Author of hard-hitting Los Angeles crime novels such as LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy had an early life not dissimilar to those of the characters he writes about. His mother was strangled in a still-unsolved murder, and he was for years a frequently homeless alcoholic who spent time in jail.

In person, though, he’s scrupulously polite, with a distinctly old-school American manner. He’s also startlingly erudite.

My father had cousins from Scotland who I could barely understand.

They would show up drunk and defame Catholics. That’s all they talked about. My mother’s people came from Britain and my grandfather was a Scottish pastor from Aberdeen. This is the part of the world where I come from.

• Full story at the Daily Mail.

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James Ellroy’s American Apocalypse

Ellroy is a master of shtick. Over the course of a few minutes he can veer from over-the-top braggadocio ("I’m the Beethoven of crime fiction") to hipster jive ("can’t make the scene without caffeine") to unapologetic perversion ("I’m a sex fiend!") to biblical righteousness ("I’m a Scottish minister’s son, and I believe in privation and a personal responsibility to God").

• Source: Rolling Stone.

• Filed under Americas, Arts, Scottish Christian News Monitor, Sectarianism.