James Ellroy

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James Ellroy (2009)

James Ellroy , born Lee Earle Ellroy (born March 4, 1948 in Los Angeles ) is an American writer . His crime novels are bestsellers . Ellroy likes to describe the darker side of American society. His work is characterized by a laconic gesture of speech, a dense plot and a pessimistic worldview.

Life

Inconsistency, a life on the fringes of society and tragic events were the predominant moments in the first thirty years of the later successful writer's life. Ellroy's mother, Jean Ellroy, was a former nurse originally from Wisconsin who later moved to Los Angeles. Ellroy's father, Armand Ellroy, had worked briefly for film actress Rita Hayworth in the late 1940s , doing bookmaking and other odd jobs. In 1954 the parents divorced. The mother was given custody and after the divorce she took her maiden name Hilliker again. In the years that followed, young James commuted between El Monte , his mother's new residence, and his father's residence in downtown Los Angeles. On June 22, 1958, the mother fell victim to a sex crime - a murder case that was never solved. According to his own statement, when Ellroy was ten years old, his mother's violent death was initially more of a liberation. He spent the following years with his father and witnessed his social decline. In addition, Armand Ellroy increasingly struggled with health problems.

As a teenager, Ellroy read increasingly detective novels and true crime reports - including works by Mickey Spillane , Raymond Chandler , Ross Macdonald and Joseph Wambaugh . Obsessive traits gained attention over the years with a spectacular sex crime from 1948 - the murder of young actress Elizabeth Short, known as the black dahlia case . After a brief interlude in the US Navy with a dishonorable dismissal in 1965 and the death of his father, James Ellroy got more and more on the wrong track. The following ten years were characterized by homelessness , petty crimes, provocative actions with racist and anti-Semitic slogans, alcohol and drug addiction, and shorter stays in prison . As a further component there were voyeuristic actions - especially in the form of break-ins , in which the spreading in the privacy of women he had previously observed was in the foreground.

Ellroy as a writer

Drugs , alcohol and life on the streets have taken their toll over time. In 1975 Ellroy was admitted to hospital for acute severe psychosis . A lung abscess , caused by years of inhalation using cotton swabs soaked in medication, almost led to his death in 1977 - according to his own statements. Following this event, Ellroy changed his life radically. He stopped drinking, attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and made a living as a caddy on golf courses . He also started writing his first novel. Brown's Requiem (German title: Browns Grabgesang), a hardboiled story that is set in the white lower class of Southern California , describes the revenge campaign of a former police officer who earns his living as a car seizure (American name: Repo Man) and private detective and - more or less by chance - caught in a story of arson , social security fraud and police corruption . With his second novel, Clandestine (German title: Heimlich) , Ellroy provided a scenario for the first time that reappeared in other novels: the story of a sex- and career-obsessed police officer who in America in the 1950s on the trail of a psychopathic female murderer device, the hunt for the same as a means of advancing his career and can only bring the perpetrator down after years of errors and personal setbacks. The blurb of the German first edition, which announced the book as an " underground thriller", characterized Heimlich as "a thriller about uprooting and guilt and a nightmare in America in the fifties - told from the perspective of the eighties."

Just like the two first works were the four follow-up novels - the three titles of the so-called Lloyd Hopkins trilogy (German titles: Blood on the Moon , In the Depth of the Night and Hill of Suicides ) and the standalone thriller Silent Terror (German: Silent horror ) from 1986 - not very productive commercially. A life from book earnings was not possible for the time being. Until the appearance of The Black Dahlia in 1987, Ellroy, who had moved to the outskirts of the east coast metropolis New York after the appearance of Brown's funeral song , continued to work as a caddy on golf courses. With regard to the factor of continuity, Ellroy described the contractual terms of the first few years as rather unsatisfactory. The same applied to the aspect of creative freedom and its unique selling points as an author. For example, he felt compelled to make several changes to the Lloyd Hopkins novels - a police officer-killer series written in the third person, which was narrative, among other things, characterized by hard changes of perspective. Reason, from Ellroy's point of view: his too great distance from the crime mainstream as well as, on the publisher's side, problems sorting his books into common "drawers".

