Ellroy and emotion

Posted on | January 22, 2010 | No Comments

“So that women with love me. That’s why I do everything I do.”

I missed it on Sunday but fortunately caught the repeat driving to work this morning of the crime novelist James Ellroy on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. The writer was incredibly open about his motivations – for writing, and with women – many of which will be captured in his new book, on his life with women, to be published this year. That’s when he admitted that he writes ’so that women will love me’, and that in all his women he has been searching for the attributes of his mother, who was murdered in 1958, and his half-a-century attempt at address for the relief and ambiguity with which he, a kid, received news of his mother’s death.

When Kirsty Young pressed him on the ease/difficulty of turning from being a 12-hour a day benzedrex inhaler junkie to a disciplined novelist, his answer was fascinating. Yes, it was overnight. The extremity of the power within himself (“I hate losing, and I neve give up”) that had nearly led to his self-destruction was turned channeled into a more positive furrow, and he became a disciplined, meticulous, creative human being. Overnight.

I listened with intent. I had just spend a difficult night mulling over my struggle of always taking on too much to feed/deal with where I am now,  rather than focusing on where I want to be. The word struggle gives it away – it’s not done lightly. And it impacted on my partner – unfairly, made her sad, drove a little distance between us.

I’m not an obsessive as Ellroy, self-admittedly, is (he likes to think; to brood) but I understand how difficult, how hard it is to be creative. How much constant confidence it requires. And hard work. Because he was caddying to make a living until his sixth novel was published. Publication itself does not deliver confidence and release from the pressures of ‘where you are at now’. It has to be internal. Something inner, stronger than the vagaries of the day.

And importantly, despite the depth of emotion and searching that Ellroy reached before turning to writing, what was clear from the interview was that life, for him, was ‘a groove’. Hugely meaningful, enjoyable. Ths is what allows you to write – happiness, pleasure. My Dark Places (the name of his memoir about his mother) might get you there and provide the content, but the pleasure is what gets the books written.

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