Having an aperitif with an individual who no longer consumes alcohol since Jimmy Carter’s presidency and no longer frequents bars is not an easy thing. But with James Ellroy, France’s favorite crime novel author, fact and fiction merge to the point of creating mirages. All you have to do is enter the dance of your own imagination, however fertile it may be: “That’s what I try to do with people, convey to them the obsessive side of my books, that they read them obsessively. » From its last cobblestone, The charming ones (Rivages, 672 pages, 26 euros), takes place during the summer of 1962 in Los Angeles, when Marilyn Monroe has just succumbed to an overdose of barbiturates and corrupt police, rogue voyeurs and criminal stars are on the prowl, let’s try obsession.
First step: mentally dim the pale light of the Rivages editing room where the interview takes place, in the heart of 7my district of Paris. Then imagine, instead of the two cups of coffee, a well-packaged old fashioned with a candied cherry stuck on a toothpick. In the background, cover the employees’ murmurs with a wave of cool jazz, Dave Brubeck on piano, Eugene “The Senator” Wright on double bass. Close your eyes, a little effort to concentrate, here we are: the City of Angels, 1962 heat wave.
Installed in a large modern armchair, with his arms extended over the backrest and his legs crossed, James Ellroy, 76, sets the stage: “It was another world and in my imagination I lived almost exclusively in that world. » His clothing – pastel yellow pants, canary yellow canvas shoes, a faded red sweater – contrasts with his appearance, that of an austere Lutheran pastor, with a long, lanky figure, piercing eyes behind round glasses and a haggard face.
Trauma XXL
At the time of the events, Lee Earle, his real name, was suffering from XXL trauma: his mother, Geneva, was murdered four years earlier, but the culprit was never found. At the age of 10 he was entrusted to his father, already in his sixties and an accountant for film studios as well as an inveterate womanizer. I grew up as fast as I could, devouring pulps, those cheap magazines with flashy covers populated by pin-ups and tough guys in floppy hats. In reality, it will never leave this era, just as we unconsciously cling to the aftermath of an emotional shock in the belief that we can better exorcise it.
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