:00:17. > :00:24.My guest today has been called America's greatest living crime
:00:25. > :00:28.writer. In his LA Quartet and many other novels, James Ellroy has
:00:29. > :00:33.painted a uniquely dark portrait of this city of Angels, a nightmare
:00:34. > :00:38.world of psychotic killers, corrupt cops and depraved appetites. The
:00:39. > :00:44.rights of what he knows, his own mother was murdered when he was a
:00:45. > :00:47.child. And it is that simple terrible fact the key to
:00:48. > :01:15.understanding all the words he's ever written?
:01:16. > :02:05.James Ellroy, welcome to heart block -- HARDtalk. Hey, boss, what's
:02:06. > :02:10.shaking? I have but I came back. I made a conscious decision with my
:02:11. > :02:21.new novel to craft a second LA Quartet, taking characters from the
:02:22. > :02:24.initial LA Quartet, said in a lay between 1946 and 1958, and the
:02:25. > :02:30.aforementioned underworld USA trilogy, three novels set in America
:02:31. > :02:34.at large between 58 and 72. Characters from those two bodies of
:02:35. > :02:39.work and place them in Los Angeles during World War Two as
:02:40. > :02:44.significantly younger people so I made quite the conscious decision to
:02:45. > :02:48.go back to LA. Going back is something I want to do with you as
:02:49. > :02:53.we talk about the evolution of your fiction because it seems to me, and
:02:54. > :02:57.you've talked about it a great deal, that you can't discuss James
:02:58. > :03:00.Ellroy's body of work without spending a little bit of time
:03:01. > :03:05.talking about the long-running impact of that terrible period in
:03:06. > :03:09.your life which began with your parents' breakup, marriage failure,
:03:10. > :03:11.and ended when you were ten years old with the murder of your mother,
:03:12. > :03:58.her body found on an LA street. The actual impact of my mother's
:03:59. > :04:01.death reached cessation years ago. It is a fact, it will always be
:04:02. > :04:05.brought up by the media, and it is the key to understanding
:04:06. > :04:08.the work that I do. But it is not the key
:04:09. > :04:11.to me as an individual. If you don't mind, tell
:04:12. > :04:17.me why it is the key to understanding
:04:18. > :04:19.so much of your work. 12 and my parents were divorced,
:04:20. > :04:23.my mother was murdered. It was a sex murder in a crummy dog
:04:24. > :04:27.town east of Los Angeles. A man raped and strangled her,
:04:28. > :04:30.unsolved to this day. Parenthetically I wrote a memoir
:04:31. > :04:33.about it, My Dark Places. I tried to solve the
:04:34. > :04:34.crime posthumously. My mother's death brought
:04:35. > :04:36.a tremendous curiosity for all things criminal
:04:37. > :04:38.and historical. I got hooked on American social
:04:39. > :04:41.history, and LA's social history, Its history from the point of that
:04:42. > :04:45.transcendence to now drives me. like a series of
:04:46. > :04:49.conscious decisions you took to pursue a writing
:04:50. > :04:52.interest after this terrible event You also suggested that there
:04:53. > :04:56.was something much more visible You talked about the
:04:57. > :04:59.degree to which at the time you hated your mother,
:05:00. > :05:03.and this may sound perverse, lusted. There was a sexual
:05:04. > :05:11.element there as well. Here's a newsflash
:05:12. > :05:17.to our British viewers. Young males are introduced
:05:18. > :05:21.to the idea of sex in the home, and their mother is
:05:22. > :05:27.the first archetype. With me it went a little
:05:28. > :05:38.beyond the basics. Up until a certain point,
:05:39. > :05:45.you have a red-haired woman, tall and statuesque in front of me,
:05:46. > :05:48.I'm way off the deep end. I grew up over time
:05:49. > :05:53.in relationship to my mother's
:05:54. > :05:54.murder. I made an internal decision to be
:05:55. > :05:58.happy, to be fulfilled. But you weren't for
:05:59. > :06:04.an awful long time. When you were into booze,
:06:05. > :06:10.into all sorts of different crime, you spent time in jail,
