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This is Your Brain - This is your Brain on LA

James Ellroy 1958 - El Monte California, on the day, almost to the moment that he is notified of the murder of his mother.

James Ellroy 2006.

After all this time, after all these years, he still carries the same 'thousand yard' stare.

This summer I read "My Dark Places" by James Ellroy. I found it to be one of the most stunning books I've ever read. Its not like anything else I've ever read before. James Ellroy suffered from one of the single most traumatic events in anyones life, not just a death of a parent, but a murder. "My Dark Places" is the story of how that horrible event came to be and the history of what occured to the crimes only remaining victim.

The first chapter of the book is the story of his mothers murder told much like a scene in one of his books, told from the perspective of the police and how they investigate the crime. The second chapter is the story told from his perspective, or what a murder of your parent looks like from the eyes of a 10 year old boy. But it doesnt stop there, he goes into many different directions on this same catastrophic event, an event that has never been solved. He eventually takes up the task of reviewing the case and hires a detective to "investigate the investigation" to see if its possible to find out anymore about the murder of his mother. From police files now almost 50 years old, Ellroy and his hired detective find people who were interviewed in the case in 1958 and talk to them about that day from so long ago.

Just the idea of seeking out to find these people, whos only item in common was a single night at work in El Monte California was an idea that I found utterly spellbinding. For example, he tracks down and finds a woman, who at the time in 1958 was a car hop at a restaurant that his mother visted on the night she was murdered. He then finds this former 'car hop' in modern day Reno Nevada. She remembers the case and the night that she was interviewed by the El Monte Police.

Think about that, one night in 1958, you're at work doing your 'car hop' thing. The next thing you know the police are asking you questions, you give them your statement, you go lineups but nothing really happens. Zoom - a lifetime goes by and the El Monte police and the questioning grows smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror as you go down lifes highway. But 40+ years later, the child of the lady that was killed 'way back then' tracks you down and asks you to talk about what you might remember from that time.

It reminded me of what scientists do when they throw atomic components at each other in a labratory to create a collision. The collision creates tracks on the plates, which reveals to the scientists a great deal about the physics of the components. Here was this collision, this disaster in the life of Little James Ellroy and all here are the parts that flew out in a dozen directions from that collision.

In the life and writing of James Ellroy, no matter where he is or what hes doing; everything leads back to a night in 1958, in El Monte California.

"My Dark Places" is a book that tracks the most personal of disasters and tracks the damage across his life and the life of many other people who just happened to have been interviewed or somewhat or somehow trangentally linked to this one night in 1958 in a suburb in LA.

Having been born in and lived in LA for most of my early life, I've always been atracted to anyone who can write about life in Los Angeles.

Most writers don't get LA. But Ellroy does.

Here's in an article that he wrote for the LA Times in July of this year that explains how and why he has come back to LA.

What I like about Ellroy as a writer is he taught me that a fragmented sentence is just fine as long as the sentence has something to say and that a sentence with three words can often express an idea clearer than a sentence with one hundred words.

Posted @ September 04, 2006 10:28 PM | Current Affairs