Legendary crime writer James Ellroy talks about his mother’s death and his obsessive search for “atonement in women.” The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women is about guilt and the power of malediction. Ellroy describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his love affairs and marriages, his nervous breakdown, and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the woman he’s been searching for.
Guests:
James Ellroy
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Comments [15]
the guy is brilliant. you've all got some addictive fixation with a stepford vanilla bland "normalcy",that quite frankly, creeps me out. maybe he mirrors something a lot of you can't or don't want to deal with.
Great stuff! He's terrific, get over yourselves.
Ellroy is brilliant and anybody who did not get that he was schticking on this interview missed the point.
let's hope he really reconsiders relocating to NY state when his kids begin college...this was one of the strangest "train wrecks" I've ever listened to on WNYC...I was simultaneously repelled and compelled...
Ellroy sounds like he's a few fries short of a happy meal, is it any wonder women keep divorcing him?
What a nutbar.
Yet Ellroy's strange, eccentric reading of his own work is strangely compelling. I won't be buying, though!
Miles O'Brien is doing a great job subbing for Lopate this week. I don't know much about O'Brien, but he handled Ellroy's bizarre mien remarkably well, letting the man's strangeness speak for itself. I love Lenny, but I'd happily tune in to more of Miles, too.
You handled that interview so well. I would have been backing out the studio door, saying gulp, gulp, homminna homminna.
Am I the only one who found the shift from Tony Blair to James Ellroy so jarring that I had to turn off the radio.
who is this guy. is it april 1st. this is stranger than lenny's jerry lewis interview
Did this guy write his memoir in crayon, whilst dressed up and imagining himself as a feminist version of Roger Waters in lipstick acting out Steve Buscemi in Trees Lounge...the dude can't even read the first page of his book!
Ellroy is crazier than the day is long!
This is delicious!
Is he drunk?
I'm calling a vet...we have one sick pup here
Ellroy should not do any more "promotion" for this book. He sounds angry and a bit crazy.
oh my GOd! this guy sounds like a creep. Breaking in and stealing women's underwear is very serious. This guy is making it sound as if he 'kinda used to have problems.'
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