Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; James Ellroy: Blood's a Rover

Tonight I'm very excited to welcome James Ellroy to Cambridge to read from his new novel Blood's a Rover. Mr. Ellery is the author of 13 novels including The Black Dahlia L.A. Confidential and American tabloid which was named times fiction book of the year in 1905. He's also in three collections of short fiction and essays and the memoir My Dark Places. He's here tonight for to read from Blood's a Rover the third and final installments in his underworld USA trilogy. Blood's a Rover dives right into the Tamil she was late 1960s starting in the summer of 68 after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. J Edgar Hoover is in L.A. waging a private war against black militant groups. Howard Hughes is buying out Las Vegas. Richard Nixon is in the White House trading political favors for campaign donations and working their way among these heavy hitters of history are corrupt cops provided private eyes and low level crooks and hit men. The Washington Post said the underworld USA trilogy anyone who succumbs to the sheer tidal force of these novels will experience something darker stranger and more compelling than almost anything else

contemporary fiction has to offer. And the L.A. Times praised Blood's a Rover and the trilogy calling the book's epic wild and brilliant dazzling and funny. So we're very excited. Mr all right here with us tonight. TS Eliot wrote if you can this way starting from anywhere at any time and in any season it would always be the same. You would have to put off sense and notion you are not here to instruct your sauf or to inform curiosity or to carry a report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been proven valid and for me. James Ellroy the demon dog of American literature. The author of seventeen masterpieces. To be followed by

numerous masterpieces. Nowhere is more appropriate to kneel in prayer than a place where books are read and sold. Will you join me in the war. But tween the printed word and Internet dystopia. Books rule. Computers drool. I am here to tell it like it is. Books edify. Can Saul turn the most under man on earth into a porno star. Turn the homeliest woman into Ingrid Bergman in one thousand forty

eight. The internet gives you a jangling nerves hyper caffeinated sleep shrivels your optic cashew dimensions and grants you the attention span of an ant. It's time to read books. The only purpose for the Internet motion pictures and computers is to sell books and spark the inner active digestion of the printed word. I was talking to Jacob Gutenberg the man who invented the first printing press. Just last night and he told me to tell all of you motherfuckers. Yes. We are growing on a

lump and profound journey of American history tonight and it starts with a heavenly visitation featuring a tiny infant boy and a tall skinny dog. Way back in one thousand forty eight. Who's the tall skinny dog. He is the Alfred a Konami Borzoi. Why does Alfred A cannot stick greatest publisher in the world. How old is the tall skinny dog today. He's 94 years old. He's the world's all dressed fucking dog. And he is also a prophet and he is also my spiritual father and he came to me in a visionary fashion and

I am here today with you to vouch and in fact to save the future of literacy in America and the world. You're listening. Here is how it happens. And if each and every one of you buy this book tonight you will be able to meet God may all be assassinated political leaders. In my books and the Borzoi himself on the other side. The publishing house of Alford a canard was founded in 1015. It quickly set the standard for publishing worldwide. Their symbol the slinky ruffle coated bores dog. He knew him all he knew Mencken Gertrude Stein Alice Toklas Fitzgerald us apostles Hemingway in the 20s. He knew Zora Neale

Hurston Langston Hughes. He knew him all up in Harlem. He published them all. He wasn't the Buchan man. He was the fuckin doc. But he had prophetic powers and he could see way way way way way way way way into the future. He foresaw a computer dystopia and he knew that only one man and one book could lead America the world. And Alford a kind of out of it. On the dark cold evening of March 4th 1940 a star shone in the sky over good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles where a couple were about to drop their frog their only male child.

Good looking red headed nurse from the Wisconsin boonies named Bill a car and a hunky Homeric Kung drifter from Boston named Ellroy. They met in 4-D. They sell sold. They jacked they way ad Gene got knocked up and what did they do. Right after I popped out of the chute they went over to the Pacific dining car for a few belts and they left me alone in my mother fuckin bed. And I started having visions already. I was groping on the nurses. I was trying to get at the vaunt. I was thinking twisted shit I was happen. Big dreams and I was thinking about books I had read books I could write fights I'd get into girls. I pur fon. I was fucked up in their head and way ahead of

