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Shortlisted for the H.R.F. Keating Award 2020James Ellroy’s identity as a crime writer is rooted in his extraordinary life story and relationship with his home city of Los Angeles. Beginning with the unsolved murder of his mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, in 1958, Ellroy’s early life played a large role in shaping his obsessions with murder, the criminal underworld of L.A. and the redemptive power of the feminine. Ellroy’s life could be seen as a brutal, visceral and emotionally exhausting realisation of the American Dream, a theme he has explored in his writing to the extent that he is credited with reinventing crime fiction. The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World is an in-depth, scholarly study of the work of James Ellroy, featuring leading Ellroy scholars such as Anna Flügge, Jim Mancall and Rodney Taveira. Moving from Ellroy's early detective novels to his later epic works of historical fiction, it explores how Ellroy found his place in the history of the genre by building on, and then surpassing, the works of authors who influenced him such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Joseph Wambaugh. It also examines Ellroy's impact on contemporary writers and on the cultural perception of L.A., which has been his legacy through the L.A. Quartet novels.The ‘Big Somewhere’ is not a geographical location, but a conglomeration of the cinematic, historical and fictional worlds that influenced Ellroy, from film noir to the Kennedy era in American politics, and on which he, in turn, has left his mark.
Steven Powell is an Honorary Fellow in the English Department at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is the editor of Conversations with James Ellroy (2012) and 100 American Crime Writers (2012). His most recent work is James Ellroy: Demon Dog of Crime Fiction (2016).
IntroductionSteven Powell (University of Liverpool, UK)Part I: Genre and Literary Influences1. “Tragic Power”: The Influence of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett on the Work of James EllroySteven Powell (University of Liverpool, UK)2. “No Man's Land”: Broken Men and Traumatized Police Officers in The Onion Field and The Black DahliaJim Mancall (Wheaton College, USA)Part II: Ellroy and Noir3. “Capable of Anything”: Dudley Smith’s Role in Ellroy’s L.A. QuartetsAnna Flügge (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany)4. “Geography is Destiny”: Cinematising the City in the L.A. QuartetNathan Ashman (University of Surrey, UK)Part III: "America was Never Innocent": Underworld and Government Power Structures5. Between Althusser and Foucault: Power Relations in James Ellroy’s Underworld USA TrilogyRubén Peinado Abarrio (Independent Scholar)6. Paradoxes of Race in the L.A. QuartetJoshua Meyer (University of Western Sydney, Australia)7. The Divine Violence of Underworld USARodney Taveira (University of Sydney, Australia)8. From Paranoia to the Contrary: Plotting the Noir World of James EllroyWoody Haut (Independent Scholar)Part IV: Ellroy and After: The Ellrovian Influence on Authors and Genre9. ‘‘A Pointed Demythologization”: The Influence of James Ellroy's Novels on Megan Abbott’s Revisionism of the Femme FataleDiana Powell (University of Liverpool, UK)10. Individual and Institutionalised Corruption: The Influence of James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet on the Novels of David PeaceDavid Bishop (Independent Scholar) and Steven Powell (University of Liverpool, UK)BibliographyIndex
[Ellroy’s] unique qualities as a crime writer are well captured, and cogently analysed, in The Big Somewhere … I think that anyone who is a serious Ellroy fan will find The Big Somewhere insightful and interesting.
