Talk:James Ellroy

Death penalty
I've seen him at Q&A, where he claimed to support the death penalty. What is the evidense that he opposes it?
 * Here. You were right; he's changed his mind.   Schissel | Sound the Note! 17:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, the article claims his vegetarianism is at odds with his conservatism. You can't get much more right-wing than Hitler. How should this be edited? I'm stuck.24.131.12.228 18:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Alcohol?
Just watched a television special wtih Mr. Ellroy. The show was done during a dinner party of LAPD investigators. Dring the dinner conversation he speaks of drinking liquor and can be seen sipping, what appears to be, red wine. Just wondering where the information that Mr. Ellroy is an abstainer originated? Niloc.

"Astonished"?
It says he was astonished by the "L.A. Confidential" movie adaptation. Is that the good type of astonishment or the bad? 24.60.22.251
 * Ellroy has traditionally been a little coy about the film. On the L.A. Confidential DVD, he praises it, but in a way that acknowledges that it doesn't reflect the entirety of the novel. In other interviews, he's declined to comment on the film. I'm not sure we can get "astonished," but maybe he's discussed it more fully somewhere I haven't seen? 81.107.37.204 15:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

In a recent BBC Arena documentary, Ellroy characterizes L.A. Confidential as both "a wonderful movie" and "a salutary adaptation of my wonderful novel". If I had to guess, I'd say Ellroy would be more definitive in his enthusiasm for the picture if it had been based on someone else's book.TomSutpen 14:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I sat in on an interview with Ellroy during the L.A. Confidential media tour. He didn't say "astonished" during that interview, but he did seem very impressed by the adaptation and said that the book had been translated to the screen about as well as he could have ever imagined. 5 May, 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.92.241.80 (talk) 17:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Recurring characters wiki
I've toyed with the idea of adding a wiki entry for recurring characters in Ellroy novels, especially the L.A. quartet, but i'm not as knowledgeable as others... anybody care to start it up? Fullmetaljacuzzi 19:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A Recurring characters Wiki wouldn't be bad, but now that I think of it, there are more characters from the temporal world dotted throughout his novels (J. Edgar Hoover, Dick Contino, Spade Cooley, Howard Hughes, etc.) than there are Ed Exleys, Pete Bondurants and Dudley Smiths. Perhaps the non-fictional can be included with the fictional. TomSutpen (talk) 06:43, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

"These old grannies come up to me and say `Oh, you wrote L.A. Confidential, what a wonderful movie that was'. Kim Basinger' was so beautiful in that film, is she nice in real life?' I say, 'Yeah, she's all right', and then granny says, `Is Kevin Spacey really gay?'

I saw a documentary about him once. Pretty sure he ended this by asking the lady whether she had read his book. When she said no, he said "so what the fuck good are you to me?"

Charming man. Chinksimon 15:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

POV
I've placed a POV tag on the article. The opening paragraph reads very POV to me in the description of his writing style. It needs to be toned down and cited with published descriptions of his style. Wildhartlivie (talk) 07:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Article update
In a GQ article ("Body Dumps") later included in the 1999 book Crime Wave, Ellroy wrote about the 1973 murder of Betty Jean Scales, probably by one Robby Polete. The article ends with Ellroy stating the investigation would continue. I've been unable to find anything further on the web about this case. Does anyone know whether it was finally closed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eye.earth (talk • contribs) 20:11, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Authoritarianism?
I've read a good deal of Ellroy's books and never found one that was a "depiction of American authoritarianism." They depict the lack of strong moral boundaries in both crime and law enforcement, but I wouldn't call that authoritarianism. They are not about state control. They are about state lack of control—of others, and itself. I don't think the intro is very correct, in that respect. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

maybe authoritarianism stands for lone sheriff macho attitude (at the end of difficult moral struggle etc. etc.) or the arbitrary use of power anyway. could "the depiction of a rude world in wich men have to reach their own personal justice" work better? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.30.16.14 (talk) 19:53, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Arbitrary use of power, sure. But that's not authoritarianism by any definition. Authoritarianism is about control. Ellroy's books are about the real impossibility of strong control in a world where power is actually quite distributed (to use White Jazz as an example: the good LA cops have it, the corrupt LA cops have it, the feds have it, the mafia guys have it, Howard Hughes has it, the petty criminals have it, etc., and the entire plot of the novel is about the protagonist trying to balance out these forces without ending up with a bullet in his gut). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:45, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the article should mention that there is a difference between the opinions J. E. has when he publicly appears and the ones he articulates in his books. In public appearences he seems to enjoy being offensive. His books (especially the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy) are a lot more reflective. To me (I´m from Europe), they even seem to lament the difficulties of doing social justice. His latest book - "Blood´s a Rover" - even has a programmatic "Now"-section at the beginning, in which an unknown person declares that he or she will tell America the whole truth about the years from 1968 to 1972. It sounds grandiose but not ironic. The whole scope of the book - from Hoover´s Red Scare to Watergate - seems to me to be critical of the repressive actions the FBI/state agencies took. Also almost all main male characters in the book begin as right-wing thugs and end up as "reds" (brought there through the love to a woman). Or is there a sub-sub-text I am not getting? 84.113.215.42 (talk) 11:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

"American Underworld" or "Underworld U.S.A."?
Which of these two "informal" titles is correct? Where are the sources that indicate one or the other is used by Ellroy? The subsection in this article used both titles, but we have a main article that uses the "American" title. We need to straighten this out. ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive' 02:54, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "Underworld U.S.A." is correct. Wikipedia, in fact, is the only place that I've ever seen it referred to as the "American Underworld" trilogy. Jedgeco (talk) 16:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. The sources I have seen all say "Underworld U.S.A."  This will have to be sorted out. ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive'  17:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Query
In the 'Methods, style and themes' section: what is a 'legal pad'? It must be a US-specific term. I gather from the context that it is some kind of notepad, but what sort? Can you use another descriptor that is understandable to all readers, please? 86.159.193.28 (talk) 09:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a note pad, typically yellow ruled paper, in a pad bound at the top. I don't know if it's a US-specific term, but Ellroy is a US writer, and that's really the most descriptive term available, unless we are going to define everything ad nauseam. Jedgeco (talk) 21:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

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Book update.
The 'Future Writings' section mentions his next book is called This Storm, and the manuscript is due in 'fall of 2017'. I was at the bookstore today, and This Storm now has a release date (September 2018) and a page count (592). https://books.google.com.au/books/about/This_Storm.html?id=DqPDCQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y If this is solid information, perhaps it is worth updating.203.220.212.117 (talk) 07:31, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

LA Quintent
While The Enchanters is listed under the Otash category, per Ellroy's website (https://www.jamesellroy.net/about-ellroy/) it is part of the second LA Quartet, which has evolved into the LA Quintent. Ellroy also mentioned this in an interview with Michael Connelly, which is also cited on this page. I think we should move The Enchanters in the bibliography as a result. 65.217.126.43 (talk) 20:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)