A long time ago, when buffalo roamed the plains and I was in elementary school, I went to see hockey hero Phil Esposito at a department store, where he had been hired to sign autographs. He was too busy chatting with some adult muckety-muck to bother to even make eye contact with us kids. I didn’t keep his autograph long, as it was nothing more than a reminder that sometimes people with great skills can conduct themselves like jerks. A couple more opportunities to see athletes in unfavourable lights (including Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon) in adult life made me happy to get out of sports reporting and into crime writing. You have no expectations of good behaviour from criminals. Anything nice is a bonus.
This brings me to my interview earlier this month with novellist James Ellroy, who you might call a grown-up writing hero. I was curious what he’d be like to chat with. I was hopeful wouldn’t turn out to be a jerk (a la Phil Esposito and Warren Moon) and ruin my enjoyment of his writing. I’m happy to report that he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. True, he had a product to sell but he seemed to really care about answering questions as fully as possible. It’s nice when someone can have a skill and not use that as an excuse to act like a jerk.