By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
James Ellroy: “Ancient Mariner Of L.A. Noir”
An admiring review of James Ellroy’s “The Hilliker Curse” in the Times Literary Supplement by Elaine Showalter offers this: “For five decades of his life, he has fantasized about redheads, intellectuals, Jewish women, musicians (especially cellists), women named Joan and women with daughters. His long second marriage, to the novelist Helen Knode, seemed to satisfy his needs for acceptance and partnership, but finally tilted him into a breakdown in which he became convinced that he had a variety of cancers… He suffered from insomnia and fits of sobbing, and became addicted to sleeping pills. As he ruefully sums it up, “I was frayed, fraught, french-fried, and frazzled”. Now divorced, he is in a happy relationship with another writer, Erika Schickel… But the more powerful subtext of the book describes Ellroy’s lifelong quest to become a serious writer… Ellroy has evolved into a highly disciplined, dedicated, single-minded, and productive novelist, and constructed one of the most confident and aggressive American literary personae in the business.” But Ellroy (and Showalter) prompt a gem in the comments, unlike the expected puzzling typing under articles in the British press, a darling of a doozy from… Erika Schickel: “I have not responded to any of the press surrounding my partner, James Ellroy’s latest memoir “The Hilliker Curse,” but I feel compelled to having reading your cogent assessment, Ms. Showalter. As a book critic, author and feminist myself, I appreciated your closing paragraph: “I would recommend it highly as a marketing guidebook for aspiring women writers who struggle with diffidence, modesty and self-deprecation. Ellroy’s Curse could be a self-effacing woman writer’s bible.” While your review focuses on Ellroy’s gift for self-promotion, you have touched on one of the merits that has brought me to love this complex man so dearly – his feminism. Before THC published, we hoped that it would be read more widely by women, and reviewed by more women than men. Not only because it is a work of deep romantic and emotional honesty, but because he so nakedly grants women power… While much of his public persona is indeed a “confident and aggressive” act, the act protects the truest thing about him: his vulnerable, sweet and brave heart. I am not in love with “The Demon Dog,” but I endure his public persona in order to be with this dear, private man. James Ellroy will always be, at bottom, a boy whose mother was raped and murdered — a boy who received no subsequent counseling, little education indifferent parenting, and a boy who turned to a dead German composer (Beethoven) as a role model when others failed to emerge. That this boy is even alive today, writing, loving, and searching for his own artistic and emotional truth, is a testament to his bravery and strength of spirit. Ellroy’s strident persona, obsessive nature and compulsive heterosexuality make him seem predatory, but in fact, he is a true and tender champion of women.” Both sections are worth reading in full. Must go wipe eyes now.
