James Ellroy on Technology and Writing

The Author's Anti-Technology Stance

James Ellroy, known as the 'mad dog of American crime fiction,' has a unique approach to technology. He does not own a computer, has never owned a mobile phone, and has never sent an email. His publicist explains that a phone interview will be OK, and when Ellroy picks up his landline, it becomes clear that he has a distinct perspective on the digital age.

A Life Without Digital Dependency

'Everything is very complex and it's satanic to me, the dependency that people have on computers,' Ellroy, 78, says cheerfully in a bass baritone drawl from his pad in Denver, Colorado. 'I don't engage in internet chat and I understand there's all this crazy shit on the internet and people with the most outlandish beliefs on God's green Earth.'

An Unconventional Writing Process

Ellroy's writing process is equally unconventional. For his 18th novel, Red Sheet, published on 9 June, Ellroy has a system where his handwritten pages are transmitted to a retired FBI couple in southern France who magically send typed pages back. In the absence of Google, he has a researcher who 'reads books, summarises and sends me the pages.'

The Inspiration Behind Red Sheet

Red Sheet looks pretty research-intensive. Picking up where Ellroy's previous book, The Enchanters, left off, the action is set in October 1962 in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. The then attorney general, Robert F Kennedy, fears a domestic backlash from communists and orders the overzealous Los Angeles police department to launch a 'red probe.'

A Contrarian View of History

Ellroy set out to dethrone the Hollywood 10, a group of directors, producers and screenwriters – including Dalton Trumbo – who were subpoenaed before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1947 and refused to testify about possible communist ties. Their refusal to cooperate led studios to create the first systematic Hollywood blacklist.

A Complex Author

Such anecdotes suggest that inside the hardboiled Ellroy lurks a soft centre. Born in Los Angeles in 1948, the son of an accountant and nurse whose unhappy marriage ended in 1954, he has previously summarised his own life like this: 'Boy's mother murdered. Boy's life shattered. Boy grows up homeless alcoholic jailbird. Jailbird cleans up and writes his way to salvation. Jailbird becomes the Mad Dog of American Crime Fiction.'