Weadmire.net Blog

I went to see James Ellroy at UCL in Bloomsbury on Tuesday 5 October. He is quite a showman. I have a $40,000 question...

I went because I was interested in how James Ellroy gets away with his treatments of relatively recent history. In answering questions he pointed out that you can write anything if the people concerned are dead. I was generally surprised, and might have asked if this would include publishing t shirts.

Apparently contradicting Mr Ellroy about confining your comments to the dead someone in the audience asked about a living character in one of the books, Don Crutchfield. Mr Crutchfield is alive and has a substantial private investigation business in Los Angeles, extant, as James Ellroy might have it.

The character in question is apparently on record as being underwhelmed with his description in the book in question. Hardly surprising. He is characterised as a vain, murderous, peeping tom with a thing for much older women and aping stronger male characters round him.  By any measure a violent but otherwise weak creep.  Last Tuesday James Ellroy said Mr Don Crutchfield was paid $40,000 to be named and described in the book, Blood's a Rover, entirely as James Ellroy saw fit so long as he was not described as being “a child molester or gay.”

The question I had for Mr Ellroy, that only came to mind on the way out, was why pay $40,000 to name and describe a living character when it would have been relatively straightforward to describe him but not to name him and thereby avoid a $40,000 bill? My conclusion is Mr Ellroy thinks $40,000 is a good price to pay to enhance the credibility of his novel take on history.

To someone ignorant of the contract and $40,000 payment - that James Ellroy is brutal and disparaging in his published description of someone living, who has significant resources and reputation but who takes no action against him, would lead to a conclusion that what is published is acknowledged by the person in question as true and fair comment. This by extension enhances the perceived veracity of everything else described in his books.  On Tuesday Ellroy signed off his mumble with “Remember, believe every fucking word.”

We will have to have a t shirt for Mr Ellroy and perhaps also for Mr $40,000 call me Crutchfield. Perhaps better we cover both with the same t shirt. It will probably be a little obscure. The explanation of what inspires the shirt might help the love life of the wearer however.  Mr Ellroy and his methods are interesting and wearers can seem in the know.  That should be worth a date at least.  Mr Ellroy should not object, love lives and enhancements there of being a topic he constantly refers to.