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7 The Hybrid Nature of Autobiography: James Ellroy’s
The Hilliker Curse Rethought as a Deleuzian Rhizome
Melanija Larisa Fabčič
A book itself is a little machine; [...] But when one writes, the
only question is which other machine the literary machine can
be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work.
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 4)
7.1 What is Ellroy’s Literary Machine Plugged Into?
James Ellroy’s life and literary work are pervaded by a very special dynamism: a
strong desire – an obsession – that can be traced back to an event in his early
childhood: the unsolved murder of his mother Geneva Hilliker when he was 10
years old. This desire not only fuels many of his fictional works, but is also the
main focus of his two autobiographies: The Hilliker Curse (2010) and My Dark
Places (1996). The murder of Ellroy’s mother can also be seen as a “rupture” in
terms of Deleuzian rhizomatics, a philosophy Deleuze developed together with his
writing partner Félix Guattari in their seminal (“anticultural”) book A Thou-sand
Plateaus (1993). This is also the theory on which I will base my analysis of
Ellroy’s autobiography The Hilliker Curse , that is, schizoanalysis, the method
Deleuze and Guattari apply in A Thousand Plateaus. Arguing that theirs is an
“analysis of desire,” they note that it is both practical and political in nature (1993,
203).
In order to understand why I chose this particular method and why I find it es-
pecially suited for approaching autobiographical writing, we need to take a closer
look at some of the main concepts from the theory of rhizomatics. Let us first
address the term “desire” in connection with Ellroy’s writing, since I consider it
to be a crucial element in understanding the intricate connection between his life
and his work. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the best way to approach a book
that is mapping (a) desire is by means of schizoanalysis. In the context of A
Thousand Plateaus “desire moves and produces” by way of or in the form of a
rhizome: “Once a rhizome has been obstructed, arborified, it’s all over, no desire
stirs” (1993, 14).1
1 We will return to this quotation in the final section, as this statement has particular significance in regard to the
rhizomatic nature of Ellroy’s two autobiographies: does his desire still stir, move, produce (at the end of his
second autobiography) or does it become stagnant?
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Because the concept is so crucial for this volume, we can ask again, What is a rhi-
zome? A rhizome is an acentric, non-hierarchical system2 that “connects any point to
any other point” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 21) and has “neither beginning nor end,
but is always in the middle, between things, from where it grows; it is an interbeing,
intermezzo” (1993, 263). The rhizome morphs, changing in “dimension” and
“necessarily [...] in nature as well” (1993, 8). It is made of three types of lines or
“lineaments” (1993, 21): lines of segmentarity and stratification (territorialization and
reterritorialization lines, also molar lines) which chart its dimensions, and lines of flight
or deterritorialization (here Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between molecular lines
and lines of flight).3 These lines can alternatively be called break line, crack line and
rupture line.4 The function of deterritorialization5 is defined as “the movement by
which one leaves a territory”, although it still also constitutes and extends the territory
itself. Deterritorialization lines are the most important lines in a rhizome: they make
(or better, keep) the rhizome an open system.6
Deleuze and Guattari also liken the rhizome to a “map”, which is “not a tracing”; the
map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible,
susceptible to constant modification” and “entirely oriented toward an experimen-
tation in contact with the real” (1993, 12). To this they connect perhaps the most
important characteristic of the rhizome, which is that it has multiple entry points.
They contrast the rhizome with the arborescent, hierarchical, centred system, in
which “the channels of transmission are pre-established and they preex-ist the
individual, who is integrated into it at an allotted place” (Deleuze and Guattari,
1993, 16). This statement infers the existence (to a certain extent) of
2 It can be found in nature in the plant and animal world in the form of subterranean stems of potato, couchgrass
or weed, and the burrows of rabbits, foxes and rats (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 21).
3 They define molecular lines as finer segmenting lines, which are “already ferrying their micro-black holes” (1993,
506) and the line of flight as “the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis,
changes in nature” (1993, 21).
4 These are terms that Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 200) borrowed from Scott Fitzgerald. They connect them to their own
classification of molar lines, molecular lines and lines of flight. The line of rigid segmentarity has molar breaks; the line
of supple segmentation has molecular cracks; the line of flight or rupture is nonsegmentary. The molecular cracks are
subtle and occur “when things are going well on the other side” (the molar line) and you do not notice it on the other line
until after ‘it’ has already happened on this line (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 199).
5 Deterritorialization can also be described as any process that decontextualises a set of relations, rendering them
virtual and preparing them for more distant actualizations. As an example of a line of deterritorialization, Deleuze
and Guattari discuss the “refrain” or rhythm as a means of escaping from and forming new territories, or even
existing in a process of continual deterritorialization, what they call “consistency”: “Music is precisely the
adventure of the refrain: the way the music lapses back into a refrain [...], the way it lays hold of the refrain,
makes it more and more sober, reduced to a few notes, then takes it down a creative line that is so much richer,
no origin or end of which is in sight” (1993, 302).
6 An open system is a system that has external interactions. Such interactions can take the form of information,
energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary. An open system is contrasted with the concept
of an isolated system, which exchanges neither energy, matter, nor information with its environment (cf.
Luhmann, 1995, 6–7).
