Transcript from chat with James Ellroy

TIMEOnline: Our guest tonight is James Ellroy, author of more than a dozen crime novels, including "White Jazz," "L.A. Confidential," and "The Black Dahlia." His new autobiography "My Dark Places" has recently been published by Alfred A. Knopf to rave reviews.

TIMEOnline: Virtually every review of Ellroy's new book starts dramatically with mention of his mother's murder in June, 1958. It troubled me, for it sounded like a sordid hook,

TIMEOnline: a cheap trick to grab readers. But that's where Ellroy's book begins, because that's where his story really begins

TIMEOnline: "Some kids found her," it starts. Kids out shagging a few baseballs with their coaches.

TIMEOnline: and Tyler Avenue, El Monte.

TIMEOnline: "Deputy Vic Cavallero huddled up the coaches and the kids. Officer Dave Wire checked out the body.

TIMEOnline: "Her right arm was bent upward. Her right hand was resting a few inches above her head. Her left arm was bent at the elbow and draped across her midriff. Her left hand was clenched. Her legs were outstretched."

TIMEOnline: "My Dark Places" is a wrenching book about obsession, dependence and, I think it's fair to say, salvation. Ellroy, after finding success as an author and gaining some financial independence, returned to L.A. and hired retired homocide

TIMEOnline: detective Bill Stoner to help him piece together what happened to Jean Ellroy. James Ellroy and Stoner have advanced the case, but don't yet have all the answers. We welcome James Ellroy...

TIMEOnline: Where are you tonight in your book tour?

JEllroy: I am in San Francisco. I spend 9 days in L.A. tomorrow. I'll be doing numerous book signing gigs all over the L.A. area. Check your local listings.

TIMEOnline: You left L.A. in 1981 ready to get away from the city you grew up in. You stayed away for years.

TIMEOnline: Tomorrow you return to the city for your tour. What are your feelings on L.A.

JEllroy: L.A: Come on vacation. Go home on probation. I neither hate, love,

JEllroy: dismiss, or revial L.A.

JEllroy: The L.A. of my book is not the real L.A.

JEllroy: I prefer my fictional L.A., and enjoy promoting my books

JEllroy: in the real life L.A.

TIMEOnline: Does your book describe a real side of the real L.A.?

JEllroy: The new book, "My Dark Places," is a work of non-fiction.

JEllroy: In it, I describe the dusty, smog blighted San Gabriel Valley

JEllroy: - a region I lived in for only four months in 1958.

JEllroy: This is an area of L.A. county that I've never explored

JEllroy: in my books before.

JEllroy: It was great to discover the place and contextualize it

JEllroy: within the story of my mother's murder. END

TIMEOnline: How did your mother's murder affect you in the short term -- in the years immediately after?

JEllroy: My mother's murder engendered me a tremendous curiosity

JEllroy: into all matters pertaining to crime, psychosexual behavior, police

JEllroy: work and detection. I turned my mother's death into something

JEllroy: both usefull and horrifying early on. My mother's death

JEllroy: was the genesis of the narrative life that has served me

JEllroy: so well as a writer.

TIMEOnline: Did you ever feel an anger at the murderer? Did it ever agonize you by its brutality?

JEllroy: As I reinvestigated my mother's case, I felt the grief

JEllroy: and rage that I never felt as a 10 year old child.

TIMEOnline: You write in your book that this project began as an article for GQ, but you write, "It wasn't cathartic. ... It was a clumsy embrace and a reunion. It was a reckless pass. It was a blind

TIMEOnline: date that (wife) Helen and (detective) Bill Stoner set me up on." Thus, the book "My Dark Places." Was this book cathartic, and how did it change you.

JEllroy: It was cathartic in the sense that it reunited me with my mother. I feel

JEllroy: no sense of closure; closure is a preposterous enfatuous concept

JEllroy: worthy of the worst aspects of daytime T.V. My relationship

JEllroy: with my mother is continuing. I feel quiet and poised for having

JEllroy: confronted her. I was a happy man when I began writing "My Dark

JEllroy: Places" - and I'm a happier man now. She lives

JEllroy: inside me now.

TIMEOnline: In the years that you were living with your father -- from age 10 to 17 -- did he poison your relationship with your dead mother?

JEllroy: My father would resurect my mother's topic of conversation.

JEllroy: Occasionally. And speak of my mother poorly but not with the same

JEllroy: vehemence he spoke of her while she was alive.

