This Storm

by James Ellroy

“I’m entranced. That’s worse. You acknowledge that you ain’t got a chance, so you act even dumber than you usually do.”

“There’s too much going on out there. God’s telling us something.”

Der Führer—style purveyor to the world’s great unwashed.

“I’m considering failure and the means not to repeat it.

Lustful men and corrupt women. It was ghastly business.

“Our mandate is to foil sabotage and make money.”

This storm, this savaging disaster.

We’re all goldbugs. We’re all in this together. It’s all one story, you see.

Lawyers will fuck you when no one else will.

We share one soul and one fate. Our shit’s all interlocked. We’re as one and fucked-up by life’s follies. We swirl as our foolish fate plays itself out.

leitmotif

Early-wartime L.A. was a time of great crimes and witheringly ambiguous solutions. It was a time to celebrate the shit-kicking American spirit and our mass resolve to see this thing through. Early-wartime L.A. The booze and the muzzle-flash love affairs. There was no better time to howl and throw parties.

Early-wartime L.A. Profiteers and privateers. My most valued Kameraden.

This is my war and my country. Do not mock the love that I hold for both. I willed thunderstorms as a child in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I must do that here and now. Reminiscenza, this storm, this savaging disaster. My options are do everything or do nothing.