We met him to discuss his 17th novel “The Enchanters”, where he recounts the numerous collusions between the film studios in Los Angeles in the 1960s, its actors obsessed with money and sex and the political and police shenanigans. After 15 days of promotional marathon in France, James Ellroy is true to himself: floral shirt, black felt hat screwed on his head and steely gaze.
What interested you in Freddy Otash, this former crooked police officer converted into a private detective, to make him the main character of your novel “The Enchanters”?
I knew Freddy Otash for the last three years of his life. He was a bad man, but I knew I could reclaim his life to tell the story of Los Angeles in 1962, portray the political intrigues he was involved in, the film and studio scandals. I recreated this demi-monde of cinema, with their films with corrupt images, their associations with equally corrupt police officers and politicians.
Do you remember the death of Marilyn Monroe, and did it affect you at the time?
No, I didn’t like her, as a woman and an actress, and her death didn’t affect me. Besides, my book does not tell about her death, but she is part of this universe of starlets and actors in search of recognition who associate with bad people who are in the book.
Can we say that you desecrate the history of your country in your novels, that you show its dark side?
I don’t write books about America, about all of America, I write slices of life. When I am inspired by history, it is as a tool, I use it. This is why I never answer the question of the role of function and reality in my books. You know, most Americans are like the French, good people, who work every day and are honest.
I create this universe, this demonic half-world that coexists with ours, and while I disapprove of what happens there, I can’t help but enjoy living there anyway. My character Freddy Otash also evolves and changes in this world, he gradually gets closer to a form of truth and God. He was also a Maronite, a Lebanese Catholic. His belief tugs at him, moreover in the novel he makes the sign of the cross every time he sees something shocking.
James Ellroy presented his new novel “Les Enchanteurs” to the public and the press on October 5 and 6 in Pau.
David Le Deodic
Isn’t there a little bit of you in this Freddy character? He is organized, precise, voyeuristic and thug, when he spies on the home and privacy of Marilyn Monroe during the last months of her life in the spring of 1962?
Yes, decades ago, for a brief moment in my life, I walked into homes, looked at people through their windows. I was very young.
Why do you think French readers appreciate your novels so much?
I think it’s because the French have a very strong, long-standing love of noir novels. They like hard thrillers, like those by James M. Cain for example, “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity”. In these books, there is no question of “The Stranger” by Camus… On the French side, you gave us the New Wave and French cinema in all its splendor.
You dedicate this book to François Guérif (editor and creator of the Rivages/Noir edition in 1986). Is this an important professional meeting for you?
Pau: The thriller lovers’ lounge is open
If meetings and readings began in Béarn and Pau a few days ago, A round trip in the dark was officially inaugurated this Saturday morning in the presence of the godmother of the event Dolores Redondo and the mayor of Pau
He was a very good friend, he was forced to retire by the previous managers of Rivages, I didn’t like it but that’s how it is. But it was he who made me known and discovered in France, who first published my novels here, “Lune Sanglante” (1987). And the two of us did Rivages/Noir.
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