TIMEOnline: You cried once when you learned of your mother's death, once when you learned of your father's death. Have you cried for either of them since?

JEllroy: I cried when I finished the novel "The Black Dahlin". My tears

JEllroy: for Elizabeth Short were my tears for my mother once removed. END

TIMEOnline: that he learned things about his mother that most people never know, nor want to. did it affect the way he felt about her?

TIMEOnline: Sorry...

TIMEOnline: Joleen1 asks: You learned things about your mother that most people never know, nor want to. Did it affect the way you felt about her?

JEllroy: It changed my feelings about my mother and put them in a whole

JEllroy: perspective for the first time ever.

JEllroy: I learned that I came straight out of her.

JEllroy: She had a certain side to her; she had a stern, moralistic side.

JEllroy: She was a woman fighting a war within herself.

JEllroy: It was a war that I would later wage within myself.

JEllroy: For every memory I had of my mother the red head,

JEllroy: I had a memory of her as a devoted parent.

JEllroy: In my book, I call it a perfectly counter-weighted

JEllroy: balance of character. END

TIMEOnline: We should note that your parents were very imamicably divorced more than two years before your mother was killed, and that you were with your father the weekend the murder took place.

TIMEOnline: And that you hardly had a "storybook" childhood. Is it hard now to live in an upper-middle class neighborhood surrounded by so-called normalcy?

JEllroy: No. It's a blast.

TIMEOnline: Are you surprised that you were able to succeed at writing after so many years of living as a theif and strung out on drugs? Does your turnaround ever amaze you?

JEllroy: My turnaround amazes me occasionally.

JEllroy: I attribute my gift as a writer to my rampant curiosity into

JEllroy: all matters criminal, my specific obsession of L.A.'s criminal

JEllroy: and social history, and, more than anything else, I know

JEllroy: how to write because I read a boat-load of books

JEllroy: assimilated style and form unconsiously, and then addressed

JEllroy: my craft with all the consiousness that I could muster.

TIMEOnline: Would you write even if it did not pay so well?

JEllroy: Yes. I write out of passion - not out of greed.

TIMEOnline: After the investigation (and we won't reveal how that ended), what is your relationship with Bill Stoner -- especially as someone who spent a few stretches in the county jail? Is he from a different world to you, or do you live in the same world?

JEllroy: Bill and I inhabit the same world.

JEllroy: We remain very close friends.

JEllroy: We both think it's funny as hell

JEllroy: that our ex-cop and an ex-county jail inmate

JEllroy: can become such great friends.

TIMEOnline: Besides gettting to know your mother and your past again, what effect did the investigation have? What insights into people in general and into the justice system?

JEllroy: I saw that the justice system

JEllroy: is strained and crippled

JEllroy: by the sheer number

JEllroy: of major and minor criminals

JEllroy: passing through it at this time

JEllroy: I am incapable of prescribing remedies

JEllroy: to this.

JEllroy: I feel very content within myself now that I have

JEllroy: written this book - but I feel no less passionate

JEllroy: and no less committed to writing great fiction

TIMEOnline: What is your next writing project, and is it an extension -- or a natural successor -- to "My Dark Places/

JEllroy: I think my passion will be expressed in subtler and all together

JEllroy: more powerful ways in my subsequent books.

TIMEOnline: Oops... Sorry folks, I got ahead of James...

TIMEOnline: Same question, James...

JEllroy: My next project is the direct sequel to my most recent novel,

JEllroy: "American Tabloid."

JEllroy: The book will be epic in every sense.

JEllroy: It will cover 1963 - 1968 America, and will

JEllroy: feature the two surviving protagonists from

JEllroy: "American Tabloid," most of the surviving real life

JEllroy: characters, and a host of new fictional characters.

JEllroy: Look for the book in two and 1/2 years.

TIMEOnline: If you're willing to call a novel of yours an "epic," do you think that you've become also a social critic -- with something of epical proportions to say?

JEllroy: I would say that I am a social critic only

JEllroy: dint of the fact that I am willing

JEllroy: to go back and live

JEllroy: obsessively in the period I am describing.

JEllroy: My period books are 97 percent fiction. I am not

JEllroy: a great student of any time and place in American history.

JEllroy: I am very skilled at re-imagining history.

TIMEOnline: I like that.

JEllroy: I trust the verisimilitude that I put into my books-but I am essentially

JEllroy: incapable of accurately analyzing

JEllroy: factual history. END

TIMEOnline: Do we Americans have a special obsession with crime, and with romanticizing criminals?