:06:11. > :06:13.you lived rough are quite a while. Give me access
:06:14. > :06:39.to a public library And way back when some
:06:40. > :06:47.mind-altering chemical, I can find joy
:06:48. > :06:49.and fixation within myself. It wasn't until I got sober
:06:50. > :06:53.at the age of 29 and started reading books that I went beyond
:06:54. > :06:55.this idiot happiness and people across the world
:06:56. > :07:01.will know this, Black Dahlia. That was about a horrible murder
:07:02. > :07:05.of a young woman in LA. Your book was fascinating,
:07:06. > :07:07.but to me what is interesting is that it seems the
:07:08. > :07:10.detective in that novel seems to resemble you,
:07:11. > :07:13.but at the same time I am wondering whether as you were growing up
:07:14. > :07:16.and making sense of what happened to you as a child, whether you would
:07:17. > :07:19.have identified more I have always identified
:07:20. > :07:55.with police officers. I would rather live in a society tha
:07:56. > :08:00.on the side of authoritarianism
:08:01. > :08:02.than in a society that errs I take myself and I superimpose my l
:08:03. > :08:06.losses, sorrows, and my own yearning,
:08:07. > :08:09.which is the chief thing. I write in my memoir that
:08:10. > :08:11.yearning is the chief fount I yearn for women, I yearn
:08:12. > :08:36.for history itself, I yearn for big lives juxtaposed against large
:08:37. > :08:38.geopolitical events, and to return to your question, yes,
:08:39. > :08:41.I take these authoritarian characters, rogue in nature,
:08:42. > :08:44.and I give them a great case. From the 1944 movie,
:08:45. > :08:49.Dana Andrews, a lonely, haunted detective falls in love
:08:50. > :08:52.with the portrait of the dead woman, Not surprisingly, I have just been
:08:53. > :08:58.commissioned by 20th Century Fox When you say to me
:08:59. > :09:05.you are a natural born authoritarian, that
:09:06. > :09:08.raises questions. If you are an authoritarian
:09:09. > :09:11.you surely have to believe that That in essence, the police,
:09:12. > :09:15.authority, security services, represent good, and the
:09:16. > :09:23.villains represent evil. But your books are so
:09:24. > :09:30.much more ambiguous They have a message that says,
:09:31. > :09:35.the law enforcers can be and are corrupt, they can be deeply
:09:36. > :09:38.flawed, they can be almost as problematic morally
:09:39. > :09:46.as the wrongdoers. I take those characters
:09:47. > :09:50.who are problematic. I juxtapose them against
:09:51. > :09:54.evil that is pervasive, it is in the outer world,
:09:55. > :09:57.we must interdict and suppress it. I am on their side, and they are not
:09:58. > :10:01.meant to represent American law Some of the most famous betrayals
:10:02. > :10:16.of corrupt cops in literature come from you, from LA
:10:17. > :10:18.Confidential, for example. I love them anyway,
:10:19. > :10:21.they are my guys. I give you their heartbreak,
:10:22. > :10:32.I give you the society at large. I give you malefactors who are 40
:10:33. > :10:35.times as flawed and out on missions of systematic evil,
:10:36. > :10:44.and my guys quash them. But if you are prepared
:10:45. > :10:46.to tolerate the corruption inside the public bodies
:10:47. > :10:48.that govern our lives, it is a recipe for societies
:10:49. > :11:01.going wrong, going very bad. If it takes hitting a child molester
:11:02. > :11:12.with a phonebook in order to secure his conviction
:11:13. > :11:13.and ultimate imprisonment, or one-way ticket to the gas
:11:14. > :11:17.chamber, then I'm on the side Are you?
:11:18. > :11:21.Yes. I am rewriting my assumptions
:11:22. > :11:25.about you as I speak. I was going to quote
:11:26. > :11:28.to you the words of PD James, and was expecting you
:11:29. > :11:30.to contradict them. She said, the classic detective
:11:31. > :11:33.story confirms our belief that we live in a rational
:11:34. > :11:35.and generally benevolent universe. I thought you would say,
:11:36. > :11:44.that is nonsense! No.
