James Ellroy Really Wants You to Be His Facebook Friend
Words cannot adequately convey the gist of the Letter to Booksellers on the back cover of the ARC of James Ellroy’s new novel BLOOD’S A ROVER, so here it is, verbatim:
In all its mellifluous and macho-maimed magnificence: my new novel, Blood's A Rover.
Knopf will drop this atom bomb of a book on you September 22. Your job is to groove it and grok its groin-grabbing gravity between now and then. From that point on: you handsell it to the book-buying public; I appear at your store and drive legions of my fans and your customers nuts; we all make out and give publishing a cash-cascading and profit-pronging boost in a bum marketplace!!!
Dig it!!!!!
The novel covers 1968-1972. It's a baaaaaad-ass historical romance — huge in scope, deep in its exploration of the era, filled with my trademark craaaaazy shit, and suffused with a heightened sense of belief and the corollaries of political conversation and revolution. Oh, yeah — this is a book for these times!
You've got Howard "Dracula" Hughes, Gay Edgar Hoover, and Tricky Dick Nixon. You've got the mob's evil eyes scoping the Dominican Republic. You've got voodoo in Haiti, a vicisiou armored-car heist, and the Feds out to deep-sixi the black militant movement. More than anything else, you've got three obsessed right-wing toadies grapping with the horror of their misdeeds – and seeking redemption in the peron of my greatest female character: The Red Goddess Joan.
Read this book.
Grab its greatness.
Find me on Facebook and let me know what you think (post on my wall!)
Yours truly,
James Ellroy
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Admittedly, I would have been shocked by a more sedate, formal letter, but it's definitely one of the more memorable extras to accompany an advance copy.
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