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pre-established goals, and strategies for achieving them; the evolution is di-rected
from the least to the most differentiated element, because arborescent systems are
governed by the principle of imitation and the production of or through filiation.7
An arborescent system most certainly gives the impression of a greater stability
and – at least on the surface – seems to be more rewarding as a model of thought
on which to base one’s life. Goals are relatively clear and recognizable in terms of
points to be reached. And that inspires a kind of opti-mism as it seems to make life
easier, but the fact that the goals are relatively clear and recognizable has a
downside, too: when a desired point cannot be reached, frustration sets in and the
clarity of direction and the goal become replaced by the oppressive feeling of
stasis.
A rhizome, on the other hand, operates immediately in the heterogeneous, follow-ing
the principle of alliance. It does not progress from the less to the more differen-tiated
elements, but jumps from one already differentiated line to another. No goal is prefixed
or even recognizable. The next move is not pre-existent, pre-thought, pre-written by
the system. Such structuring grants great freedom; however, it is also scary and – in a
different sense – frustrating, because it infers endlessness and lack of purpose, which
are concepts quite foreign to Western thought.
Deleuze and Guattari use many synonyms (or near synonyms) for “rhizome” in A
Thousand Plateaus, among others multiplicity (1993, 8) and becoming (1993, 237–
239). They say becoming does not equal a progression (regression); it is neither a
resemblance to nor an imitation of something,8 nor is it an eventual identification with
something; it is not a production of anything. Becoming produces nothing other than
itself. Becoming is a rhizome.9 They also argue that “[w]henever desire climbs a tree,
internal repercussions trip it up and it falls to its death” (1993, 14). By “climb[ing] a
tree” they mean succumbing to the logic of the arborescent system. The rhizome, on
the other hand, “acts on desire by external, productive outgrowths” (ibid.) and allows
it to keep moving and producing (more of itself ).
7 The OED defines “filiation” as “the fact of being the child of a particular parent or parents: relationships
based on ties of filiation as opposed to marriage” (Oxford Dictionaries, “filiation”).
8 A very famous and recurring example that Deleuze and Guattari give in explanation of the rhizome and the
becoming is the one of the wasp and the orchid (1993, 10).They explain that the orchid deterritorializes by
forming an image of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is also deterritorialized, in
that it becomes a piece in the orchid’s reproductive system. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its
pollen. “Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome” (ibid.). They further explain that t his is
not a case of the orchid imitating the wasp or vice versa, but that “something else entirely is going on: not
imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming, a
becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp” (ibid).
9 They speak of different kinds of becoming and even establish a kind of hierarchy of becoming: becoming-child,
becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-molecular, becoming-imperceptible/clandestine, becoming
everybody-everything, becoming-world (1993, 232–310).
131
Deleuze and Guattari ascribe a special position to American literature, which must
include the author James Ellroy. In it they see manifested a greater rhizomatic
direction than in European literature; the American authors “know how to move
between things, establish a logic of the AND, overthrow ontology, do away with
foundations, nullify endings and beginnings” (1993, 25). This was an additional
reason for me to apply the rhizomatic, schizonalytic perspective to James Ellroy’s
autobiographies.
There are several important questions one should attempt to answer when using
the method of schizonalysis (in our case on a book), such as: What lines are there
(in the rhizome)? What map is the book making and/or rearranging? Is the author
deterritorialising? What are his lines of flight? What is he becoming? These ques-
tions (and specifically the question of what Ellroy is becoming – through and via
writing – in the wake of the tragedy that he experienced in his childhood) will be
answered in the last section of this chapter.
The question regarding Ellroy’s literary machine in the title of this chapter,
however, can preliminarily be answered as follows: his “literary machine”
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 4) as well as his life, have been primarily plugged
into the “crime machine” (1993, 242).10 In addition to that we can also observe an
assemblage11 with the love machine. Ellroy’s desire is directed toward an empty
space, the missing mother that he can never again reconnect with, and her death
that triggered his “becoming” (1993, 9–10) – this is what drives his “love
machine”.
7.2 Autobiography and its Contemporary Incarnations
Before I focus on the rhizomatic method and its connection to hybridity, a brief
outline of the field of autobiography must be provided. It is a hard task to define
the text type (or literary genre, as it is usually referred to in English terminology)
of autobiography, in my opinion mainly because it is a hybrid genre. I will define
the concept of hybridity in connection to literature, the way I understand it, in the
following section. So for now, let us just say that the word “hybrid” has developed
from biological and botanical origins and that its
10 Deleuze and Guattari never really define the term “machine”; they give many examples of many different
machines, they write at great length about the “war-machine” (1993, 351–424), but they do not clearly define it.
The closest they come to identifying it is likening it to a “multiplicity” (1993, 36–37).
11 Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 36) define assemblage as follows: “For the moment, we will note that assemblages
have elements (or multiplicities) of several kinds: human, social, and technical machines, organised molar
machines; molecular machines with their particles of becoming-inhuman.” A literary machine creates the
assemblage of literature.
