Conversations with James Ellroy

Lunch and Tea with James Ellroy

104 Lunch and Tea with James Ellroy M. G. Smout/2001 From The Barcelona Review (May–June 2001), no. 24. Reprinted by permission. 1. Lunch: Easter Sunday, April 15, 2001. Maritímo Restaurant, Barcelona. Jeez, the man’s a giant. The person towering over me and shaking my hand looks nothing like the photo commonly found in his books—the one where he looks like a squat, chubby, neofascist British politician circa 1950. “Great hair. If I had hair, I’d have it like yours.” The man is a charmer and I am won over in one sentence. He then asks about my background and says how much he likes the north of England, Manchester and so on. Americans are like that, they can go on autopilot extracting basic social information, but Ellroy’s probings seem genuine. He loves meeting people and our arrival (myself and TBR editor Jill Adams) has sparked an interest, maybe even revitalized him a little. Barcelona is the quiet start to the Spanish leg of his massive book tour, but he still has to speak slowly and carefully as he and his hosts—Spanish publishing house Ediciones B—can only communicate in ponderous English. On our arrival—a Brit and a Yank without a tape recorder —Ellroy relaxes and, not performing for journalists, is off, every pent up sentence let loose in a flood of rapid-fire speech, vitriol, slander, and wonderfully sick humor. In a lull, Santi, on my left, says sadly, “I could understand him until you two came along.” We are in an ugly, crowded, box-like all-window restaurant whose saving grace is an incredible view of the old port and the dockside, and good food. An added bonus for Ellroy are the German shepherds in the boatyard below. Their presence often draws his attention. Ediciones B editor Susana Andres asks for a menu in English, but it is a wasted effort as Ellroy is the world’s fastest chooser of food. He doesn’t eat meat so goes straight to fish and from M. G. SMOUT / 2001 105 there anything with the word “cod.” He starts off with a raw salt-cod salad—a Catalan specialty—and follows it with a huge cod steak in a cream sauce. It is very rich and defeats Jill, but Ellroy is a hearty eater and scoffs the lot in minutes. He also has a frightening array of vitamin pills and supplements lined up on the table. These he washes down with copious amounts of green tea which he has brought along for the tour, producing bags from his pockets to plop in hot water after testing the temperature with his finger. The fear of illness, the upheaval of traveling (alone) and being on a tight tour schedule, calls for strict cautionary measures to help combat a persistent apprehension over health matters which leads to nervous check-ups in hotel mirrors. Every blemish, mark on his skin, wheeze, or whatever urges him to seek transatlantic phone help from his wife, writer Helen Knode. Her name crops up a lot. It is mid-April and he won’t finish this tour until July, and although he actually enjoys it, you can tell he desperately wants to be back in Kansas City. The vitamin pills, the no-booze and tobacco, working out in hotel gyms (if they have them—no such luck in Spain) all speak of worries other than just surviving a tour. He is worried about getting old. This worry has added extra depth to the characters in his latest novel, The Cold Six Thousand, but it also serves as a reminder that Ellroy has quite a few “missing ” years which he fully intends to recuperate in some way. And looking at the very fit and bouncy man opposite me, wolfing down cod like it was going out of fashion, waxing lyrical on all things and being very in love with Helen and life in general, I see a hyperactive teenager without zits and not someone in his early fifties. The only way James Ellroy is going to grow old gracefully is if someone sedates him. The man is all energy—he must have been one hell of a drinking buddy. The Spanish contingent are the only drinkers at the table (and the only smokers, although they kindly refrain). We touch on the subject of alcohol abuse and the effects it has on one’s character. He has recently finished...