James Ellroy has been awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters by French Culture minister Frederic Mitterand. According Le Point, Mitterand venerated Ellroy as a ‘master of dark dreams and counter history, truly one of the great names of modern literature’. In turn, Ellroy paid homage to French literary culture, citing Stendhal, Proust, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir and Genet as writers without whom he could not have written as he does.
Mitterand’s broad assessment of Ellroy is scarcely mind-blowing, but never was the phrase ‘master of dark dreams’ better applied. As Time once put it, ‘Ellroy rips into American culture like a chainsaw in an abattoir’, which perhaps explains why his books are so popular in France. Ellroy’s naked examination of the private nightmare of public policy, which was the subject matter of his seminal Underworld USA trilogy, is reminiscent of the corruption scandals that perennially beset French public life. Currently, President Sarkozy’s alleged involvement in the Bettancourt saga and his Cabinet’s rumoured sexual antics have some parallels with the cast in Ellroy’s American Tabloid: describing Joe Kennedy’s questionable relationship with Jimmy Hoffa, JFK’s sexual incontinence and Hoover’s dedicated voyeurism, supported by sinister freakshows from Hollywood, Batista’s Cuba and the CIA. Ellroy creates the darkest and bloodiest of dreams: no wonder he numbers Stendhal and Camus among his foremost influences.
Eva Marie Sainte, siren, star of North by Northwest and friend and co-star of Yves Montand, and Gus Van were also bestowed with the honour.
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