The death of Marilyn Monroe in August 1962 haunts The Enchantersthe melancholy and acid seventeenth novel by James Ellroy and third volume of the Los Angeles Quintet begun by Treachery et The coming storm.
The 76-year-old American knows very well that he has revolutionized the black novel with a volley of masterpieces (The black dahlia, L.A. Confidential, My dark side, American tabloid,…) and therefore does not hesitate to send several months in advance of the promotional tour which accompanies The Enchanters, his instructions to journalists who wish to meet him. “ I will not discuss in no case politics or current American culture. I will not talk about my personal life under any circumstances. I won’t speak in no case films taken from my books”, he wrote to us last July. Suffice to say that we never really know what sauce we will be eaten with.
Nothing to cry scandal about, however. It is his strictest right and James Ellroy is far from alone. Quentin Tarantino has several times sharply reframed journalists who ventured into territory other than that of the filmmaker’s immediate news. More surprising, on the other hand, we learn innocently, on the Eurostar which takes us to Paris where the author of White Jazz is one of the guests of the America festival in Vincennes, which the latter won over two colleagues after just a few minutes. And the voice suggests that we not start the interview by talking about Marilyn Monroe. Which is still amazing since Marilyn’s ghost haunts this seventeenth novel by James Ellroy. Here are the main extracts fromintense, physical maintenance even and far from being uninteresting with a man who, like everyone undoubtedly, is not apart from a paradox.
What is the driving idea of this new novel?
I wanted to write a popular American novel from the early 1960s. Like the Harold Robbins books with The Carpetbaggers, The Adventurers or The Inheritors or those of Irving Wallace and The Chapman report. Two-word titles that begin with a The. There were also many paperback books on sex, call girls, gynecologists, flight attendants,… And of course, the title, The Enchantersis ironic and evokes the fake enchantment of the Kennedy era of 1962.
It’s madness. Jack is at the White House and the idiot Marilyn Monroeforgive me, takes pills, drinks and pisses off 20th Century Fox. While 20th Century Fox is on the verge of going bankrupt because it’s putting all this money into Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor who does drugs, drinks and does stupid things with the film’s co-star Richard Burton. Cleopatra was unwatchable then and still is today. It’s horrible. And more than anything else, it wasn’t the kind of movie America wanted to see in 1962.
For my part, I read The Enchanters as a tribute to Red Harvestby Dashiell Hammett, published almost a hundred years ago and a cornerstone of the genre where corruption is everywhere; from the press to the police to the political class…
This is the case, yes, yes. The events are chaotic. Thugs operate undercover. There is a narrator…
Your first memories of reading are magazines from the 1940s when you were, what, eight or ten years old?
A little earlier than that because my parents divorced in the fall of 1955 and I was seven years old. They had a big closet full of magazines from the 40s, early 50s. Thank goodness. Before I knew how to read, I looked at photos. Then I could read the stories and especially the story, the story (he repeats the word several times – Editor’s note). I live in the pastyou know all that, like the fact that I don’t own a computer…
On August 4, 1962, the date Marilyn Monroe died, it was hellishly hot in Los Angeles. Do you have any specific memories of this summer, heatwave aside?
I graduated in June and was supposed to start high school in September. To make pocket money, I delivered newspapers. Marilyn Monroe died on a Sundaywe only heard that on the radio and what I remember is that on Monday, people were waiting on their doorsteps to get the newspaper and read the story.
Finally, is Marilyn Monroe your Trojan horse for exploring this specific period?
Well seen, thank you. Marilyn Monroe means nothing to me; I’ve said it a million times. I didn’t like him as an actress and I never had much regard for her as a woman but I knew a book was there and I was right. I wrote it.
Do you see his death or what it represents as a pivotal date, the end of a certain innocence before the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, Altamont, Charles Manson?
It’s all wind! Hollywood is full of weirdos! Monroe, it’s just another overdose.
Without forgetting your wicked sense of humor…
I was aware thatit was necessary to add a little humor and that is why it is deliberately funny and extremely blasphemous. Marilyn Monroe and Jack Kennedy as pornographic playing cards that perverted collectors collect, it’s funny. The Enchanters East a terribly ugly and profane book which requires a huge dose of humor.
I would like to ask you a question about one of all your first novels, A killer on the road…
(He cuts) It depends. What is the question? Ask the question, I’ll let you know.
The ambition of Martin Michael Plunkett, the narrator of the book, is to write the ultimate and definitive autobiography of the serial killer that he is. Was this also your literary ambition?
It’s good the only one of my novels that I find terrible. It’s the only one my wife hates. I needed the money, frankly. So it was an original paperback, and I got what was good for me out of it, which was a good amount of money. I wrote it in three monthsand that was it, A killer on the roade but I don’t give a damn. It’s old. It’s like the Lloyd Hopkins trilogy. Brown’s Requiem or Clandestine. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.
Are you serious?
It’s a career. I only want to talk about this book The Enchanters because that is the reason for my stay in France. One of the great qualities of French cultural journalists is that they adhere to the rules of interviews. And my rule is that I’m not talking about politics. I’m not talking about the presidential election. I don’t want to talk anymore of my private life or the murder of my mother. That’s all. It’s over.
This all reminds me of a baseball player named Denny McLain. A great pitcher in the 60s for the Detroit Tigers who broke all records. He spent six years in prison and always claimed he knew nothing and wrote his autobiography I Never Had It Made (which is actually the title of the autobiography of Jackie Robinson, another baseball player. McLain’s is titled I told you i wasn’t perfect –Editor’s note). This is my state of mind. The Enchanters is a very good book and I am delighted to be here in France but on October 7, I am going home to write the next one, the outline of which I have already outlined. All I have to do now is get over the jet lag…
A final word about the melancholy that emerges from your latest novel. Does it echo its times?
It’s true that it’s elegiac. It’s a bygone era with a Freddy Otash confronting his life as a relatively young man of 40 years old. Yes. In 1962, he was 40 years old. It is also a tragic view of life. I am a Christian and I believe the world is fallen. I believe that only Jesus can save us. I’m sad for the worldbut very happy for myself. But I’m not trying to save the world.
Chaos and discord reign everywhere in the sixties with people who think they can get away with it. There drug use is exploding in the middle class and psychiatry is in vogue. This is what I’m talking about with the inappropriate relationship of Marilyn Monroe and her psychiatrist. And as I like to live in the past; I enter the era of my own knowledge. I am on a mission to write two more big detective novels which are mostly just popular American novels and my quintet will be completed. They will both take place during this famous year 1962.
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