The 1987 novel The Black Dahlia brought the decisive breakthrough both commercially and in terms of fame and importance Ellroys as a thriller writer. In Germany and France in particular , Ellroy became the new “Shooting Star” of the US hardboiled novel . By 1992 three more books by the so-called LA Quartet followed: The Big Nowhere , LA Confidential and White Jazz (German titles: Blutschatten , Stadt der Teufel and White Jazz ). All four novels address the dark side of Los Angeles history during the 1940s and 1950s. Despite the above-average complexity and density of figures, all four of the quartet's novels advanced to success. On the part of the critics, her ruthless, nihilistic view of the night side of the American dream was seen as a great merit of the author. LA Confidential , starring Kevin Spacey , Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger , was also a real hit as a film. Ellroy, who years earlier had declared his intentions to become the greatest detective writer of all time, declared after graduating from the L.A. Quartet that he had finished the genre and never wanted to write a book in the future that was as Detective novel or thriller can be classified. Instead, he now wants to shift to materials with historical themes.

A major project that would continue into the new millennium was a series of three historical novels depicting American history in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as the plot of sex- and power-controlled machos, mobsters and political gangsters. Characteristic for the three novels An American Thriller , An American Nightmare and Blood Will Flow were a comprehensive, multi-year plot scenario with three-digit number of characters and a mixture of real and fictional events. An American thriller opens the theme of the years that preceded the murder of John F. Kennedy , Blood Will Flow as the final work of the trilogy, among other things, the infiltration of left groups and the Black Panther Party by the FBI in the 1970s as well as the presidential candidacy of the Republican Richard Nixon up to towards the Watergate affair . In addition, a collage-like, staccato-like form of representation with abrupt, short, sometimes incomplete sentences. The titles of the so-called “Underworld Trilogy” or “American Trilogy” were also quite successful commercially. In numerous reviews, however, the author's exhibited nihilism was also given critical tones - as was the complexity of the framework, which tends to overwhelm the reader.

James Ellroy (2011)

In addition to the titles listed, James Ellroy has published several books with short stories and short stories. In 1996, My Dark Places (German: Die Rothaarige ) was another highly regarded title. The information that a journalist intended to re-excavate the story of Ellroy's murdered mother had prompted the writer in 1994 to undertake his own on-site research. Ellroy worked with retired police officer Bill Stoner to gather new records, testimony, facts and circumstantial evidence. Admittedly - as he self-critically admitted in 2010 in The Hilliker Curse - the chance of finding the perpetrator after thirty years was extremely slim . With the results presented as a mixture of autobiography and reportage , Ellroy did not just provide a crime documentary on his own behalf. The redhead was also an attempt to posthumously do justice and dignity to his mother. In an interview, he said of his motives for taking up his mother's story in this form: “In the 70s I was a man who drank, took drugs and coughed around. She was a woman who did the same in her 50s. I had strange sexual tendencies. You don't. I was in an alarming state of health, which drove me to get solid again. She too could have made such a change in her life if she hadn't met the bastard who killed her. ”Self-reflective, sometimes self-critical thoughts were also the focus of the autobiographical treatise The Hilliker Curse (German title: Der Hilliker-Curse ) from 2010. In it, Ellroy once again lets his life pass in review and reflects on his relationship to women, which is strongly influenced by the death of his mother and the obsessive preoccupation with the similarly positioned black dahlia case.

Film adaptations

A number of Ellroy fabrics have been made into films over the years. The best-known film adaptation to this day is LA Confidential - an implementation that was positively received by both critics and the audience. In contrast, Brian De Palma's adaptation of the Black Dahlia material was rated highly contradictory and criticized by parts of the critics as too artificial. Other film adaptations include The Cop (starring James Woods ) and the short story adaptation Dark Blue (starring Kurt Russell , Michael Michele and Ving Rhames ) - a story that recreates a corrupt unit of the LAPD amid the riots in Los Angeles the 1992 Rodney King judgment.

Positions

Regardless of the social criticism that is often interpreted into his works, James Ellroy likes to portray himself as a conservative strongly influenced by Christian values - at least when it comes to cultural and moral issues. He repeatedly characterized the experiments of the hippie and '68 era as misguided and illusionary - a point of view that he also expresses in his novels. The often harsh rejection of '68 popular culture is flanked by a preference for classical music , especially the works of Ludwig van Beethoven . In an interview with Die Welt in May 2015, he said: “I hate rock music [...] If there are two big movements that I was allowed to leave out in my life, thank God, it was the left and rock 'n' roll. I was never a part of the counterculture. "[...] In addition, he admitted in interviews that the conservatism of George W. Bush to not get anything, and hinted at the 2008 presidential election, rather to the side of the Democratic challenger Barack Obama to tend . When it comes to women's issues, he repeatedly emphasized his sympathy for the basic feminist concerns of women's emancipation and equality .

Private

In 1991, James Ellroy married the literary critic Helen Knode for the second time . Four years later, the couple moved to Mission Hills, a suburb near Kansas City . Since 2005 Ellroy and Knode lived separately. For several years he has been living with his ex-wife Helen again. He moved to Colorado for her.

