Scenes from a literary marriage: James Ellroy, Helen Knode and THE HILLIKER CURSE.

I haven't read enough of the work of crime novelist auteur James Ellroy.  But I speedread through part of Ellroy's latest venture into autobiographic memoir THE HILLIKER CURSE. Unfortunately, it reminded me of a GQ/ESQUIRE article bloated into book form so Ellroy could make quick-and-easy cash waving around his "this is it, hepcats" public persona one more time.

The portion of HILLIKER (premise/hook: Ellroy's mother's mysterious violent death colors Ellroy's relations with women thereafter) I read covered the marriage of Ellroy to the LA WEEKLY film reviewer/liberal provocateur Helen Knode.  Knode, in her own way, has.had the same kind of grandstanding persona as Ellroy; her film reviews often positioned her as the scourge of mainstream Hollywood sexism, while occasional WEEKLY here's-my-life columns rhapsodized on subjects such as the young Helen enjoying carnal delights in bathtubs with Frenchmen.

So, Ellroy and Knode met, made love and married.  Knode found herself putting much of her writing career (one novel called THE TICKET OUT excepted) on hold while Ellroy zoomed to megafame with the film adaptation of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL plus the writing of AMERICAN TABLOID and THE COLD SIX THOUSAND (not to mention his original memoir re the death of his mother, the still-worth-reading MY DARK PLACES).  And the marriage which started out as a hipster-meets-Reaganite variation of Scott-and-Zelda ended up dissolving in an ANNIE HALL manner (with Ellroy closing himself off mentally--and ultimately physically--from Knode; HILLIKER exemplifies this distance by recounting Ellroy's in-the-mind infatuation with opera star Anne Sofie Von Otter).

There could have been a great DOUBLE FANTASY-esque book with alternating chapters written by both Ellroy and Knode examining a loving but competitive-and-ultimately-doomed marriage between two literary stars of varying wattage.

And it's regrettable, to put it mildly, that Ellroy couldn't have given Helen Knode a chance to tell her side of their story (and participate in the royalties as well).

COMMIE GIRL Rebecca Schoenkopf out as editor of LA CITY BEAT.

A stain on alternative journalism has been removed: Rebecca Schoenkopf (who once charmingly told a reader who wrote a complaining letter "f--- you") is no longer editor of LA CITY BEAT, the alternaweekly which underwent an in-your-face-with-slick-magazine-cover makeover last summer.

Schoenkopf (formerly COMMIE GIRL columnist for OC WEEKLY) started her tenure at the paper with a loud fart of an article about how the Los Angeles County Museum of Art should be destroyed because the then-current Chicano art exhibit wasn't sufficiently with-it. And the smirkiness kept coming.....

To Schoenkopf's credit, she brought some talented ex-OC WEEKLY writers (notably Steve Lowery and Jim Washburn) to CITY BEAT. But the general "we're SO better than you right-wing boneheads" bratty 'tude of the pre-Mike Lacey era OC WEEKLY {excepting then-writers such as Victor Infante and Jaimes Palacio) apparently didn't play too well in Los Angeles. And when Schoenkopf's ex-boss Will Swaim was tapped to run CITY BEAT....the results are summarized by Kevin Roderick of LA OBSERVED: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/11/schoenkopf_out_as_citybea.php

Now CITY BEAT looks like it will mutate into what Kit Rachlis' (who runs the old-folks home for former LA WEEKLY writers called LOS ANGELES magazine) version of the LA WEEKLY between the late 80s/early 90s minus the occasional spasms of quirkiness (not-so-fondly remembering John Powers writing about a truffle and an attempted seduction and Helen Knode rhapsodizing about being in a bathtub with a Frenchman)--essentially MOR liberalism.

Which is more than can be expected from the current LA WEEKLY (which ran off Marc Cooper recently), which tilts center/right now (and has Jill "I Still Heart Richard Riordan" Stewart as an editor).

One nervously awaits Mike Lacey bringing Rick "The Finger" Barrs back to L.A. Then the humiliation of the WEEKLY (currently celebrating its 30th anniversary with an issue that brings back and/or namechecks most of its former writers) will be complete.