:11:45. > :11:50.I agree. So much of modern crime writing,
:11:51. > :11:58.and a lot of it owes a lot to you, so much of it is about
:11:59. > :12:04.ambiguity, and as Ian Rankin says, writing fiction where good
:12:05. > :12:06.does not always triumph, where evil can't always be
:12:07. > :12:09.rationalised, and the reader is sometimes seduced to take
:12:10. > :12:18.side with the evil side. You always know
:12:19. > :12:26.who my good guys are. I believe in good guys,
:12:27. > :12:32.and I think the heroes of my books They have first person and third
:12:33. > :12:39.person subjective viewpoints, and you understand each and every
:12:40. > :12:42.one of their rationales. Even the evil Irish
:12:43. > :12:54.cop, Dudley Smith... He's the one who says,
:12:55. > :12:57."I control people, and if I can't A slow, tortuous path
:12:58. > :13:03.to self-sacrifice, Maybe the conversation
:13:04. > :13:24.we are having and the explanation you give for ultimately
:13:25. > :13:26.the sympathy you have, and who are very bent and corrupt,
:13:27. > :13:30.maybe that is one reason why some people in the US have come to see
:13:31. > :13:33.you as a defender of, for example, the LAPD,
:13:34. > :13:36.even during the Rodney King fallout, the videotaped beating of a black
:13:37. > :13:39.citizen, and you said, If you see the entire
:13:40. > :14:03.three-minute sequence of events, pertaining to Rodney King,
:14:04. > :14:06.you will not judge the LAPD anywhere The extracted 56 blows
:14:07. > :14:16.to the head are shocking But that abbreviated context
:14:17. > :14:22.is nothing but a lie. You have to see all of
:14:23. > :14:33.the events that preceded it. You say you think
:14:34. > :14:38.like a detective... I am by the way the yearly MC
:14:39. > :14:41.of the LAPD's Jack Webb awards. You've only said, "A lot of my good
:14:42. > :14:59.friends are inside the LAPD". But I wonder with all
:15:00. > :15:02.the allegations of racism and institutionalised
:15:03. > :15:04.abuse within the LAPD, whether you are blind to it
:15:05. > :15:07.because you're too close to it? No, what I'm not blind
:15:08. > :15:10.to is the idiocy these human rights groups and their impacted,
:15:11. > :15:12.stiffnecked sense of victimisation. This is James Ellroy,
:15:13. > :15:15.who earlier in his career, I think gloried in the idea that
:15:16. > :15:18.you were a demon dog, who would say it like it really
:15:19. > :15:28.is in American culture, even despite the forces
:15:29. > :15:30.of liberalism and PC... I'm shocked that pit bulls
:15:31. > :15:40.are banned in a climate of hysteria I stand up for Staffordshire Bulls -
:15:41. > :15:44.a British dog that I have Well, let's not get
:15:45. > :15:57.too hung up on dogs, but let's apply this
:15:58. > :15:59.to American culture today, No, we're not going to talk
:16:00. > :16:05.about politics in America today, no. I don't mean party politics,
:16:06. > :16:08.whether you are a Republican or I just mean the flavour
:16:09. > :16:11.of the times. For example, in your
:16:12. > :16:13.latest book, Perfidia... It's a very interesting book
:16:14. > :16:21.because you place it around the time of the Pearl Harbor
:16:22. > :16:23.attack and soon after. And what you portray
:16:24. > :16:26.is a Southern California which is in the grip of a fear,
:16:27. > :16:30.a fifth column of an enemy within. And because of that
:16:31. > :16:32.fear, corners are cut. ..adapted, shall we say,
:16:33. > :16:36.to ensure that for example 100,000 Japanese Americans can be locked up,
:16:37. > :16:39.can be interned in camps. I just wonder whether you
:16:40. > :16:42.see a parallel today? Let's cut right
:16:43. > :16:48.through that right now. I write my books in
:16:49. > :16:52.a state of immersion. As far as I'm concerned,
:16:53. > :16:55.Franklin D Roosevelt is the president
:16:56. > :16:59.of the United States. I know he's not, but that's
:17:00. > :17:13.the world I live in. there are no corollaries
:17:14. > :17:16.to any event preceding That book is written
:17:17. > :17:23.in blood, and in real time. The bombs fall on Pearl
:17:24. > :17:27.Harbor 80 pages in. Then we're through, around
:17:28. > :17:30.the clock, up until the 29th. Abrogation of civil liberties -
:17:31. > :17:33.we know it happened. It was the Japanese
:17:34. > :17:36.internment, and it was wrong. And we are inside the perspective
:17:37. > :17:42.of a closet homosexual The other cops, even Dudley Smith,
:17:43. > :17:53.the corrupt cop, will come to view Because people, in my books,
:17:54. > :17:57.are always on a tortured But even if you say you wrote
:17:58. > :18:02.this book in the mindset of 1942, and you refuse to move
:18:03. > :18:12.that mindset to today, you, as, you know,
:18:13. > :18:15.an important literary voice in America today, surely
:18:16. > :18:23.have a view as to whether there is a justification post 9-11