Press reviews

  • Süddeutsche Zeitung : Ellroy is probably the most insane of the living poets and sexual offenders of American literature.
  • ZEITmagazin : He writes America's bloodiest crime thrillers.
  • Book journal: Anarchically broken, sex-obsessed and with an uncanny sense for everything pathological, destructive ... The wind of evil blows from his books.
  • Der Spiegel : Ellroy is the most important contemporary crime writer.
  • Rolling Stone : He went on a big stage with An American Thriller , that of politics. Instead of thrillers a trilogy of historical novels. Sounds logical from today's perspective. But 1995 was - in terms of career and self-assessment - like Russian roulette. He turned the drum. Pulled the trigger. Click. Then again, this time not for the execution, the writing of the first parts, but for the feedback from the critics, which genre traitors like to piss off or who don't exactly greet newcomers of Ellroy's caliber with gimlets. Click. There remained four chambers, one loaded. Next, the audience response: click.

Works

Lloyd Hopkins series

  • Blood on the Moon (OT: Blood on the Moon); 1984
  • In the depths of the night (OT: Because the Night); 1984
  • Hill of suicides (OT; Suicide Hill); 1986

LA Quartet (tetralogy)

  • The Black Dahlia (OT: The Black Dahlia); 1987
  • Blood Shadow (OT: The Big Nowhere); 1988
  • City of Devils (OT: LA Confidential); 1990
  • White Jazz (OT: White Jazz); 1992
James Ellroy on his book Blood Will Flow (November 2009)

Underworld USA (trilogy)

The second LA quartet

  • Perfidia (OT: Perfidia); 2014
  • This storm ; 2019

Others

  • Brown's funeral song (OT: Brown's Requiem); 1981
  • Heimlich (OT: Clandestine), 1982
  • Silent Terror (OT: Silent Terror); 1986
  • Dick Contino's Blues and Other Stories. Stories. 1994 (not available in German)
  • The Redhead (OT: My Dark Places); 1997
  • Crime Wave. On the night side of LA Tales (OT: Crime Wave); 1999
  • Hollywood. Night pieces. Short stories (OT: Hollywood Nocturnes); 2000
  • End of the line morgue. Stories (OT: Destination: Morgue!); 2004
  • The Hilliker Curse (OT: The Hilliker Curse); 2010

Film adaptations

Radio plays

  • "The Black Dahlia" (WDR 1996, Director: Walter Adler)
  • "Die Rothaarige" (NDR / SWR 1998, director: Leonhard Koppelmann )
  • "Blood on the Moon" (SWR 2000, director: Norbert Schaeffer)
  • "In the depth of the night" (SWR 2001, director: Norbert Schaeffer)
  • "Hill of Suicide" (SWR 2001, director: Norbert Schaeffer)

Awards

  • 1989: German Crime Prize (International Category, 1st place) for The Black Dahlia
  • 1990: German Crime Prize (International Category, 2nd place) for Blood Shadow and Silent Terror
  • 1990: Prix ​​Mystère de la critique for Le Grand nulle part ( Blood Shadow )
  • 1992: German Crime Prize (International Category, 1st place) for City of Devils
  • 1997: German Crime Prize (International Category, 2nd place) for An American Thriller
  • 1997: Maltese Falcon Award for White Jazz
  • 1998: German Crime Prize (International Category, 3rd place) for Die Rothaarige
  • 2011: Crime of the year 2010 (5th place) in the KrimiWelt best list for blood wants to flow
  • 2015 Grand Master Award , the highest award of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) for special achievements in the crime genre with consistently high writing quality

Web links

Commons : James Ellroy  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g James Ellroy. A Long Way to Kansas City , CJ Schmidt, kaliber38.de, 2004, accessed November 18, 2012
  2. ↑ James Ellroy: Secretly. An underground thriller. 1987, Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt / Berlin, ISBN 3-548-10364-2 (cover text of the German-language first edition)
  3. ↑ James Ellroy: The Hilliker Curse. My search for the woman. 2012. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-55008-843-8
  4. ↑ a b With James Ellroy rights rights love a "red goddess" , Holger Kreitling , Welt, January 21, 2010
  5. ↑ a b Max Dax: "It was a great time". In: welt.de . May 10, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  6. ↑ James Ellroy interview for Perfidia: 'I have a penchant for the extreme'. In: The Telegraph. September 10, 2014, accessed July 5, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly Edition 6, spring 2018, p. 142.
  8. ↑ Holger Kreitling: Breaking Bad 1941: James Ellroy's new thriller "Perfidia". In: welt.de . March 5, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Ellroy, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ellroy, Lee Earle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles , California