James Ellroy
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroyis an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 March 1948
CountryUnited States of America
I put on such a good show, the story is outrageous, and people don't want to hear that I'm basically a reasonable human being. As long as it continues to get me print, I'll continue to perform in an exuberant manner.
I wanted to portray a newly democratized, enclosed society. I wanted to show how extraordinarily fluid people are in their embrace of other human beings.
Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.
[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.
I'm grateful for the life I have. I lived bad for many years, and I've got a great life now. I've got the kind of life people only dream about.
Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.
Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers.
Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.
The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is kitsch and Mickey Mouse watches and all this intolerable stuff...
I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.
Some people don’t respond to civility.
My mother and I will continue on some level that I haven't determined yet. I think my mother's a great character, and I have to say that giving my mother to the world has to be the biggest thrill of my writing career.
I feel very calm and poised underneath it all, but no less passionate or committed to the work. I won't go soft on you, but I feel calm inside.
It was interesting to write directly about what things meant to me. A lot of the art of writing novels is in telling things by implication.