:18:24. > :18:26.for things like the Patriot Act, that we saw in the Bush
:18:27. > :18:28.administration, or indeed And I do not acknowledge anything
:18:29. > :18:38.outside the history that And it is that very quality,
:18:39. > :18:43.the fact that I deny the world today, do not use a cellphone,
:18:44. > :18:46.have never logged onto a computer And it gives these books
:18:47. > :18:53.their immediacy, and the feeling that they were written
:18:54. > :18:57.in that time period. I will die in 34 years,
:18:58. > :19:07.slightly after my 100th birthday. But I will have a lot
:19:08. > :19:10.of books that will stand. And they will stand
:19:11. > :19:12.because they were written Will you, in the course
:19:13. > :19:21.of the next 34 years, that we both hope you have,
:19:22. > :19:33.will you turn your mind to events that go beyond the period
:19:34. > :19:37.of the United States in the '30s and '40s, which has been the focus
:19:38. > :19:40.of your attention so much Will you address what has happened
:19:41. > :19:44.in the last ten years, My historical curiosity
:19:45. > :19:52.runs out in May of 1972, when my novel Blood's a Rover,
:19:53. > :19:57.my most recent novel, before Perfidia, concludes
:19:58. > :20:00.with the death of J Edgar Hoover. I am going to write
:20:01. > :20:02.the second the LA Quartet. I am going to write a post-war
:20:03. > :20:06.trilogy that will run concurrent in its timeframe with
:20:07. > :20:10.the first LA Quartet. And, brother, at that time I will be
:20:11. > :20:14.old and I will be tired, and hopefully I will have enough
:20:15. > :20:18.money in the bank to live the rest Let me ask you about the genre,
:20:19. > :20:24.if that is the word you use. You have been a pioneer,
:20:25. > :20:32.and I have mentioned people like Ian Rankin who say they owe
:20:33. > :20:36.a huge debt to you in the UK. There has always been this
:20:37. > :20:39.discussion, maybe based purely on snobbery, in the world
:20:40. > :20:41.of literature, whether crime fiction should be allowed in to the sort
:20:42. > :20:44.of literary circle. I'm not crime writer,
:20:45. > :20:57.nor am I noir writer. I have written a bunch of books
:20:58. > :21:01.set in LA in the height That's the novel that is resting
:21:02. > :21:15.under your left hand right now. and I am happy to have influenced
:21:16. > :21:19.a generation of crime writers. And I think the designation of crime
:21:20. > :21:24.writers, historical writers, all of this, it's
:21:25. > :21:34.interesting in the moment, and really, in the end,
:21:35. > :21:37.it only pertains towards where your I suppose, I have been
:21:38. > :21:40.reading some criticism of you and one thing that struck me
:21:41. > :21:44.is that a lot of writers have compared you, perhaps surprisingly,
:21:45. > :21:47.with James Joyce, for your inventive use of language - stream
:21:48. > :21:49.of consciousness at times. One critic said the Conrad
:21:50. > :21:53.comparison works because you explore Do you think we are -
:21:54. > :22:00.have a savage heart as a species? I think we have a savage heart,
:22:01. > :22:07.mitigated by conscience. And I think the very best of us come
:22:08. > :22:15.to spiritual flashpoints, points of explication
:22:16. > :22:18.in our personal lives where we see ourselves in the context
:22:19. > :22:22.of the world. Other human beings,
:22:23. > :22:25.I believe that we are all I believe in the spiritus mundi,
:22:26. > :22:34.the collective unconscious. And in that respect I am perhaps
:22:35. > :22:37.as one with James Joyce or Joseph Conrad, who I have never
:22:38. > :22:40.read, or Dostoevsky, But put all of that aside,
:22:41. > :22:54.I don't think of this stuff. I wasn't fighting you or baiting
:22:55. > :23:01.you just to fight you or bait you when I was talking about history
:23:02. > :23:04.versus the contemporary. If I'm not yearning for some woman,
:23:05. > :23:17.I'm yearning for history itself. I'm yearning for conjunction of men
:23:18. > :23:20.and women within history. Are you yearning as much
:23:21. > :23:23.now as you ever did? We talked at the beginning
:23:24. > :23:26.about the murder of your mother, about what a difficult
:23:27. > :23:28.childhood you had. And I can understand the yearning
:23:29. > :23:33.that came from that. But still today in your
:23:34. > :23:40.60s, you are yearning? Because I'm deeply in love
:23:41. > :23:43.with a British woman. But that sense of yearning that
:23:44. > :23:47.has driven you on... That's why the demon
:23:48. > :23:51.dog analogy is so good. It's why I am chagrined that they're
:23:52. > :24:02.banned here in Britain. My girlfriend and I are going
:24:03. > :24:14.to Dartmoor and we are going to find the Hound of the Baskervilles,
:24:15. > :24:17.and he is going to say, James Ellroy, thank
:24:18. > :24:24.you for being on HARDtalk.