Blood's A Rover - Ellroy On Blood's A Rover

Ellroy On Blood's A Rover

Ellroy commented on the scope of Blood's a Rover several times during his tour to promote The Cold Six Thousand. When asked if he still saw Underworld U.S.A. as a trilogy, Ellroy responded, "American Tabloid is the first volume of my Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. The Cold Six Thousand is my second. I will soon begin work on the epic third volume, a ghastly tale of political malfeasance and imperialistic bad juju from 1968 to 1972." He said the book would have "a different style entirely" than The Cold Six Thousand.

Ellroy said he would steer clear of the Watergate scandal: "The Cold Six Thousand... covers the matrix of American politics and crime from 1963 to 1968; the first, American Tabloid, covers 1958 to 1963; a third will proceed to 1972. You can see exactly where the story's going: the '68 election, the Mob's foreign casino plan, Nixon in office, all that. I'll stop short of Watergate, because Watergate bores me." He also told interviewer Robert Birnbaum, "It's been done to death. And most of the characters are still alive; thus you can't use them fictionally."

Ellroy addresses the book's strong racial overtone in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Oh yeah... You're supposed to be seduced and shocked by the casual racism in Blood's a Rover. This book is so full of race shit, it's fucking hilarious shit. There's a lot of scenes of black people and white people cracking jokes. And as much as the people grandstand about race in this book, they're driven by racial animus and the idea of racial reconciliation. Because of political correctness we are losing the outrageousness of humor. I always think of Frank O'Connor's line from a million years ago: "a literature that cannot be vulgarized is not literature at all and will not last."