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modern use refers mainly to a juxtaposition (usually without transitions) of two or
more unlike elements.12
Traditionally, autobiography (in the broader sense of the word)13 refers to life writ-
ing. More specifically (as a literary genre) it signifies a retrospective, autodiegetic
narrative that undertakes to tell the author’s own life, or a substantial part of it,
based on memory. It aims to reconstruct a person’s development within a given
historical, social and cultural context. While autobiography on the one hand claims
to be non-fictional (factual) “in that it proposes to tell the story of a ‘real’ person,
it is inevitably constructive, or imaginative, in nature and a form of textual ‘self-
fashioning’” (Schwalm, 2014, 14).14
In accordance with Lejeune’s theory of the autobiographical pact, autobiography is an
institutionalised communicative act, in which author and reader enter into a particular
contract – the “autobiographical pact”: “Autobiography supposes that there is identity
of name between the author, the narrator of the story and the char-acter who is being
talked about” (Lejeune, 1988, 12). The author’s proper name refers to a singular
autobiographical- identity, which identifies author, narrator and protagonist as one, and
suggests a decoding of the text as autobiography. If the identity of names is missing or
if the perspective is not autodiegetic, it suggests a different kind of decoding (in the
sense of autofiction15 or autobiographical novel).
An interesting question is also who the autobiography is written for, whom it addresses.
Any act of autobiographical communication addresses another person, somebody else,
by constructing a narratee, a “fictive addressee” (see Schmid, 2003, 79), “who may be
part of the self, a ‘Nobody’, an individual person, the public, or God as supreme Judge”
(Schwelm, 2014, 16). At the same time, autobiography stages the self in relation to
others on the level of narrative. These others (personal models or important figures in
one’s life story) and the relationships the self has
12 The OED defines “hybrid” as follows: “1 Biology The offspring of two plants or animals of different species or
varieties, such as a mule (a hybrid of a donkey and a horse): the bird was a hybrid of a goose and a swan; 2 A thing
made by combining two different elements; a mixture: the final text is a hybrid of the stage play and the film” (Oxford
Dictionaries, “hybrid”). Young (1995, 6) writes, that “a few examples of this word occur early in the seventeenth century;
but it was scarcely in use until the nineteenth’, ‘hybrid’ is the nineteenth century’s word. But it has become our own
again. In the nineteenth century, it was used to refer to a physiological phenomenon; in the twentieth century it has been
reactivated to describe a cultural one. [...] The word’s first philological use, to denote ‘a composite word formed of
elements belonging to different languages’, dates from 1862.”
13 Autobiography in the broader sense of the word refers to one of the two main genres within the broader field of
life writing, life narrative, which are biography and autobiography. In both genres we find texts that have either
a more literary or a more sociological focus and can manifest themselves both as writing or as speech. In the
narrow sense of the word autobiography means specifically the literary genre, in which life experience is
aestheticised (to various extents) (cf. Jolly, 2001).
14 This constructive, imaginative aspect is directly linked to its poeticity, its literarization and aestheticization .
15 In autofiction an author may decide to recount his/her life in the third person, to modify significant details or
‘characters’, using storytelling techniques of fiction.
133
with them can be present in the narrative to a varying degree, up to the point where
the boundaries between auto- and heterobiography are effectively erased. In a
heterobiography a life narrative is not “the bounded story of the unique, in-
dividuated narrating subject”, but rather a “routing of a self known through its
relational others” (cf. Smith and Watson, 2001, 67).
Dilthey (2002, 221–222) considers autobiography the supreme form of the “un-
derstanding of life”. Understanding, according to Dilthey, also involves fitting the
individual parts into a coherent, meaningful whole, ascribing interconnection and
causality, giving it sense (“Sinn”). This automatically suggests an underlying
binary, hierarchical tree-structure and the presence of a strong molar line (Deleuze
and Guattari, 1993, 512), which discerns between selected moments that are in ret-
rospect awarded special significance and relevance for the entire life course; the
author has the superior position of the interpreter. But that is the case only in the
classic version of autobiography. The contemporary notion of autobiography has
shifted from a literary genre to a broad range of cultural practices that draw on and
incorporate a multitude of textual modes and genres.16 Autobiography ultimately
resists a clear distinction from its fictional relatives (autofiction), leaving the ge-
neric borderlines blurred.
Memory is the key element in autobiographical literature. Which type of memory
is at work in it? At the core of the cognitive-based definition of au-tobiography
(which is also the one I ground my approach on) is the concept of autobiographical
memory. The development of autobiographical memory is directly linked to
language, as language is the medium that enables the sym-bolic exchange and
externalisation of experience, and thus creates the possibil-ity of positioning
oneself in relation to others (Markowitsch and Welzer, 2006, 28–34). It also allows
us to imagine ourselves beyond the immediate present.17 Autobiographical
memory is social18 because it is a fixed point in the fluctua-tion of roles and
situations, which offers to oneself and others the assurance that one remains (and
will remain) the same self throughout. This spatio- temporal sameness defines the
so-called autobiographical position that reflects the dual
16 By 2010, Smith and Watson distinguish between sixty “Genres of Life Narrative” (2015, 253–268), based on a
combination of formal and semantic features (e.g. narratives of migration, immigration or exile, narratives
engaging in ethnic identity and community, prison narratives, illness, trauma and coming-out narratives, as much
as celebrity memoirs, graphic life writing and forms of internet self-presentation).
17 The child learns to discern between the past, present and future between the ages 3 to 5, a phase that – in Western culture
– coincides with the so-called infantile amnesia; in other words it has to do w ith adults’ inability to retrieve episodic
memories, i.e. memories of specific events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when,
and where) before the ages of 2 to 4 (cf. Robinson-Riegler, 2012, 272–276).
18 Furthermore, autobiographical memory is a social competence insofar as we develop it in communication with
others by means of “memory talk” (Nelson, 2004) and “conversational remembering” (Middleton, 1997).
