Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy

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MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Here is 'the skinny' (as the subject himself might put it) on one of the most charismatic and complex crime writers on the planet, affording insights into both the man and his craft. It's every bit as gripping and twisted as a James Ellroy novel. Dig it, cats.

I'm not someone who's pored over all of Ellroy's work, but I was more than intrigued to find out more about his life from the little I knew and Steven Powell delivers a comprehensive account of a life well lived. This is a terrific book for James Ellroy lovers. It relies heavily on Ellroy’s memoir, My Dark Places, but Steven Powell has managed to find additional primary sources in writing this biography.he sees as inimical to Ellroy’s work: “The more friction and unresolvable conflict that existed in his personal life, the more visceral his art became.” A highly enjoyable read… shrewd in its critiques of the work and jargon-free– an academic biography in the best sense. I suspect it will spoil the genre of literary biography for me for a while: can the life of any other living writer be anywhere near as horribly gripping?”—Jake Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph

A rip-roaring look at the life and career of James Ellroy. It covers a lot of familiar ground but still manages to pull new insights about his childhood and early writing, and also adds some interesting context to his work and how it fits into the larger scope of American literature and Los Angeles. Eventually Ellroy identified as the “Demon Dog” of American crime fiction, and even barked sometimes in public spaces! Since barking dogs can be totally annoying, some fans (and former lovers) understandably failed to find this persona very amusing. Speaking of dogs, by his own admission, Ellroy’s dog Margaret did not like him and often growled in his presence. The dog was a gift from his second wife, editor/novelist Helen Knode (m.1991-2006). A highly enjoyable read … shrewd in its critiques of the work and jargon-free – an academic biography in the best sense. I suspect it will spoil the genre of literary biography for me for a while: can the life of any other living writer be anywhere near as horribly gripping? T he American crime writer James Ellroy, born Lee Earle Ellroy, chose his pen name because it was ‘simple, concise and dignified – things I am not’, a statement perhaps underscored by another name he likes being called, ‘Demon Dog’. We learn from Steven Powell’s sober new biography that an overseas publisher who wanted to translate Ellroy’s work (‘an almost unendurable wordstorm of perversity and gore,’ according to one critic) found that translators, deterred by his difficult language and right-wing sympathies, refused to do it. The beginning is very harrowing and very frank and honest which I truly applaud it for. This is warts and all and does not shy away from some very difficult subject matter that is his life but as we move forward to his writing career we are probably getting the most in-depth character study about the man and his gift to the world.Steven Powell obviously has a great understanding of this author and insight into his public and private life. Ellroy is quite an egmatic character and quite the womanizer. He wants to be heard and thinks that everyone is drawn to him. Powell touches on the subject of Ellroy's mothers murder and the turbulent life that seemed to follow Ellroy's childhood.. The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Without question, the tragedy of Jean Ellroy’s unsolved murder in El Monte, California, (1948) has greatly influenced her son’s life and literary career beyond comprehension. There was bias and stigma in that era against divorced single mothers who didn’t meet the powerful idealized societal version of wife, mother, homemaker. There was no evidence that Jean, a nurse, was an alcoholic, promiscuous, or a bad unfit parent. She closely supervised her son’s education, took him to church services and on vacations. We learned that following their acrimonious divorce, his father deliberately poisoned his son's mind against his mother-- parental alienation was unheard of at the time. My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Bloomsbury Academic for an advanced copy of this biography on one of the outstanding and outlandish crime writers of the 20th Century. I have actually never read a James Ellroy novel, although I have seen several of the movie versions. I knew he had a reputation that was somewhat volatile, but had no idea of the depth and breadth of that volatility throughout the course of his lifetime.