James Ellroy has some advice. This is it: “Observe the civil contract. Don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. Address everyone as Mr. and Mrs. I’ll pay you to have your tattoos removed. Don’t say dumb shit like ‘like, it’s like, whatever.’ Don’t read movie reviews. Go see the movie and decide for yourself. Be respectful. The quickest way to sound like a dipshit is to call a respected filmmaker you don’t personally know Marty.” This was just one of the marvelously frank and dead-on pieces of wisdom imparted by the self-identified “demon dog of American literature” at a reading and interview held last night at the New York Public Library and hosted by the Young Lions.

After a cocktail hour in which young literati milled about sipping on VeeV Acai, the dapper, mustachioed Ellroy, the author of LA Confidential and American Tabloid, among other gripping, lurid, crime novels, took to the stage dressed in a grey pin striped suit, pink shirt with French collar, a bowtie and pocket square (not matching). Ellroy then growled, yelped, snorted and gestured (waved, banged on the podium, flicked off the audience, pointed at the audience, pointed at the ceiling, pointed at the top of his head, pantomimed jerking off and bent at the knee and leaned waaay back) through the first two chapters of his latest novel, Blood’s A Rover. The book is the final installment in his Underworld USA trilogy, which he modestly identifies as his masterpiece. Ellroy admitted that he honed his fine performing skills in 7th grade, by giving book reports on books that didn’t exist. The fictitious novels were about, in Ellroy’s words, “Action shit. Sex shit.” Judging from his impassioned reading of Blood’s A Rover, it’s about much the same. Ellroy then sat down with Nathaniel Rich, an editor at The Paris Review (and the son of New York Time’s columnist Frank Rich, who was in the audience). Rich has previously interviewed Ellroy for 20 hours (the results of which are in the current issue of The Paris Review) and so got to the good stuff quick. Discussed: That on January 26, 1977, while caddying on the eighth hole of a golf course, Ellroy thought, “Hey God, let me start the book tonight,” and began his first novel that evening. That Ellroy’s father’s dying advice was to try and pick up every waitress he meets. That Ellroy believes when writing, “Every word that begins with a hard “C” has to start with a “K,” because that’s funny shit.” That Ellroy outlines his books in such detail the outlines regularly run to 400 pages. That Ellroy keeps his complex plots clear in his mind because he is very smart. Also, because he “ignores the world. I was born to live in dark rooms and think heavy shit. I don’t like things that crowd the frame of consciousness. All this shit out there messes with me. So ignore it. I don’t read or go on the internet or go to the movies or watch television. I ignore the present so I can live in the past.”