134
structural core of the autobiographical self and the first person pronoun that
represents it (see also Ricœur, 1992).
Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 16) offer an interesting perspective in connection with the
type of memory that is at work in (life) writing. They point out the differ-ence between
long-term and short-term memory, which is not simply quantitative because the two
types of memories do not grasp the same thing in different ways. “Short-term memory
is of the rhizome or diagram type, and long-term memory is arborescent and centralised
(imprint, engram, tracing, or photograph)” (1993, 16). Deleuze and Guattari do not
define short-term memory in terms of a “law of contiguity or immediacy to its object”
as most do, but describe it as disconti-nuity, rupture, and multiplicity, which can act at
a distance or return a long time after the event. Short-term memory is the mode
connected to writing, and long-term memory is at work during the process of reading.
Short-term memory also includes forgetting as a process: “it merges not with the instant
but instead with the nervous, temporal, and collective rhizome” (ibid.) So when writing
and living coincide, either in the sense of true temporal parallelism (diaries) or
subsequently
– when writing reconstructs living (as is the case in autobiography) – we have a
very special situation in regard to the type of memory that is active in the pro-cess.
Writing requires forgetting, which creates holes (ruptures) in the timeline and
sabotages the intent of the long-term (also molar) memory to reterritorialize; molar
memory (which is bound to molar entities of family, race, society, or civiliza-tion)
is a punctual system.19 The rhizome (to which short-term memory is con-nected)
on the other hand, is a line-system, in which lines do not link or conjugate points
– they pass between them.20 This passing-between constitutes the opposite of
arborescence. It is also the opposite of the point-system of (long-term) memory,
and this is why such memory is “antimemory”. That would mean that the rhizome
is antimemory. This is somewhat confusing as they link the rhizome to both the
short-term memory and the antimemory, but there is a connection via forgetting,
which is an integral part of short-term memory.21
19 Deleuze and Guattari explain the punctual system of long-term memory as follows: “Memory has a punctual
organization because every present refers simultaneously to the horizontal line of the flow of time (kinematics),
which goes from an old present to the actual present, and the vertical line of the order of time (stratigraphy),
which goes from the present to the past, or to the representation of the old present” (1993, 295).
20 For instance, in the wasp and orchid example they write, “The line does not link the wasp to the orchid, anymore
than it conjugates or mixes them: it passes between them, carrying them away in a shared proximity in which
the discernibility of points disappears” (1993, 293).
21 This type of confusion is quite common in A Thousand Plateaus as Deleuze and Guattari do not provide stable
definitions in it; by this I mean that the definitions change from chapter (plateau) to chapter (plateau), and some
terms remain completely undefined. Instead, they offer a series of examples from which a definition is supposed
to arise somehow. In addition to that they do not claim that their concepts are scientific (1993, 22). They go as
far as to virtually deny a definition (1993, 294): “Wherever we used the word ‘memories’ in the preceding pages,
we were wrong to do so; we meant to say ‘becoming’, we were saying ‘becoming’.”
135
Deleuze and Guattari consider rhizomatic writing to be connected to short-term
memory and antimemory.22 What about the autobiographical memory (and au-
tobiography)? Is it connected more to short-term memory (antimemory) or does it
also bear some characteristics of long-term memory? It is definitely more con-
nected to short-term memory, as forgetting figures so prominently in it; one indi-
vidual’s memory has a more confined perspective and it is less verifiable and more
connected to the process of writing/speaking (and not to reading/listening).
7.3 The Interspace: The Rhizome and Hybridity
Hybridity is in my opinion closely linked to the rhizome as understood and de-
fined (in their very own, rhizomatic manner) by Deleuze and Guattari. The two
terms are not (entirely) synonymous, but they are interrelated in a complex man-
ner. The rhizome can be seen as that which produces the hybrid, but on the other
hand the process of hybridization (as merging of heterogeneous elements) is the
key aspect of rhizome-building.
Both words are borrowed from biology and both denote something anomalous,
something that propels change and forms (or is part of ) a system that is very
different from the one that governs Western (and arguably worldwide) thought,
namely, the arborescent (centralised, hierarchical, binary) one.
But let us first review how the term hybridity is understood and applied in the
context of literary theory and writing in general, so we can better discern the con-
necting points that it has with the concept of the rhizome and lastly also with the
text type of autobiography.
7.3.1 What are Hybrid Text Types?
The term hybrid text is understood in many different ways in the context of various
subdisciplines23 of both linguistics and literary theory (and beyond)24. In literary
22 As an example of true rhizomatic writing they (among others) name Virginia Wolf and her novel The Waves
(1993, 292), which is not an autobiography, but bears resemblance to autofiction. They claim that the memory,
by and with which that book (that writing) operates, is “molecular memory” and it too is not completely
independent from the molar memory. But because the molecular components are connected to it via
deterritorialization, the molar memory is not really governing them. This level of becoming is rarely reached,
but there are many stages in-between (the arborescent writing and rhizomatic writing), which are also
noteworthy as they are signs of an (un/conscious) struggle against arborescence.
23 Interestingly, the term hybrid was first used to describe a linguistic phenomenon and was only later transferred
to literary and cultural contexts, which indicates a close connection between linguistics, literary theory and
cultural studies in regard to the phenomenon of hybridity.
