James Ellroy

One day in the mid-'90s, the lanky and sometimes manic James Ellroy walked into the brownstone New York office of his publisher, Otto Penzler -- the two were going to a fight that night -- and broke the news: He had just sold the film rights to his novel "L.A. Confidential." "We were laughing so hard we were crying," recalls Penzler, who had published Ellroy on his Mysterious Press. "I was incredulous -- we both agreed it was unfilmable." They were right, of course. And they were also wrong.

READING "The Ellroy Enigma" by Scott Timberg [April 6] reminds me that a movie can never equal the layered complexity of a book. That said, "L.A. Confidential" was still a pretty terrific movie. A few years ago, a friend and I went to hear James Ellroy read at a small theater in Santa Monica. Asked if the actors who played his characters in "L.A. Confidential" were the characters he envisioned when he originally wrote the book, Ellroy replied, "No."

Director David Fincher would do well to bring crime writer James Ellroy along to all of his interviews, as he did just days before the opening of his film "Zodiac." Tall, beanpole thin, the 58-year-old author riffs like a jazz musician on violence, masculinity, the toll of obsession. Ellroy is a charter member of the high-functioning, trying-to-be-happy walking wounded.

The tall, lanky figure entered the room to building applause as the crowd recognized him; he mimed an autoerotic act and grabbed the podium with a vengeance. His shaved head, thick twitchy brows and Joycean eyeglasses screamed maniacal genius, and the performance-honed rant that followed did nothing to betray that. This wasn't how these L.A. Film Festival talks usually start.

My old church is a condo block. The Black Dahlia site remains '50s intact. L.A. is all new and wholly familiar. It's why I ran away and why I ran back. The street grids are unchanged. Overbuilding has blocked out views and blitzed topography. Old buildings abut pocket malls. Old parks are wrapped in iron gates. L.A. is epidemically everywhere and discernible only in glimpses. The L.A. mandate was always enticement and expansion. That marks all growth as just and true.

It's the kind of house Hancock Park is famous for: unemphatic but impressive, with a perfect lawn, fresh coat of paint and ivy crawling up the walls. By Los Angeles standards, this is old-school cool. James Ellroy, all 6 feet 3 of him, is stomping across that manicured lawn, sporting a Hawaiian shirt and golfer's cap and pretending to walk a nonexistent dog. He mimics staring into the window, then simulates masturbating to what he sees inside. "Just like that," he offers.

Reading was anything but a solitary pursuit over the weekend at the 14th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA. Throngs attended dozens of panels that ranged over topics including the literature of outsiders, activism and current political issues. Attendees lined up under a warm Westwood sun to hear the likes of James Ellroy, Ray Bradbury and other literary lights. Also on hand were Michael J. Fox, Danica McKellar, stars from another firmament.

Blood's a Rover A Novel James Ellroy Alfred A. Knopf: 648 pp., $28.95 Here's the new James Ellroy. You pretty much know what you're going to get. Bucketloads of conspiracy theory and 600-plus pages of stripped-down prose strafing you like a machine gun. The book is long, as usual, the sentences short, as ever: "He was a sergeant on the Vegas PD. He was married. He had a chemistry degree. His father was a big Mormon fat cat. Wayne Senior was jungled up all over the nut Right.

While relishing the finger-popping jazz cadence of James Ellroy's beautiful prose, I found myself whispering "Yes, yes, yes" in recognition of every hurt, disappointment and seduction that Los Angeles offers ("The Great Right Place," July 30). It's not necessary to descend to the depths (or climb to the pinnacle) to appreciate the lure of our great city. L.A. is bipolar. It is mean and dirty one minute and sweet and beautiful the next. Los Angeles is the bad boyfriend or psycho girlfriend whom you just can't bring yourself to leave, because in the back of your mind you hope against hope that things are gonna get better.

RE " 'Dahlia,' a Postmortem" (Sept. 10): On behalf of writers everywhere, let me lodge this protest: Not once, in the two-page article, was the name of the screenwriter mentioned. The author of the source material, novelist James Ellroy, admitted he had no direct role in shaping the film, basically crediting director Brian De Palma for what appears on the screen. De Palma mentioned something about "the original draft" and concluded by saying, "I just made the best movie I could out of the book."