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
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.
The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.
As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, I have thought about other things throughout the years.
I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and the power of Perfidia is that it's the result of complete immersion. I was there for the two years that it took me to write that book.
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.
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 haven't been to a movie in a year and a half.
I'm clenched down, I'm locked in on it, which is my general approach to life.
I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.
I've created a narrative of the world. I live in the world - tenuously, most times. I've avoided the digital world.
I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.
Classical music fulfills for me the function of narrative. I spend 90 minutes a day listening to symphonic music - Beethoven to Bartók - some chamber pieces, and that's my enrichment.