The Demon Dog

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

James Ellroy has described himself as the demon dog of American crime fiction and, if anything, that is one of the few times this full-voiced, overwhelming personality has used understatement.


His new book is “Destination: Morgue!” (Vintage, 338 pages, $13.95). Two quick points. First, what a terrible decision it was on the part of his publisher to have no hardcover version of this extraordinary book. Second, this guy comes up with some of the most terrific titles of all time. “The Big Nowhere,” “Blood on the Moon,” “L.A. Confidential,” “White Jazz.” How could anyone just walk past books with titles like that?


It is possible, I think, to make the argument that in the past couple of decades, Mr. Ellroy has been the most influential writer in America. After his bestselling novel, “The Black Dahlia,” he began to use a truncated sentence structure that sounds like no one else. Short, choppy sentences, like messages sent by Western Union, became his trademark.


In this awesome (man, do I hate that word and its overuse, but nothing else will do here) collection, subtitled “L.A. Tales,” here is Mr. Ellroy starting to tell about the best district attorney in the country: “It’s Steve Cooley’s world. Dig it dystopian. Check out his desk. It’s orgy-size. It came with the job. It’s morning. He’s thinking. His brainwaves are boiling bravura.” His riff on the Robert Blake case: “The Blake job – six months old/indictmentless/classic. One, short time frame. Two, no guilt proof. Three, no alternative suspects.” And that’s it.


Pick up a book by any of a half dozen young hardboiled writers, and there will be similar clipped sentences. No verbs. No adverbs. No one pulls it off like Mr. Ellroy. And it’s best in the short form.


This telegraphic style requires some work on the part of the reader. You have to fill in the missing words. For the long novels, like “The Cold Six Thousand” and “American Tabloid,” it can be exhausting. But “Destination: Morgue!” is a collection of essays (previously published in GQ), plus three novellas and a short story written especially for this volume. These can best be enjoyed in small doses. They’re so good, you’ll want to keep reading. But if you force yourself to spread out the treat for a week, as you should with a box of Godiva chocolates, you’ll be happier.


This might be a good time to say that not everyone will find this a treat. Mr. Ellroy writes the sort of raw, vulgar, violent prose that hasn’t been politically correct since before he was born. If you are a little sensitive about certain language, whether it involves sex, bodily functions, or race, don’t say you haven’t been warned.


While this type of usage demonstrates a kind of courage, as does developing a unique literary style, it is as nothing compared to Mr. Ellroy’s willingness to strip naked and expose himself in a way that even porn stars don’t do.


He says of himself (actually, he says it twice in these pages), “I was an acquired taste that no one ever acquired.” Nor could anyone be blamed for not acquiring the taste. His essay, “My Life As a Creep,” is accurately titled.


The opening line is merely a hint of the rank place that can only be described, charitably, as a deviant mind. “Sex almost killed me. I managed this without human contact.” He goes on to describe nine years (nine years) of drugs, booze, and sexual practices that involved only himself. His fantasies of various girls and women, fueled by breaking into their houses to lie on a bed and fondle, sniff, and steal their underwear, are described with excruciating candor.


“This memoir,” Mr. Ellroy writes, “is a three-count indictment. Count one: I lied and stole and spawned bad juju. Count two: I did it in a cravenly circumspect manner. Count three: I creeped out the whole female race. This indictment is self-proffered. That gives it some oomph.”


All of Destination: Morgue” is not specifically autobiographical, though reading anything by Mr. Ellroy seems so powerfully personal that it gives the effect of being true. What he writes is true – at least true in the way that Mr. Ellroy sees it. As a towering intelligence (Joyce Carol Oates once described him as the American Dostoyevsky), his perception of the truth must be taken seriously even if it differs from your own belief.


In the piece titled “Grave Doubt,” he writes about a bad guy, real gutter scum, who is sentenced to death for a crime Mr. Ellroy does not believe he committed. He meticulously chronicles the criminal’s many violent excesses but also dissects the case against him and finds it wanting.


Mr. Ellroy favors the death penalty. “If you have to know why we need the death penalty,” he writes, “you’re never going to know.” But he eloquently pleads against its use here – to no avail, as it turns out, as the postscript lists the date of execution.


A lifelong fan of boxing, Mr. Ellroy opens the book with a rapid flip through an album of his boxing memories, finally focusing on a single fight in which one of the boxers has been described as a “good kid.” Well, maybe. “‘Good kids’ is fanspeak,” claims Mr. Ellroy. “Good kids are killers who limit their rage to the ring.”


There is almost no limit to the number of memorable, stunning, incisive quotes that I could cull from these pages. And I haven’t even mentioned the fiction, which offers more originality and entertainment per 50-page novella than most authors produce in their entire career.


It’s been three years since Mr. Ellroy’s last book, “The Cold Six Thousand.” That’s too long. He’s been doing a lot of work in the worlds of motion pictures and television. Okay. That’s his right and prerogative. All I can say is: Mr. Ellroy – get the hell out of La-La Land. Don’t leave the writing of books to the hacks.


The New York Sun

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