I tried telling Jackie Meaux’s story in many different ways. She started as a character in another story. She is the pivotal dead girl in a shaggy detective novel. It’s an okay stab at the L.A. crime fiction novel. I was living in L.A. hoping osmosis would transform me into a screenwriter. I’d been writing nothing but criminal screenplays. Why not take a stab at Chandler and Ellroy?
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago but educated in London. Saw action in The Great War and made his way back to Los Angeles, alcoholism and eventually writing. He took Hammett’s Spade and made him more insolent, (if that’s possible) urbane and quick-witted. Philip Marlowe was a modern knight-errant.
James Ellory was something else. He calls himself the Demon-Dog of American Lit. He’s Hammett and Chandler on Benzedrine. A more brutal and romantic Ross MacDonald. A writer who takes clipped sentences to its zenith. Hard-boiled writing starts with Hemingway and ends with Ellroy. So, Ellroy would have you believe.
There is something to be said for cultivating a writer’s persona. Hammett had the world-weary Pinkerton in his bag; Chandler had the booze-soaked bard down, and Ellroy, well, when he was nine years old, his mother was murdered, and they never found the killer. What else could he do in life but become a crime writer?
Los Angeles crime fiction is legendary, to say the least. Its amalgamation with the film industry is to blame. The glitz and the glam and the black tar underneath mingle together to create a well-lit hell. It’s the palm trees and the white light and yada, yada, yada. It’s paradise, but it’s not. It could all burn down in a second.
Chandler, Ellroy, and MacDonald are the gold standard. Not just for L.A. crime fiction but crime fiction in general. They’ve inspired me. Especially, Ellroy. I’ve tried really hard to mimic his ferocity and brutality, but I think only a man who’s gone through what he has can write the way he writes. You have to find your own voice.
I realized what kind of voices I was drawn to as a reader and a mimicker. They were mostly white male voices. Makes sense. But none of these guys were writing about black women. Probably for good reason, too. I should mimic that, right. I shouldn’t try to tell certain stories from certain points of view. We’ve covered this.
So, where is this all leading? I mentioned these California crime writers for a reason. They are white and they are institutionally racist. Ellroy, whether he admits it or not, is self-aware enough to depict his white-cop characters as such. They’re not redeemable in any way. But it sells books.
It got me to thinking.
Josh Mayhall 