myself lyin there have been thinking crazy shit. And this tall ruffle coated motherfucking dog walks. Puts his paws up on the edge of my hospital bed he says. Rather we need you Brad publishing be flyin high right now but I see a stock market meltdown in 2008 when you already established is a great fuckin writer. I see. Bad bad bad capitalist juju. I sees a decline in literacy as a crime in the streets. I see perhaps the end of literacy in my tenure as the king of publishing and I need you to write the greatest motherfucking historical novel of all time to get kids and young people middle aged people know people to

shut their fucking computers and get back to the printed word. I may take you a little bit of time to do it but I know you are the only one. So I thought about it for a second and I said get your paws off my bed you furry cocksucker. I gotta lie was a livin to do first. As I slunk away. I went out and I did a lot to live on and I wrote a lot of books and I wrote some very very very very very good books some near great books. A couple of great books. And now with Blood's a Rover. I have written the book that the Borzoi foretold on March 4th 1948 which guarantees your

front row seat in heaven to meet me after I pass away. God Himself the Borzoi the original Alfred A cannot and I guarantee you all that in heaven you will all be able to have sex with each and every person on this earth that you desired while you were here. Who told you to fuck off. So you'd better buy this fucking book tonight. Clay lies still but Blood's a Rover breaths aware that will not keep up lad. When the journey's over there will be time enough for sleep. It's a quote from 80 Housman. It's from a Shropshire Lad he wrote those words 90 odd years ago. It describes the moral exhaustion bad.

Bad men in love with strong women. And there are a shit load of them in this book. This is the third volume of my underworld us a trilogy Vol. 1. Time magazine's novel of the year 1995 with Time magazine shit you perhaps covers 958 1063 and the Rise and Fall of John F. Kennedy Volume 2 of The Cold Six Thousand cover 63 to 68 the concluding and greatest volume plugs are over sixty eight to 72. These books will leave you stand and dry client tied up to the side screwed blued tattooed And by fun good. These are books for the whole fucking family. If the name of your family is the Manson family.

If you have not read American tabloid In The Cold Six Thousand and have purchased Blood's a Rover start here because everything is compressed. Early on into this standalone volume. Go back read the earlier books later with a mine honed and warped by your evening with me. And you're all too tenuous association with the Alfred economic foresight all read three short passages from this book after which I would welcome the most intrusively over personal questions that each and every one of you has tried. America I window peeped four

years of our history. It was one long mobile stakeout and kick the door in shakedown. I had a license to steal and a ticket to ride. I followed people. I bugged and tapped and caught big events an ellipsis. I remained unknown. My surveillance links the then to the now in a never before revealed manner. I was there. My reportage is buttressed by credible hearsay and insider tattle massive paper trails provide verification. This book derives from stolen public files and usurped private journals. It is the sum of personal adventure and 40 years of scholarship.

I am a literary executor and an agent provocateur tour. I did what I did and saw what I saw and learned my way through to the rest of the story. Script your pure veracity and scandal rag content that conjunction gives it its sizzle. You do carry the seed of belief with in you already. You recall the time this book captures and sense conspiracy. I am here to tell you that it is all true and not at all what you think you will read with some reluctance and capitulate. In the end I am going to make you believe it. All I am going to tell

you every thing. Jaffer to Don Crutchfield Los Angeles 615 68 well too bad he's walked by the lot. The first group looked like shop girls. They wore Ivy League threads and modified blue fonts. The second group was pure hippie. They wore patched up jeans peacenik yet and long straight hair that swirled. They came and went. The wheel man waved the shopgirls waved back. They hippie chicks flipped off the wheel man the wheel man. Wolf called the Shell station lot. Beverly Hayworth for pumps and a service bay office three wheel men sprawled in their

sleds. Bobby gallery had a rocket old Phil Irwin had a 4 0 9 Chevy. Correct chata 65 Gigio he was the rookie wheel man. He had the boss ride 390 hearse for speed coon maroon paint. Bobby and Phil were mid day blitzed on high test vodka crotch was residual torqued on the girl show. He scanned the street for more walk by us. Zilch. Just some old hebes walk into the room. Back to the paper. Yawn. More jive and James are all Ray and Sirhan Sirhan snore. America grieves. Accused assassins lair

re vibe pencil neck sir hand by a towel head. Hey I am America. I got your griefs weighing in. Crutch flip pages. He hit flyweights at the forum and a grabber Life magazine offers million scoots for Howard Hughes picks a redhead walked by a crutch waved at her she scowled like he was a dog toured wheel man E-Myth did bad. Dives they were a low rant and indigenously fucked up. They perched in the lot. They waited for work from skank private eyes and divorce lawyers they tail cheating spouses kicked in doors and took photos of the fools bawling. It was a high risk high yucks job with female skin potential.