24 In translation studies, for example, a hybrid text is defined as “a text that results from a translation process”. A
typically linguistic concept of hybridity sees hybrid texts as particular instances of bimodal (for instance, verbal
and visual) materials (cf. Baptista et al., 2011).
136
theory, for example, there is talk of the so-called hybrid narrative25 which refers to
texts that are a mix, a blend of two or several literary genres and/or forms, and
marked by characteristics like non-linearity, fragmentation, segmentation and a
threaded, braided structure. Two aspects that have been most discussed in literary
theory in regard to hybrid text types are the process of writing as a way of living
(in connection with the fixation and production of memories) and the question of
the aestheticisation of existence – both aspects can be surmised in the concept of
text as an existential category (see Fabčič, 2003). Text types that are traditionally
considered hybrid (especially the travel essay, the diary, the autobiography, etc.)
are specifically suited to express the aestheticisation of existence, since they are
on the one hand bound to the objective reality, and on the other hand they strive to
heighten and augment it. This coping with life, with the objective reality, the jump
from perception to understanding, can also take on the form of writing, of text
production – this is the main subject and motif of all autobiographical literature.
One copes with life by writing (it), and life and writing come the closest in the text
type of the diary, which is fundamentally life being written parallel to living it (see
Fabčič, 2003, 145–148).
The key question in defining hybrid texts seems to be one of decoding: should they be
decoded referentially (as factual texts) or as fictional texts? Factual texts, specifi-cally
factual narrations (like biographies, autobiographies or chronicles) describe a certain
incident while raising a claim to reality and “referentiability”. They are to be
understood as narrative models of reality. But even though factual narra-tions are not
about fictitious figures, things and events, they can have their own poeticity.26
Assmann (1980, 14) states that reality itself proves to be insufficient for literary
processing and that with the help of “interpretive connections and the creation of
correlations”, the “deficiency of the given” is being rounded up.27 The literarisation of
a factual narration often happens through staging (or better, re-staging), that is, re-
organizing of elements that are in themselves factual; this leads to a reconstruction of
the empirical world. Fictional texts, however, are “part of a real communication, in
which a real author [...] produces sentences that are being read by a real reader” (Klein
and Martínez 2009, 2), without (directly) referring to
25 The term is used mainly in connection with nonfiction writing, although the results of it are viewed as literary
forms, as literary hybrids.
26 I understand poeticity in the sense of cognitive psychology and cognitive poetics as a quality of discourse, of
language use, in general. “Verbal signs function poetically whenever verbal processes activate nonverbal (visual,
acoustic) ones, so that a balance between the two or a predominance of the nonverbal over the verbal is achieved”
(cf. Sándor, 1989, 299).
27 The other reason for the literarization of reality in factual narrations is the fact that it is impossible to portray
the totality of just one single moment, thus creating the necessity to select (moments) in order to “transfer a
confusing and insignificant entropy into a meaningful entity by the principle of selection” (Sándor, 1989, 299).
137
real people, places, events. The act of fictionalising is actually the as-if-movement
of thought, an act of imagining, which results in a text world that is never a com-
plete equivalent of the empirical world, regardless of whether we are observing
and analysing literary, hybrid or factual texts (see Iser, 1991, 43). Both have or can
have a (gradually expressed) literaricity. The factional and fictional do not repre-
sent a binary opposition, as the fictional is connected with the real via manifold
interrelations. The fictional should rather be seen as another perspective of reality,
which is, however, always based on this reality (cf. Iser 1991, 18–51). The distinc-
tion between factual and fictional texts is therefore inherently vague. Hybrid texts
belong to the in-between space: they are a blend of factual and fictional elements
in a way that enhances their complexity and demands a more active and creative
decoding. The aforementioned factual narrations are in my opinion hybrid texts (in
this case: neither factual, nor fictional). Some authors (especially narratologists)28
consider them to be factual texts, but I believe they fit much better in the inter-
space of hybrid texts.
From the perspective of radical constructivism it can be said that the aesthetic ap-
proach is part of every human conception of reality since the human perception system
acts in a constructive, and not a reconstructive manner (cf. Dettmann 1999, 123). The
aestheticisation29 is not an attempt to embellish the reality but rather an epistemological
instrument. This view can be traced back to Konrad Fiedler and his statement that art
is a sphere of knowledge and that it is unjustly reduced to striving for beauty as the
main goal. Art is not a representation but a production of reality; the cognition of reality
can in a sense be equated to the production of reality. And if we take a closer look, the
production, the constitution of reality, reveals itself to be an aesthetic process (cf.
Fiedler 1996, 36–37). As stated, my approach to text types and specifically hybrid text
types is cognitive-based. I see hybrid texts, as well as the categories below the text
level, their building blocks (figures of thought and their realizations on the mezzo and
micro levels of texts) as modalities of thinking, which more often than not coincide
with the metaphorical modality (see Lakoff and Johnson, 2003, 12) or metonymical
modality of thinking. My definition (Fabčič, 2016, 141) of hybrid texts or text types
therefore distances itself from the traditional distinction made between literary and
non-literary texts; it is not based solely on the criterion of a gradually emerging
literariness and aes-theticism (although both elements can be found in the rhizome of
a hybrid text). It instead postulates an underlying rhizomatic structure30 of said texts,
an affinity
28 Cf. Schaeffer, 2013.
29 Which is in fact used synonymously with literarization and poeticity in this context.
30 Nomadic waves or flows of deterritorialization go from the central layer to the periphery, then from the new centre to
the new periphery, falling back to the old centre and launching forth to the new (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 53).
