ENDANGERED SPECIES:
Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives
SUMMARY: Ellroy is one of 12 authors spotlighted in a collection of interviews conducted by Lawrence Grobel and recently published in trade paperback by Da Capo Press, June 2001. "Endangered Species" features "James Ellroy — There's Never Been Anybody Like Me in American Letters," a long interview conducted in 1998. Portions of the interview appeared that same year in Playboy Japan. Other authors featured include Elmore Leonard, Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, J.P. Donleavy, Allen Ginsberg, Alex Haley, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates and Neil Simon.
Grobel elicits some interesting material from Ellroy, including his recounting of beating a Doberman Pinscher to death with a two by four following a botched shoplifting escapade. He also shares some interesting insights into the age difference between Kim Basinger and Russell Crowe and the resulting oedipal implications in the film adaptation of "L.A. Confidential." The interview concludes with Ellroy's admission that for several years when he couldn't sleep, he would reenact Ernest Hemingway's 1961 suicide by shotgun. "There were times when my mind was racing so hard that that sounded like a good thing."
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