JEllroy: Yes. Crime is like jazz - Americans do it best.

TIMEOnline: Is our obsession healthy? I can't help but feel that there are better ways of spending a year than watching the trial of an ex-football star on live television...

JEllroy: The O.J. Simpson case was defined

JEllroy: by its bottom level audience: People who wanted

TIMEOnline: (To all members: We'll open the floor for the last few minutes, but James can only handle one question at a time. After this answer)

JEllroy: O.J.'s meritricious lifestyle, but couldn't have it, and instead settled

JEllroy: for a sanky morality play that told that them that lifesyle was venal.

JEllroy: I thought the O.J. case was a big fat snore.

TIMEOnline: Okay, floor is open...

TIMEOnline: Joleen, go ahead...

TIMEOnline: All right, here we go?

TIMEOnline: Are people surprised that you can be so open about your very sordid past?

JEllroy: Yes. I and owe my readers my mother and myself total candor.

JEllroy: I believe in consiousness. I believe that addressing

JEllroy: your past and your demons

JEllroy: can only have a good result. I will be a better, more powerful

JEllroy: writer for having confronted my mother.

TIMEOnline: What other events in your life are also responsible for your writing -- your voice, your style, your subject matter?

JEllroy: My obsession with the criminal history of L.A.

JEllroy: My largely ineffectual stint as a crook.

JEllroy: My obsessive drug use from 1967 to 1977.

TIMEOnline: (Our guest is crime novelist James Ellroy, author of a new autobiography "My Dark Places," an account of his search for his mother's murderer.)

Contino: What does the editing process consist of for you? And how many drafts do you write for one of your books?

JEllroy: "My Dark Places" went through 3 drafts. I write extremely detailed

JEllroy: outlines, wherein I describe the plot down to the most

JEllroy: minute detail. I follow this diagram down to the letter,

JEllroy: which allows me to concentrate on style and

JEllroy: characterization. I go

JEllroy: over the books and over the books and over the books

JEllroy: until it reads perfect to me. Then and only then do I sent

JEllroy: the manuscript out to my agent and editor.

Contino: I know you're not a fan of a lot of crime fiction, but do you have a favourite crime movie?

JEllroy: The God Father Part II.

Contino: Good pick!

Contino: At what stage are you in the composition of your next novel? And will Dick Contino be in it?

JEllroy: You will be a major character in my next novel and I will begin

JEllroy: writing the damn thing as soon as I finish my book tour.

TIMEOnline: What other fiction do you read? Which authors? And which ar your favorites from past decades?

JEllroy: I rean nobody curently.

Contino: Do you associate with other writers that you've publicly expressed admiration for (ie. Don DeLillo or Eddie Bunker)?

JEllroy: Here are some hits from my past.

JEllroy: "Compulsion" by Myer Levin.

JEllroy: "The Choir Boys" by Joseph Wambaugh.

JEllroy: "The Digger's Game" by George V. Higgins.

JEllroy: "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris,

JEllroy: "Lebra" by Don Dillilo,

JEllroy: "Mildred Pierce" by James M. Cane,

JEllroy: "No Beast So Fierce" by Edward Bunker.

JEllroy: I hang out with Eddie Bunker a little bit. I've never hung

JEllroy: out with DeLillo face to face.

TIMEOnline: We've got to wrap things up here soon, so this will be the last question... Contino, it's yours if you want it...

Contino: In the biography of Jim Thompson, Savage Art, the author talks at length about how a lot of the unsavory characters are based on people he knew. Is this true for you also?

JEllroy: No.

JEllroy: It is not true.

TIMEOnline: Thanks for joining us tonight, and I hope your tour goes well.

Contino: I'm a huge fan. Thanks!

TIMEOnline: It was good having you on.

JEllroy: Thaks everyone. I enjoyed it a lot.

TIMEOnline: TIME will try to have the transcript of this chat available in the future on time.com.

TIMEOnline: Please join us for our regular Thursday night chats. We'll be bringing you newsmakers and TIME correspondents from around the world.

TIMEOnline: We're signing off for the night now, and James Ellroy has left the building....

TIMEOnline: Good night.

TIMEOnline: Thanks, Contino.

Contino: Thank you!

TIMEOnline: We're heading out for the night, but you can jump into the cafe channel, and join us here regularly on Thurs. night.