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toward a theming and imitating31 of the perception process, in order to achieve a
parallelism of perception and thinking. All of these elements are present in
Ellroy’s autobiographies.
7.3.2 Are “Rhizome” and “Hybrid” Synonyms?
The terms “rhizome” and “rhizomatic” are prominent in Deleuzian philosophy; they
describe an open system that works with planar and trans-species connections and
allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representa-tion and
interpretation, which is extraordinarily rich and complex (see Smith and Protevi, 2015).
The planar, horizontal connections of the rhizome are what makes it similar to hybrids
and hybridization, which is also known (in biology) as hori-zontal gene transfer.
Hybridization is described as the transfer of genetic material from an organism to a
being other than one of its own offspring (the opposite of filiation and hereditary
reproduction, which are based on vertical gene transfer). As such, it is a source of new
genes and functions to the recipient of the transferred genetic material. In this sense,
hybridization is a mechanism that permits the ac-quisition of evolutionary novelties
(see Boto, 2010, 819). Horizontal gene transfer therefore contradicts the neo-
Darwinian conception of a gradualist process driving the appearance of novel traits and
functions. Another concept that is connected to hybridity is mutualism, in which two
different species interact together to form a multiplicity (i.e. a unity that is multiple in
itself ). And multiplicity is, of course, also a term that features prominently in
Deleuzian philosophy.32 Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 242) mention the hybrid in the
context of discussing bands and packs: “Bands, human or animal, proliferate by
contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes. Like hybrids, which are in
themselves sterile, born of a sexual un-ion that will not reproduce itself, but which
begins over again every time, gaining that much more ground.” Hybridization is not
“filiative production or hereditary reproduction” and neither is the rhizome; they work
by alliance. Instead of filia-tion there is infection, contagion, which involves entirely
heterogeneous elements (for instance, human – bacteria, human – vampire, wasp –
orchid) which result in
31 Deleuze suggests a different term for imitating, namely, becoming (1993, 272).
32 As already stated, “multiplicity” is a term that is sometimes used as synonymous with “rhizome,” but more
precisely: the rhizome is a type of multiplicity; there also exists an arborescent, molar one. The molar
multiplicity is countable and is subordinated to the One; it consists of molar lines that are “subordinated to the
point; the diagonal is subordinated to the horizontal and vertical; the line forms a contour, whether figurative or
not; the space it constitutes is one of striation.” Molar lines form a segmentary, circular, binary, arborescent
system”. The rhizomatic multiplicity is very different; Deleuze and Guattari also call it “molecular”. In it “the
diagonal frees itself, breaks or twists. The line no longer forms a contour, and instead passes between things,
between points. It belongs to a smooth space.” This multiplicity is “no longer subordinated to the One, but takes
on a consistency of its own” (cf. Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 505).
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combinations that are “neither genetic nor structural”, but “interkingdoms”. Rhi-
zome is alliance, trees are filiations. “The tree imposes the verb ‘to be’, but the
fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ‘and...and...and’... This conjunction
carries enough forces to shake and uproot the verb ‘to be’ [...]”. So alliance can be
seen as a connection that is based on (additive) conjunction, which propels the
horizontal spreading (of the rhizome) in space. This planar movement of the
rhizome resists chronology and the organisational structure of the arborescent
system. It does not look for causality along chronological lines in search of the
origin of things and neither is it focused on the pinnacle or conclusion. It is
favouring a nomadic (hy-brid) system of growth and propagation.
A rhizome is made of plateaus. Gregory Bateson33 uses the word “plateau” to des-
ignate something very special: a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose
development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end. Rather,
the plateau of intensity is a goal-in-itself, a situation of constant evo-lution and
becoming. In rhizomes, conflict and pleasure are maintained togeth-er; conflict does
not build, but is expressed and released.34 Deleuze and Guattari ground their concepts
(and theory) of rhizomes and plateaus in Bateson’s rumina-tions. They consider the
rhizome to be suitable to serve not only as a model of the world, history, culture,
knowledge, etc., but also as a model of the book, for a book.
A Thousand Plateaus, for instance, is written in a non-linear fashion,35 and the reader is
invited to move among plateaus in any order. One can indeed read (and keep reading) the
book in this exact manner, always taking a different path through it and always arriving at
(at least slightly) different conclusions, but sometimes the book “forces” one into a corner,
as it offers contradictory definitions and opinions. But that is, in fact, part of
schizoanalysis.36 Additionally, the barrier between observer and observed is blurred: “There
is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world)
33 Bateson (1972, 113) cites Balinese culture as an example: mother-child sexual games, and even quarrels among
men, undergo this bizarre intensive stabilization. “Some sort of continuing plateau of intensity is substituted for
[sexual] climax,” war, or a culmination point.
34 Bateson (1972) sees the characteristic of the Western mind to relate expressions and actions to exterior or
transcendent ends instead of evaluating them on a plane of consistency on the basis of their intrinsic value, as
something regrettable. He further claims that social conflicts (in the arborescent system of the Western culture)
tend to build to a point of release, which he calls “schismogenesis”, that is, the creation and emergence of
schisms between groups.