Gretchen was new to it. He wanted to grew a little of the job for Amber the paper called Howard Hughes a billionaire wrecked loose crotch got an idea he could starve himself down to bones and shimmy up a he chaffed snap one Polaroid and vamoose the lot. Bobby Gallagher skimpy for mags and slurped Smirnoff hundred Phil Irwin wiped his 4 0 9 with the shammy cloth. Bill worked tale jobs in stooge gigs for Freddy o Tash Freddy you know was a shakedown artist and freelance strong arm he was ex-LAPD. He lost his pianist license for some horse doping caper. Phil was his pet wheel man watch dog

memory. The lot. DOZHD no work no walk by Koos. Gas Station on we. It was hot it was humid crotch yawned and aimed at a CVS then it is balls. I. It perked him up and got him head tripping the gas station blahs add you. He was 23. He got expelled from Hollywood high for a candid camera stance in the girls gym. It's all man lived in a Goodwill box outside Santa Anita Crouch SR panhandled bed all day and a straw many burritos exclusive. His mom vanished on six 1855 crotches 10 then she up and split and never returned. She

sent him a Christmas card and a five spot. Every year different postmarks no return address. He built his own missing persons file. It filled up four big boxes. He killed time with that. He called around the country and ran PD checks hospital checks obit checks. He kicked off the quest in junior high school. Nothing. Margaret Woodard Crutchfield was stone gone. The wheel man gig fell on his dad. It happened like this. He kept up with his high school pal buzz buzz shared his passion for PAD prowls saw prowls like this. Hancock Park big soft houses preppy girls lairs Knock knock. Nobody's home.

Good. Yeah enter undetectably carry a pan like you dig some plush cribs. You walk through girl's bedrooms and exit with lingerie sets. He did it a few times a bus. He did it a lot by himself. But as this dad was cly duper Clyde was a big time P.I. he did divorce jobs and got Celebes out of this yet installed college kids and left wing groups and got them to rat out subversion. The fuzz popped crotch on a panty prowl they snagged him with some black lace undies and a sandwich he climbed from Salay Compton's fridge Clyde bailed them out and got his record expunged. Clyde got him we'll man and chump surveillance gigs. Clyde said window

peeping was co sure but next be any Clyde said kid to peep. Crutch out a flop at the Vivian apartments. It was a walk up dive just south of Paramount grips and stagehands live there. Bit players turned lunchtime tricks in a jumbo mop closet crotch crammed all his shit into two small rooms. His file shit is camera shit. His car shed his buggy untap shet. Clyde taught him surveillance. He had phone cards and wire mounts up the fuckin yang yang. He had the full run a Playboy magazine. He had Car Craft back to 52. His wallpaper was 41. Playboy playmates. He settled in for the night.

He updated his notes on his mother's last known location. Christmas 67. Margaret Woodard Crutchfield writes from Des Moines. Every known records Jack 0 backtrack to 66 a Christmas card from Dubuque every in-between town for record checks zero. Crotch got a antsy Buzz who knows where blitzed on who knows what but has had this mean streak that he lacked. Buzz carried a fake cop's badge and coerced to pad out a hookers. Next that holding it in was better. It was warm out a summer storm brewed crotch took a drive he circled up the Hollywood Boulevard now to the strip. He looked at people the long haired girls Jass him and the

long haired guys rubbed him wrong. He trawled for that sixty two bird and scottie's a blow job bandits. He saw two fags in a sixty one bird and no more. He drove east to Hancock Park. He cut his lights and perched second employment. That big Spanish house held them window glow flickered upstairs and down. He saw Chrissy in USAC sweats. One glimpse and gone. He saw Dan attire hair back in the kitchen. Bus didn't get it. Nobody got it. That's why I never told anyone it wasn't christian want. It was always stand aunt and she was 53 years old. I'm listening to John about the stick figure Borzoi on the

spine of my book. There are thirty two Borzoi representations on a style sheet in the art department Alfre taken off. Authors can't pick your own Borzoi right. Yes. Yeah right. He's tall he's skinny he doesn't like to eat a lot it slows him down. He's like me you're better. It's a book it's twenty nine bucks usually get it on discount. Look how beautiful this fucking thing is. It's got the Borzoi bound in cloth. It's got cut in pages indigenous only to you guessed it. Alfred A cannot. It's got a great story. Took me three years to writes got a great picture of me cost me five grand to have the picture taken. Wow. You get to go to the Dominican Republic Haiti chase black militants and South Side L.A. hang out with gay girl Hoover.

