Here's a question concerning James Elroy, the best selling author of several crime novels, including LA Confidential, and The Black Dahlia, both of which have been turned into movies.
Since learning about exactly what being an Aspie is some time ago, I've found myself looking back to author James Elroy's autobiography, My Dark Places, and recognized certain Asperger traits - including some that are in myself.
When Elroy wrote about the unsolved murder of his mother when he was a child, he recalled he felt almost nothing - except happiness that he could go live with his estranged father.
While growing up, he was the poster child of social clumsiness. He admits to being "too pathetic" for his friends to hang around.
When his father was unable to sell hundreds of stadium cushions in a get-rich-quick-scheme, Elroy recalled how he had taken the things to school to try to sell - and only succeeded in making himself look like an idiot.
He rode a ridiculous bike that he referred to as his "n****r pimp ride," which only made him look like a loser.
When his father put him into a primarily Jewish Junior High School, he tried getting attention by standing up in class to make anti-Semitic and racist rants as means to get any kind of attention. It only served to get the hell beaten out of him.
He would wait sitting in the dark for his father to come home, because as he explained, no one had ever taught him sitting in the dark wasn't normal.
All his life, Elroy was obsessed with crime -either fictitious crime novels, or real life crime that occurred in his home town of LA. Most of all, he was obsessed with the unsolved murder of hi mother, and that of Elizabeth Short of the Black Dahlia fame - both of which he fantasized about, and replayed again and again in his mind well into adulthood.
As an adult, Elroy (a self educated junior high drop out) when he wasn't working at low paying jobs or from getting money from sympathetic relatives, was eking out a living as a petty criminal. Much of what little money he had went to self medicating drug use which lasted for years.
He tried to pick up women at bookstores and libraries, and only later came to understand they were repulsed by him due to his lack of hygiene.
While working as a golf caddy, he'd walk aimlessly through the golf course at night, fantasizing about crime and sex, till ideas for novels crystallized (this wandering and daydreaming is one of my own symptoms which set off the light bulb in my head that Elroy was also an Aspie).
In many of his novels, Elroy obsessed about the Black Dahlia murder, and his heroins fit his mother's physical description. His leading male characters are wounded, self loathing characters.
In interviews, Elroy is very verbose, packing a million dollar vocabulary. While he has learned to handle himself in social situations, he can sometimes come across as self-aggrandizing and overbearing, though perhaps he doesn't realize this isn't proper behavior.
This is only a bit of information, as I no longer own My Dark Places, and it's been years since I've read the book. Still, I see a lot of Asperger's traits in James Elroy.
Does anyone else, or am I full of crap?
Last edited by Kraichgauer on 03 Jan 2011, 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
03 Jan 2011, 7:09 pm