35 Even though they define the rhizome as a linear (more precisely: multilinear or superlinear) system in opposition
to a punctual system (1993, 295), linearity is not understood as succession on a single line or a hierarchy of lines,
but as an assemblage of lines.
36 Deleuze elaborates on the function of theory and concepts in a conversation with Michel Foucault in 1972 which
was first published in 1980 in the book Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews
by Michel Foucault. He says that the tracing of concepts (and the so-called long-term concepts) is something to
be avoided at all cost; concepts must change (in true nomadic nature); they must not add up to a system of belief
that you either enter and accept, or you do not, they are to be seen as a “toolbox”.
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and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author).” In-
stead, “an assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn
from each of these orders” (1993, 23). A rhizome-book37 is in an assemblage with the
outside, as opposed to the book as image of the world. “The outside has no image, no
signification, no subjectivity.” To come close to it means to understand the contempo-
rary world as an assemblage of more and more de-regulated flows of energy, matter,
ideas and actions (see Smith and Protevi, 2015).
All the aforementioned aspects of the rhizome (the blending of the observer and
the observed, assemblage with the world, multiple entry points) can be observed
in what literary theory calls hybrid texts.
In analogy to the question “Who does the earth think it is?” that Smith and Protevi (2015)
offer as an illustration for the Deleuzian approach to re-thinking the system of knowledge
in a rhizomatic manner, we ask the question: Who does this book (The Hilliker Curse) think
it is? A rhizomatic autobiography has a fluid and even reversible chronology, which means
we have leaps from a point (in time) to a point without there being a connecting line and
without identifying the (real) point of origin. It does not attempt to retrace a life, but to draw
a map of it, starting from whichever point in said life. As there are two autobiographies that
I will analyse in broad strokes, we can in fact speak of two maps with different entry points,
but covering (nearly) the same time span. I maintain that neither is really directed toward a
conclusion, a goal, as it is very clear from to the start that the (obvious) goal is unreachable
by default. Like a true rhizome that is always in the middle, in-between dimensions of time
and reality,38 a rhizomatic autobiography will aim at reaching a plane of consist-ency, of
immanence. It does not seek catharsis, but rather searches for another kind of aliveness, not
one that is connected to a singular peak, a pinnacle, after which no becoming is possible,
but one that maintains a (relatively) constant level of intensity.
7.4 From My Dark Places to The Hilliker Curse: the
Plateaus of Ellroy’s Autobiography
As already pointed out, Deleuze and Guattari consider American books and their
conception to be different from European books (1993, 19). They link it to the
37 Or, rather, should be, as there are very few texts that come close to a true rhizome-book; most have some
rhizome-features and can therefore be called rhizomatic, but are still not a bona fide rhizome-book, including A
Thousand Plateaus, for which the authors say that it did not completely succeed in becoming that (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1993, 24).
38 Smith and Protevi (2015) speak of the rhizome in terms of a system that is a more or less stable set of processes
moving in different directions toward actuality and toward virtuality, without ever reaching either one, as these
two ontological registers do not exist, but they do “insist” (Deleuze, 1966, 22).
141
reversal of Occident (arborescent structure) and Orient (rhizomatic structure) that
takes place in America and especially in American literature: their West is rhizo-
matic and their East is arborescent in nature. They claim that in America there is
a reversal of directions: the search for arborescence occurs in the East, and the
West is rhizomatic, “with its Indians without ancestry, its ever-receding limit, its
shifting and displaced frontiers. There is a whole American ‘map’ in the West,
where even the trees form rhizomes” (1993, 19).
Ellroy’s LA (which he depicts in 13 of his 16 books) is right there, inside or, bet-
ter, within the American rhizome. Los Angeles was and remains his travelling
ground in the sense of a “voyage in place,”39 “nomadic transit in smooth space”40
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 483). The voyage in place or the smooth voyage is
(in Ellroy’s case) one that happens by way of thinking, a spiritual voyage, if you
will (effected without relative movement, but in intensity), and it is a difficult,
uncertain becoming.
According to Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 203),41 the highest level of rhizomatic
writing implies that the writer opens “his lines of writing to life lines” 42, which means
that the “lines” of his life are constantly transforming themselves and cross-ing over
into the “lines of writing.” The lines which constitute a becoming can be imposed on
us from the outside or sprout up by chance, without a recognizable reason. And the
third kind of lines must be invented, effectively drawn in our lives: these are the lines
of flight. We may be more interested in a certain line than in others, and perhaps there
is indeed one that is – not determining but – of greater importance. In Ellroy’s case that
is the Geneva Hilliker line.
Let us touch upon some of the defining points of autobiography in connection to James
Ellroy’s autobiographies. Who are the fictive addressees of My Dark Places and The
Hilliker Curse? The first addressee is no doubt Ellroy himself, but the sec-ond one is
someone who also constitutes a key figure in his life narratives and will never be able
to read them: his mother, Geneva Hilliker. Are they autobiographies
39 Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 403) differentiate between movement, which is extensive, and speed, which is intensive.
“Movement designates the relative character of a body considered as “one,” and which goes from point to point; speed,
on the contrary, constitutes the absolute character of a body whose irreducible parts (atoms) occupy or fill a smooth
space in the manner of a vortex, with the possibility of springing up at any point.