How are Dracula use the mob assassinate. Civil rights leaders have sex with the most iconic figures of the era and nobody gets hurt. Don't fucking stiff me. For all the work I put into this thing and the lives that I lived and the marriages and extraneous girlfriends that it cost to me I don't put it in a little box that looks like an etch a sketch with 10000 other fucking books. War is a lie. Well hunt your ass down. He will maul your ass. He will kill your ass. He will eat your ass he will digest your ass and you will shit your ass out. DO NOT FUCK WITH THE cannot force but Don Crutchfield is a real life character and a friend of mine and todays a day for him. He is the P.I. to the stars and if you want to learn about

crotch go to API for stars dot com. I met crouch in 99 we struck a deal for me to use his life story in Blood's a Rover it's partially his story partially my story. What correction and we are very good friends do not reveal is what's real and what's not. It's a seamless interweaving of the real the fantastical the unfathomable The imaginable. Wow. It's why it's got to F are fiction on the spine. Have I gone to the Dominican Republic. No I did not. I sent somebody. I'm not afraid of anything. Jetlag spending money I don't have to when all I have to do is sit in a room read maps look at pictures and dream. It was not necessary to go to the Dominican Republic lesser writers perhaps So

there was no real life inspiration for Kemper Boyd in American tabloid Kemper Boyd Edmund Kemper Boyd is the name of the deceased uncle of my ex-wife best friend the novelist Helen Conneaut read her book the ticket out in paperback The sequel The Wildcat play will be published next year. I read anything that Helen connoting writes. I may have said that a long long time ago. Here's what happened. I largely ignore the world and it's proven quite efficacious for me. I don't have a television set. I don't have a cell phone. I've never worked on a computer. I've never written a check. I've either been married and check writing duties off on the women I've been with. Now I have an assistant. I am computer illiterate. I don't have a cell phone. I don't read books.

I don't read newspapers. I don't go to motion pictures. There's nothing I have no cultural input. I listen to classical music on a boom box. That's as far as it goes. I limit my perspective. I limit my realm of interest so that I can live obsessive play the themes of my personal life. I have a memoir coming out next year and the history that I write about. I hire researchers who compile factsheets and her knowledge base that allow me to extrapolate fictionally and give you the private infrastructure of big public events. That works for me. The other thing that I do and have done for 40 years is I lie in the dark brood. I think about all manner of crazy shit

and wait for the phone to ring and it's a landline phone. This is the way I left. I'm not shitting you either. I've blurred some books I haven't read them next fall Alford a Kanada will publish my memoir The Hilliker Curse subtitled my pursuit of women far Alfre taken off I turn the book in a week when my mother's maiden name was Hill aka. It discursive the grasses. If she's in it trust me trust me. Here's the thing I seen L.A. Confidential more times than I care to admit. I'm not going to watch it tonight. I'm going to introduce the shit out of it and head back to tell. Money is the gift that no one ever returns the size Large always bets and the color green is

always flattering. What's happened is throughout the years filmmakers film studios independent producers have offered me option money for my books. Most options run out fallow movies never get paid. I was lucky enough to have there were a fine film like confidential made from my book of the same title that I thought was irreducible. Sometimes you just get lucky parents that a CLI if you don't get lucky and you're still paid for it. You should not criticize any lesser movie made from one of your books for attribution because nobody forced you to take the dough. Same thing for writing screenplays. Write a screenplay. Become something else. Six or seven other people right behind you gets made into a movie you get paid for it. Mum's the word. Films writing film scripts

