詹姆斯·埃尔罗伊

李·厄尔·“詹姆斯”·艾尔罗伊（Lee Earle “James” Ellroy；1948年3月4日—）是一名美国犯罪小说作家和散文家，1981年出版第一部小说《黑色安魂曲》，之后的著名作品包括《黑色大理花》、《绝命之乡》、 《铁面特警队》等。作品以密集的情节和悲观主义世界观为特征。

公共形象

艾尔罗伊喜欢夸耀自己，并以使用脏话出名。在一次纽约时报的采访中，他说：“我是小说大师。我也是有史以来最伟大的犯罪小说家。我之于犯罪小说就像托尔斯泰之于俄罗斯小说，贝多芬之于音乐。”

Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American crime fiction writer and essayist.

Life

Early life

Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Geneva Odelia (née Hilliker), was a nurse. His father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. His parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved to the suburb, El Monte.

At the age of seven, Ellroy saw his mother naked and began to sexually fantasize about her. He struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship with her, and tried to catch glimpses of her nude. Ellroy stated that "I lived for naked glimpses. I hated her and lusted for her..."

On June 22, 1958, when Ellroy was 10 years old, his mother was raped and murdered. Ellroy later described his mother as "sharp-tongued [and] bad-tempered", unable to keep a steady job, alcoholic, and sexually promiscuous. His first reaction upon hearing of her death was relief: he could now live with his father, whom he preferred. His father was more permissive and allowed Ellroy to do as he pleased, namely be "left alone to read, to go out and peep through windows, prowl around and sniff the air." The police never found his mother's killer, and the case remains unsolved. The murder, along with reading The Badge by Jack Webb (a book comprising sensational cases from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department, a birthday gift from his father), were important events of Ellroy's youth.

Ellroy's inability to come to terms with the emotions surrounding his mother's murder led him to transfer them onto another murder victim, Elizabeth Short. Nicknamed the "Black Dahlia," Short was a young woman murdered in 1947, her body cut in half and discarded in Los Angeles, in a notorious and unsolved crime. Throughout his youth, Ellroy used Short as a surrogate for his conflicting emotions and desires. His confusion and trauma led to a period of intense clinical depression, from which he recovered only gradually.

Education

In 1962, Ellroy began to attend Fairfax High School, a predominantly Jewish high school. While in high school, he began to engage in a variety of outrageous acts, many anti-Semitic in nature. He joined the American Nazi Party, purchased Nazi paraphernalia, sang the Horst-Wessel-Lied at school, mailed Nazi pamphlets to girls he liked, openly criticized John F. Kennedy, and advocated for the reinstatement of slavery. His "Crazy Man Act", as Ellroy describes it, was a plea for attention and got him beaten up and eventually expelled from Fairfax High School in 11th grade, after ranting about Nazism in his English class.

Ellroy's father died soon after this, with his father's last words to him being, "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you."

Early career

After being expelled from high school, Ellroy then joined the U.S. Army for a short period of time. On enlisting, Ellroy soon decided he did not belong there and convinced an army psychiatrist he was unfit for combat. He was discharged after three months.