Not Your Average Literary Reading

James Ellroy approaches his readings as performance pieces, self-assuredly distant from the notion of retiring novelist uncomfortable in front of a crowd. The thought that the author of the “L.A. Quartet” and the recently-published “Hollywood Nocturnes” could be anything other than extreme seems hardly plausible. Intense, lurid, acerbic, quick-witted and funny, Ellroy reached new heights at the Met Theater. Packed with people--even the aisles were jammed--this Hollywood home to a long-running series of readings hosted a double bill of sorts: James Ellroy read from his novella, “Dick Contino’s Blues,” based on the real-life story of 1950s accordion star Dick Contino. He was followed by a live appearance by Mr. Accordion himself, accompanied on drums by his son, Peter Contino.

Ellroy articulates the sleaze-ball fury of his writing in an elegantly elongated way: He virtually acts out his fiction as he reads, standing with legs spread apart, Jack Purcell sneakers gripping the floor, arms moving, blue blazer, silk rep tie, white-collared pink shirt, not fooling anyone into mistaking him for a model of eastern literary sobriety. He read the prologue and first chapter of the story of Dick Contino’s mid-professional life--after the meteoric rise to stardom and the fall, he found himself, an accused draft dodger, trying to stage a comeback in late ‘50s Los Angeles. Contino’s inner life is in contrast to the corrupt politicians, rogue cops, sex-crazed weirdos and gangsters of Ellroy’s four-novel suite of decay and brutality.

The reading was inspired: Contino was drawn larger than life as co-conspirator, victim, utter oddball and bizarre artist.

Contino made the leap from the opening chapter’s Crescendo Club stage in 1958 to the Met Theater with a shy plunge into a set of 1950s accordion gems, interspersed with anecdotes about struggling with his zigzag career, the burden of being labeled a draft dodger (although he served two years in Korea and five in the Reserves; his realization that most people wanted a scapegoat, not the truth) and Ellroy’s retrieval of Contino from pleasant obscurity in Las Vegas. Dick Contino, trim, tan and 60ish, tore the place up.

Together, they answered questions in an almost brotherly way, two gifted misfits from an era in Los Angeles history that no one should live through again nor ever forget.