Fearing the details

James Ellroy has this almost encyclopedic knowledge of forties and fifties Los Angeles, which frightens me. Frightens me both by its breadth and by the visions it fills me with. These images of death and true-crime, grit in your teeth deposited by a tough wind blowing against you, walking down bad parts of Sunset and being approached by seedy looking men asking if they can take your picture.

It's hard to believe a world so corrupt and stylish ever existed, and perhaps it didn't, perhaps I can only read about them in the pages of Chandler-esque pulp crime. My idea of romance has always been to find these places, travel to towns led to by out of the way back-roads and meet women in diners with uncommon names like Betsy or Lorna.

James Ellroy is haunted by the place he writes of, I think, or more by the women that are killed there. Sometimes, ideas get into you so badly that you must know them inside and out, find what makes them tick, formulate theories. His writing reeks of that kind of mania. I admire it.

I try to duplicate his dedication to detail but find I cannot handle it, immersing myself in anything for long periods makes me manic, fills my head with obsession, gives me bad dreams that aren't really about sleep. It is a shame because often, out of obsession applied toward a productive endeavour, comes purpose and the respect of ones peers. Tonight I think I will sleep unsoundly of death and the sickly scent of downtown dives smeared in these pages. Maybe someday I won't fear the details so much.