Thanks for a fascinating review, Raymond.
Patrick King
--- On Fri, 10/15/10, TAIT RAYMOND <raymond.tait@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> From: TAIT RAYMOND <raymond.tait@ntlworld.com>
> Subject: RARA-AVIS: James Ellroy Reading
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, October 15, 2010, 12:17 PM
> I attended a reading by James Ellroy
> last week on 5 October at the Cambridge
> Union here in Cambridge, England. The reading took
> place in the main
> chamber which you can see pictures of here:
>
>
>
> http://www.cus.org/
>
>
>
> When I went in to take a seat people were sitting on both
> sides of the
> chamber with a lectern placed in the middle just in front
> of the ‘big red
> chair’ so that he would have been facing down the middle
> of two rows of
> seats opposite each other. A little while before the
> scheduled start time a
> young woman came in and asked everyone on one side to move
> to the other so
> that they could move the lectern and he could face one side
> of the chamber.
> An audience of 100 or so gathered. Just after 7.30
> she came back and gave a
> brief introduction before asking us to welcome James Ellroy
> who entered and
> took up his position. He is a very striking
> man! He also dresses well and
> that night was wearing a more casual outfit than I might
> have expected:
> Sleeveless dark grey pullover, long sleeved reddish shirt
> with a nice
> pattern, white trousers and what appeared to be
> trainers. It all looked
> good anyway.
>
>
>
> He began with a very theatrical introduction where he spoke
> about being in
> Cambridge, quoted a chunk of TS Eliot and then something
> else that I didn’t
> recognize before addressing the audience more
> informally. He explained that
> he was going to read five short pieces from The Hilliker
> Curse and then we
> would be able to ask questions. At some point during
> all this he went off
> on a bizarre riff about how if we all bought 1,000 copies
> of the book or
> something like it we would be able to have unlimited sex
> with anyone we
> wanted forever. It was a bit more complicated than
> that with separate
> stages but didn’t quite come off in my view. He
> also gave us a variation on
> this which every audience gets: ‘Good evening peepers,
> prowlers, pederasts,
> panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the
> demon dog, the foul
> owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far
> right, and the slick
> trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books,
> masterpieces all;
> they precede all my future masterpieces.’ He told
> the story about his
> mother asking him on his tenth birthday who he wanted to
> live with, her or
> his dad, and how she hit him when she said his dad.
> And how he invoked the
> Hilliker curse as a consequence.
>
>
>
> Then the reading. He reads in quite a unique way,
> more like a poet than a
> novelist - phrases hurled out in a very declamatory way
> with pauses in
> between. I wasn’t entirely sure this worked until
> he came to the fourth or
> fifth passage which is written in a ‘he said, she said’
> form where I thought
> it came off really well.
>
>
>
> And then the questions and answers section which was of
> course the highlight
> of the evening. They covered the following territory
>
>
>
> Who is the Blood the Rover dedicated to? I can’t
> remember exactly what was
> said but I think it was the woman who was the ‘she’ in
> the passage he read
> from The Hilliker Curse. This was the first question
> from a woman who is a
> big fan and had read all his books. It developed into
> a fairly lengthy
> dialogue between them. Who knows, maybe they spent
> the night together?
>
>
>
> Something about Closure. There is no such thing as
> closure says JE. He
> spoke about the influence of the death of his mother and
> then told a sort of
> joke. He would like to meet the person who invented
> sex and ask what
> project they are working on now. And he would like to
> meet the person who
> invented the concept of closure and shove a plate up their
> ass.
>
>
>
> Does he have any influence over film versions of his
> novels? No. He went on
> to talk about how films are like hamburgers and he
> doesn’t watch them. He
> explained that he doesn’t read newspapers, doesn’t
> watch TV and doesn’t go
> to the cinema. Has no books in his home apart from
> his own and one other
> the identity of which I have forgotten. And that
> basically he lives in LA
> of over 40 years ago in his head writing his books.
>
>
>
> He mentioned Beethoven and someone asked what was so great
> about him. He
> explained that Beethoven had revolutionized music in a way
> that no other
> artist has done with any other artform and spoke about the
> greatness of
> Beethoven’s late music and the importance of his
> deafness.
>
>
>
> I asked him about the extent to which he believes the
> events in American
> Tabloid for example are the sorts of things which actually
> occurred and the
> extent to which they are a conscious exaggeration. He
> replied that he
> didn’t want to seem glib but that he makes all that shit
> up.
>
>
>
> Someone else asked if he had ever had any legal comeback
> from anyone. He
> said there had been one legal action where a researcher had
> identified the
> death of someone in one of his books but it turned out this
> was another
> person with the same name. He said he wasn’t able
> to talk about the
> specifics.
>
>
>
> Someone asked about Noir. He said he wasn’t noir at
> all.
>
>
>
> Someone asked about Raymond Chandler. The most
> overrated writer in the
> history of American literature. Terrible plots etc.
> Now Dashiell Hammett…
>
>
>
> Does he believe in God? Yes
>
>
>
> Will he go to heaven? Yes
>
>
>
> After the questions he signed books for us with his
> characteristic scribble.
>
>
>
> I found him charismatic and intimidating, unique and
> impressive. I haven’t
> read enough of his books to be able to assess his real
> worth but having just
> read American Tabloid for the first time which I think is a
> huge novel in
> every sense I mean to read more.
>
>
>
> Raymond
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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