ahead has supported my high divorce high style lifestyle for many many years and I'm nothing but great fun and I doubt that there will ever be another movie made from one of my books. That's just the luck of the draw and the odds of the game so don't hold your breath and don't believe anything that you see announced in the tread papers that has my name on it. L.A. come on vacation go home on probation. I live there now. I came back I didn't have any any place else to go. If you read the helicopter curse I'll tell you why I really came back. I've written a lot of high flying shit about why I came back to Las Vegas soft as psych Geist all that shit. Not the real dope. Isn't that like a curse and. It's home. It's very familiar to me but I'm from there so I don't view it epigrammatic like it's where I come from. I was destined to

write enormously big novels. I was destined to live love work in Los Angeles. It's imprinted up here. I can't quite get away from it. It keeps coming back and falling on my head. I love that shit. I love hipster talk yet ish racial invective of alliteration doing shtick about the Ku Klux Klan and spelling all hard c words with K S. Now I like street humor. I like perverted drag queens hanging out at the Gold Cup Coffee Shop bullshitting with L.A. cops in the summer of 68. Oh shit it's just I'm alive with language. The American are go in the out rate just us. I have it it's in my blood I live to think talk breathe fuck around with language.

Language had a certain power then there were words you weren't supposed to say. Two biggest influences of my youth were the Lutheran Church and Confidential magazine. I mean I knew Rock Hudson was a fruit 1050 it was no big surprise since circa 1900 sex when everyone else got the word I'm interested in that kind of shit who's a homo who's a nympho who's who's cashew and who's a hothead who's a dipso. Aren't you interested in that shit. Yeah why do people pretend that they're not interested in that shit. I'm profoundly interested in that show. Now Johnny Ray was honkin boys at men's rooms. Yeah Frank Sinatra came home and found Ava Gardner in the sack with Lana Turner. That's good she yet. Why do you pretend you don't dare get that's good. Fucking twisted

yet. It comes alive on the page. Dad here my people the Reverend Al Rai and his flock. Now flock you to your own cocksucker. OK you never will find the man who killed my mother it's over and. My Dark Places is not as deep. A MEMOIR deep a bit of soul searching as The Hilliker Curse which come off will publish next year because my dark places is a crime story and the real story of Geneva hell a car and die is a love story and is the story of my journey with women. So I went as deep as I could. In 1905 and my dark places and in 2010 I go deeper deeper deeper still

in the L.A. curse which will come out one Blood's a Rover comes out in paperback by two books here at the Brattle Theater and you won't believe what you get. Another All option they're all option dad. They just don't tend to get made you take the bread you get out. There's no logical reason for any of it. Motion pictures cost a lot of money to make. And it has been said that the option to book to the finished successful motion picture is what the first kiss is to the fiftieth monogamous anniversary. And remember what I said about money. It's the gift that no one ever returns the color green is always flattering and the size larger always fits. I drive here and there I live in Los Angeles I go out I have dinner I look at people it's

planning it's planning. It really is. You're not you're not buying I lie in the dark and I dream they shit. You know I get mad it's true. It's that I give you access to their souls and I set their lives and bust their souls in Los Angeles. That's been a primary locale. You go all over the world or you go to DC you go to Miami go on the campaign trail you're there at the Chicago riots the Miami riots for the political conventions in 68 you go to the D.R. you go to Nicaragua you go to Haiti all kinds of places. I live in L.A. now. I dig it there. Not the rest of my life. Not for us I'm alive. It's that I'm from there. It has given me an insight that no other writer has

and I put fully realized characters there and they lived there for a reason that even they never divulge. They were dandy I thought that Guy Pearce of all the three of the three big guys here Spacey and crow was the best of the three. Come on where's the big metaphysical question. Why is this book different from all my other books. Has anyone. How many people have read Blood's a Rover sides of Man 1 1. Why ok and put me on the spot. Why is this book different. Yes it's the women. Ideology belief diversity

where you thought you'd never hear me say his revolutionary arc. You're absolutely right. You know at night you're absolutely right. Big big white is my best male character ever. You honor me you honor me in the man who talked about the red goddess John honors me. Yeah. And their love their great great love that it's a love story this book it's a love story. Does anyone want to ask me. Why do you write. In my ardor songcraft exercised in the still night when only the moon rages and the lovers lie abed with all their griefs in their arms. I labor by singing a white not for the strutting

trade of charms upon the ivory stages but for the common wages of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart do I write on the Spindrift pages but for the lovers their arms round the griefs of the ages who pay no praise or wages nor heat my art or craft. Don't Thomas. God bless you thank you for coming. Signed books.