James Ellroy is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: “American Tabloid,” “The Cold Six Thousand” and “Blood’s A Rover” as well as the L.A. Quartet novels: “The Black Dahlia,” “The Big Nowhere,” “L.A. Confidential” and “White Jazz.” He is also the author of two other Freddy Otash novels, “Widespread Panic” and “The Enchanters.” He currently lives in Colorado.
SunLit editor Kevin Simpson recently connected with Ellroy to talk about his latest novel, “Red Sheet.” The following has been edited for length and clarity.
SunLit: Well, let’s jump right into “Red Sheet,” because there’s just so much going on. It’s October of ’62, Bobby Kennedy is the attorney general. He’s worried about communist backlash to the Cuban Missile Crisis, orders an investigation, and I’m hardly scratching the surface here. The lead investigator is a familiar name throughout your work, the cop turned corrupt private eye, Freddy Otash, and that would be more than enough storylines for a lot of novelists, but you’re just getting warmed up.
Tell us a little more about the scope of this novel.
James Ellroy: It is a complete social and criminal history of L.A., my smog-bound fatherland. In the fall of 1962, when I was 14 years old, Richard Nixon, the defeated vice president and loser in the Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960, is running for governor of California against incumbent Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. He’s way behind in the polls and headed for Shitsville, USA. That’s another plot line.
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We got some murders. There’s a murder on Halloween night. There was a murder way back in April, double murder of 1954. And Robert F. Kennedy fears communist backlash now that the fucking commies have blinked, wimped, and pulled their missiles — aimed at America, I might add — out of Cuba. It was John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy’s finest moment, but it’s not enough for the man that Freddy Otash calls Ratfuck Bobby.
SunLit: Across your novels, you chronicle an expansive history of L.A. in the mid-20th century. Where does “Red Sheet” fit into the larger catalog?
Ellroy: I think it’s my best book. It’s my most outrageous book. It’s my most geopolitically deep book. It’s my most moving book. I think it’s my greatest book.
SunLit: We’ve got an excerpt from “Red Sheet” coming up Sunday. It’s from Chapter 4, and it describes an unusual lineup of suspects. Can you put this excerpt in context for us?
“Red Sheet”
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Ellroy: LAPD, at their insensitive and innovative best, has rounded up some communists, apostate communists, and a colorful character named Henry Cathcart Wilkins, a black man, former communist who later became the Burgermeister of L.A.’s Negro Nazi League. Freddy, and a woman, former communist named D.J. Siemers, question these people and bait them, and it’s a riotous scene.
Now, I played the blacklisted mock martyrs of the Hollywood 10 for laughs, and there are laughs abundant in this chapter. When I heard that you wanted to excerpt this chapter, I was overjoyed.
SunLit: Let’s talk a little about Freddy Otash, who, of course, was an actual person. And at one point you sat down with the real Freddy Otash before he died. Was there something about his personality that convinced you that he, or some variation of him, belonged in fiction?
Ellroy: Freddy Otash was a sack of shit. He was rude, crude, vulgar. He was caustic. There was a craven, cowardly quality to him as well. I have made him into that venerable literary archetype, the great detective. And here he is, 40 years of age now, falling in love for the first time with a woman. I can’t stop thinking about her. I was thinking about her when I was 14, 15 years old, I still am. She left us, God bless her, in 2022 — the great folk singer Judy Henske.
So Freddy is in for it in this book. He will come to grips with himself. I’m not giving much away here. The prequel to “Red Sheet,” “The Enchanters,” which takes place earlier in 1962, begins his voyage of self-discovery. And I’m not done with him yet, because I’m going to write a sequel to “Red Sheet” as well.
SunLit: Let’s talk a little bit about your creative process. Of course, you famously write in longhand. Have you made any concessions to technology over the years, either in your writing or otherwise, as the publishing world goes increasingly digital?
