 18 years.

THC: You seem especially obsessed with a particular era in L.A.'s history, that being the 50s. Why is that?

JE: I'm also observed with L.A. in the 40s My four L.A. Quarter books cover L.A. from 1947 to 1959. Now, in my Underworld USA trilogy, I'm moving out of the era of my childhood, my era of dimly-recalled events, into the era of my cognizance.

THC: Nice.

JE: I'm in 1963 now, when I'm 15 years old, and it's an entirely different ballgame. The grand design of the rest of my career is to recreate twentieth century American history through fiction.

THC: Do you ever feel daunted by not knowing everything that happened in the past?

JE: No. Because I am, with the exception of the non-fiction that I write, in the business of making up the past.

THC: There is a certain myth surrounding the way you write, and that is that you shut yourself away and type away rapidly and obsessively for hours on end-

JE: That's not true. I plan very carefully. I start with political research, I usually hire researchers. I compile many notes on character, plot, venue, historical incident. Then I do a shorthand draft of the entire story, and then I block it out into a formal outline, then I follow that outline down to the most minute detail. You cannot write books as large, as complex, as densely populated as mine, without a detailed outline.

THC: What are some of the stylistic concerns present in your mind when you write?

JE: I want the cleanest, most direct, simplest, most expressive possible language. The violence of the language is directly tailored to the violence of the story that I am telling. I love the American idiom, I love profane American language, I love Yiddish, I love racist argot, I love this whole obscene potpourri of the American tongue, and I love putting it into my books.

THC: How did you grow out of your low period?

JE: I quit drinking and using drugs. I started writing books.

THC: Based on what realization?

JE: That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to have a life. That I wanted to lead a decent life, a noncriminal life. That I didn't want to destroy myself, that I wanted to be a productive member of society.

THC: For me at least, there has always been an element of romance in a lifestyle like that, which is not mainstream, which is anti-establishment-

JE: I wanted to join the establishment.I wanted to write books. I wanted to meet women. Iwanted ultimately to get married. I wantedultimately to get married. I wanted to earn money.I am not a member of the counter culture, I neverhave been. I'm impatient with it. I don't likerock and roll. It's institutionalizedrebelliousness to me. I wanted to live square,live right and live right and live productively.And it was only when I decided to put down thedrugs, stupid adventuring and everything else thatI was able to sit down and write books.

THC: What would you say to that portion of yourreaders who might embrace you as a champion ofprecisely that lifestyle just because some of yourcharacters are so flagrantly so.

JE: I'm a Republican.

THC: [shifting uncomfortably]

JE: That's what I would tell them.

THC: Is there any part of you that lives out afantasy through your seedier and more criminalcharacters like Danny Getchell?

JE: Crime to me, dark social history, ebb andflow of dark events, the near psychopathic,semi-psychopathic, the leg-breakers of history area voice for me to express my moral concernsbecause these are men who paid morally for theirdark deeds. I am first and last and always amoralist. They are the means for me to recreatehistory to my own specifications, but I am notthem.There is a definite distinction betweenmost writers and their work. Because the work is,in the end, as it is in my case, a work ofimagination, with the exception of thenon-fiction.

THC: What do you perceive is the persona thatthe popular press has made you out to be?

JE: A wild man. I have a wild imagination. Iknow how to perform in front of a crowd. That'sfive percent of it. Specifically, when I go on abook tour, I feel like an animal that's beenuncaged.

THC: Are you slightly psychopathic?

JE: No. I am contemplative. I'm hardworking.I'm meticulous, I'm diligent, I have a veryfinely-attuned conscience

JE: I wanted to join the establishment.I wanted to write books. I wanted to meet women. Iwanted ultimately to get married. I wantedultimately to get married. I wanted to earn money.I am not a member of the counter culture, I neverhave been. I'm impatient with it. I don't likerock and roll. It's institutionalizedrebelliousness to me. I wanted to live square,live right and live right and live productively.And it was only when I decided to put down thedrugs, stupid adventuring and everything else thatI was able to sit down and write books.

THC: What would you say to that portion of yourreaders who might embrace you as a champion ofprecisely that lifestyle just because some of yourcharacters are so flagrantly so.

JE: I'm a Republican.

THC: [shifting uncomfortably]

JE: That's what I would tell them.

THC: Is there any part of you that lives out afantasy through your seedier and more criminalcharacters like Danny Getchell?

JE: Crime to me, dark social history, ebb andflow of dark events, the near psychopathic,semi-psychopathic, the leg-breakers of history area voice for me to express my moral concernsbecause these are men who paid morally for theirdark deeds. I am first and last and always amoralist. They are the means for me to recreatehistory to my own specifications, but I am notthem.There is a definite distinction betweenmost writers and their work. Because the work is,in the end, as it is in my case, a work ofimagination, with the exception of thenon-fiction.

THC: What do you perceive is the persona thatthe popular press has made you out to be?

JE: A wild man. I have a wild imagination. Iknow how to perform in front of a crowd. That'sfive percent of it. Specifically, when I go on abook tour, I feel like an animal that's beenuncaged.

THC: Are you slightly psychopathic?

JE: No. I am contemplative. I'm hardworking.I'm meticulous, I'm diligent, I have a veryfinely-attuned conscience