James Ellroy really loves his work


Photo of Julian Guthrie

He answers the phone to his hotel room with a booming, "Ellroy!" Arriving in the elegant lobby, he reluctantly untangles himself from a redhead, and watches her walk away. He settles into his chair, sinking down until his 6-foot-3-inch frame is nearly parallel to the ground.

James Ellroy, the American crime writer known for his murdered mother, staccato sentences, alliterative profanity and outsize ego, was in San Francisco recently to sell what he describes as the "most dialectical, most spiritual, most profound book" of his career.

A giant historical noir, "Blood's a Rover" concludes Ellroy's "Underworld U.S.A." trilogy - three dense, meticulously woven novels that span from 1958 to 1973, blurring fact and fiction, political corruption and everyday depravity.

It is a trilogy that "f- me up completely because I inhabited the souls of these leg-breakers," Ellroy said, looking up at the waitress . "I rewrite history the way I see things."

Ordering a double decaf espresso, Ellroy, 61, continued, "I need a lot of solitude. I was meant to live alone in the dark and think. I ignore the world around me and immerse myself in history gone by so I might live with it more deeply and write with greater verisimilitude."

Crime and politics

Ellroy's best-known works include the modern noir "L.A. Confidential" and "The Black Dahlia," which fused the gruesome 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short with the 1958 unsolved murder of his mother. The "Underworld" trilogy represents a departure from straight crime to political malfeasance, although Ellroy says: "American politics are just another crime scene."

A high school dropout who learned the craft of writing by reading crime novels, Ellroy in person is like Ellroy in print - a concoction of fact and fiction.

In an hourlong interview, the self-proclaimed "demon dog" of American fiction veered from opportunist ("My mother's death gave me the gift of curiosity") to appreciative ("I'm the happiest person I know"), from egomaniacal ("I'm the Beethoven of crime fiction") to soulful ("I'm a Christian and I believe in the power of redemption").

Clad in blue jeans, a pink-and-white-striped button-down and a green sweater vest, Ellroy exudes a mix of mad scientist and preppy professor. But beyond his rhetoric lies a solipsistic writer obsessed with the craft of storytelling.

"For 'Blood's a Rover,' I did a 400-page outline," Ellroy says, sitting up briefly to munch biscotti and sip his cappuccino. "My research is copious in terms of note taking. I do six to seven drafts. I plot assiduously. I go through every sentence and I don't move on until it's perfected.

"I'm interested in doing very few things. I don't have a cell phone. Don't have a computer. Don't have a TV set. Don't go to movies. Don't read. I ignore the world so I might live obsessively."

He writes on white notebook paper, and begins working at 7 a.m. He employs researchers to compile fact sheets and timelines on real characters. For the "Underworld" series, these included John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon, Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover. "Then I create a private human infrastructure," Ellroy says. "In my books are real-life characters and fictional ones. One question I never answer is what's real and what's not."

The book - 600-plus pages of short sentences - was more than eight years in the writing.

With the interwoven story lines and multiple characters, "Blood's a Rover" follows "American Tabloid" and "The Cold Six Thousand" in rewriting a chunk of American history, and starts just as Nixon is assuming the presidency.

One of the main fictional characters in "Blood's a Rover" is a femme fatale named Joan Klein, who might be "a red diaper peacenik or an armed-robber manque." Many of the book's mysteries are wrapped up in her.

"I based her character on a woman I met here in San Francisco," said Ellroy. "I dedicated the book to her. She is a college professor. She was a mystery to me. I'm very powerfully compelled by women."

The two lived together in her Twin Peaks home for less than six months, starting in 2005. It was enough time for Ellroy to realize he wasn't with the right woman, or in the right city.

"San Francisco is untenable," he says. "I like to drive. There is nowhere to park."

After two divorces, and stints in Carmel and in Kansas, Ellroy is back in Los Angeles, where he grew up. "I always return to L.A. to lick my wounds," he says.

Memory of mother

He has written a memoir, "The Hilliker Curse," which is due out next year and is a reflection on his relationships with women and the abiding power of his mother (whose maiden name was Hilliker).

"My mother was an alcoholic who liked cheap men," Ellroy says. "She was taken from me when I was 10, but she's a constant in my life. When she was no longer there, I was left to my own devices. Writing gave me something to do."

Pushing himself up from the chair as his redheaded friend reappeared, Ellroy said, "I'm the happiest I've ever been. I believe in God. I surround myself with good people. I love the work I do.

"I have five more novels I want to write - all big political ones. I'm out to surprise, to do the unexpected. To give you the big apostasy."