Ellroy: No, I’ve never gone digital, I’ve never used a computer, I don’t have a cellphone, you can’t text me. I’m speaking to you on a landline telephone. I have a website that a fellow maintains for me professionally. He’s a paid hand, and that’s as far as it goes.
If I need to buy a pair of shoes, my wife will boot up a shoe purveyor on the internet, and acknowledge a couple of pictures, and that’s that. But I’m computer illiterate.
SunLit: Why is that? While others have felt they needed to adapt, you certainly have done just fine without all these extra bells and whistles.
Ellroy: I like the quiet world. I rarely watch television. I’ll watch boxing on television, but I don’t really know what streaming services are. I don’t know what apps are. Computer language leaves me cold. Now there’s artificial intelligence. It’s the presence of Satan on Earth.
SunLit: Your storylines, as we talked earlier, are so intricate and built around so many characters. How do you keep all those characters and plot lines organized?
Ellroy: The outline for “Red Sheet” is 450 pages. I have a woman who lives in the south of France who types for me. She types the manuscripts that I send her, block printed on white notebook paper. We do numerous drafts.
I live in a nice apartment complex with a concierge service here in Denver, and they stream or do whatever they do to get the pages to her, and they receive the pages and bring them upstairs to me.
SunLit: Your writing style has been called one of the most distinctive in American fiction. A few of the words I’ve heard to describe it are compressed, hard-boiled, noir, rhythmic, musical. How would you describe it, and how did it evolve over the course of your career?
Ellroy: Well, I started out over relying on concision. Then I gradually expanded my style, be it in the first person, one viewpoint, or three people, multi-viewpoint, to allow more detail. And the style is more reader friendly, but it is still notably concise. It’s also rhythmic. If you look back over the numerous paragraphs in “Red Sheet,” which is 540 pages long, you will see that I usually end, be it dialog or description, with words of one syllable.
SunLit: Do you agree with those who find it rhythmic?
Ellroy: I can hear it, because I read very slowly, and I do, in fact, move my lips when I read. And I speak the words aloud as I print them on the pages.
SunLit: Your first novel was published in 1981. And recently you’ve been touring the country behind “Red Sheet.” Have you noticed a new generation embracing your novels, aside from your long-established fans.
Ellroy: I have fewer readers now than I did at peak points in my career. People are lazy now. They don’t like to spend the amount of time reading that my books require, and the intense concentration that my books require, given the density of the plots, the numerous names that one has to retain. I’ve noticed that the art of reading has deteriorated, and I blame computers.
SunLit: When you meet with younger fans or newer fans, are they coming to you solely through books, or do they connect with your work through podcasts or online communities or films?
Ellroy: These are readers that seek me out. I have young readers, I have younger readers. Most of my readers, the demographic is overwhelmingly male, and the fiction reading demographic is overwhelmingly female, which may be why my sales have declined.
SunLit: You’ve lived in Colorado now for quite a few years, and you’ve noted previously it’s quite a different vibe from Los Angeles. Has living here changed the way you think about storytelling?
Ellroy: No, no, I’ve lived all over the place, and I moved. I lived in suburban New York, suburban Connecticut, Carmel, Kansas City, San Francisco. I went back to L.A. for nine years, and then I got back with my second ex-wife, and she was living in Denver. She said, ‘Hey, I moved twice for you, you gotta move once for me.’ So, I like Denver.
SunLit: You’ve also lived here long enough now to absorb some local characters, some history, Denver’s overall vibe. Can you imagine setting a crime novel in Colorado?
Ellroy: No, no. I will write books set in historical Los Angeles for the rest of my life. I’ve written books outside of L.A. before — Mexico, Washington, D.C., the American South, Chicago, New York City. But it’s L.A. from here on in.
SunLit: So, what’s next for you? You mentioned you’re not quite done with Freddy Otash. Is there another novel in the works?
Ellroy: There’s the fourth Freddy Otash novel. I’m not at liberty to discuss it yet, but look for it in two, two and a half years.