40 Smooth space is heterogeneous, a field without conduits or channels, not observable from a point in space external to it
(an example of this is the system of sounds, or even of colours, as opposed to Euclidean space). “[...] it is wedded to a
very particular type of multiplicity: nonmetric, acentered, rhizomatic multiplicities that occupy space without “counting”
it and can “be explored only by legwork” (see Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 393).
41 Which I consider to be a very fitting definition of autobiographical writing, especially in reference to modern
autobiography.
42 They have nothing to do with language; they mean nothing – they are an element of cartography. It is language
(the literary machine, the writing) that must follow them and feed off them (see Deleuze and Guattari, 1993,
202–203).
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or memoirs? The difference (according to Neumann, 1970, 25) is that between the
external orientation of memoirs, representing the individual as a social type, while
the autobiography focuses on memory and identity. Ellroy calls My Dark Places a
“crime memoir”, but it is much more an autobiography as it deals with recon-
structing memories and trying to establish personal identity via another person, his
mother – which makes the book a heterobiography, to be exact. The Hilliker Curse
is not identified as a memoir or autobiography by the author, but it is also an
autobiography. The clues for the autobiographical position (and a correspond-ing
interpretation, decoding of the book) are the family name “Hilliker” and the
possessive pronoun “my” in the subtitle My Pursuit of Women. Are the two books
examples of (true) rhizomatic writing? The preliminary answer would be: The Hil-
liker Curse might very well be considered as such, while My Dark Places still
bears many traits of arborescence.
In The Hilliker Curse there are two lives that are being written: the author’s and
his mother’s (i.e. the life of Geneva “Jean” Hilliker Ellroy). There are also other
lives, stories of real women, whom Ellroy had long(er) lasting relationships with:
his first wife Helen, his lovers Joan and Karen, and his current partner Erika; they
play a more significant role, form stronger deterritorialization lines. But there are
numer-ous other women, some named, some unnamed, some re-named by Ellroy
in what can be considered an assemblage of his mother Geneva and an imagined
woman, who is basically an empty slot, ready for reterritorialization whenever a
new object of observation that seems to fit the slot (even though it is characterised
by very few specific features) appears.
In My Dark Places we find the same two lives that together form the subject of the
autobiography, which, as mentioned, must therefore be called a heterobiography:
Ellroy cannot write his own life without writing his mother’s life as they both form a
rhizome. In addition to Ellroy’s and his mother’s life story, there is also the life of
homicide detective Bill Stoner (who is the only male linked to Ellroy via a deter-
ritorialization line in his autobiographies).43 Via Bill Stoner’s life we get an insight into
the lives of the victims of the murders he investigated, which again serve as lines of
deterritorialization , of flight. These lines are less connected to Ellroy’s life, as they are
present only through narration of others (the most significant being the story of the
Black Dahlia aka Elisabeth Short)44.
43 In his fictional works there are many male characters into which Ellroy deterritorializes himself, but in his
autobiographies women dominate and therefore we can truly see them as documents of his becoming-woman.
44 Elisabeth Short ( July 29, 1924 – January 15, 1947), nicknamed “The Black Dahlia”, was the victim of a much-
publicised and particularly gruesome murder that happened in Los Angeles in 1947 and that to this day remains
unsolved.
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We can see both autobiographies as interconnected to the point where we can draw
a comparison to the three versions of Wordsworth’s verse autobiography The
Prelude,45 in which he writes about the same time span of his life again and again.46
This has been seen by many as an impossibility of autobiographical closure
(Schwalm, 2014, 15). The continual revision of the same time-span reflects the
author’s state of mind at different stages of writing as well as a certain instability
of the autobiographical subject as a narrator – he is not one, he is many. The
various narrative presents are only ever temporary points of view, and there is no
one or final vantage point – this, too, can be considered a characteristic of a
rhizomatic (hybrid) autobiography.
In chapter 14 of the 4th part of My Dark Places (titled “Geneva Hilliker”), Ellroy
reviews his past attempts to write about his mother’s life, stating that the female
protagonist of his 1982 novel Clandestine was loosely based on his mother, and her
son on Ellroy. But they were “surrogate fictions”, as Ellroy calls them. Clandestine is
(not only by name) connected to the Deleuzian becoming-clandestine (1993, 188),
which further connects to becoming imperceptible;47 it is one of the plateaus of Ellroy’s
becoming. His becoming-clandestine is manifested early in his life: he describes
himself as a seasoned “brooder and watcher” (Ellroy, 2010, 18) at the age of 10, and
being invisible, imperceptible, is one of the prerequisites of a watcher (which is a
precursor to the full-blown stalker that Ellroy later became).48 In one of his signature
climaxes, “Voyeur. Pious Protestant boy. Fatuous seeker” (2010, 19), he points out a
line of deterritorialization that moves from molar elements (voyeur, protestant boy) to
molecular segments (unquantifiable, undeterminable)
– that is, elements which the “seeker” is vaguely discerning. He calls his specific type
of watching “voyeur-perving” (2010, 119). His fixation on watching, on visual access
(which – to him – was superior to physical contact) resulted in a multitude of
deterritorialization lines along which his becoming unfolded: “My girls were
45 There are three versions of Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem: the 1799 Prelude, called the Two-Part
Prelude, the 1805 Prelude, which was found and printed by Ernest de Sélincourt in 1926, in 13 books, and the
1850 Prelude, published shortly after Wordsworth’s death, in 14 books.
46 He does that in order to chronicle the “growth of a poet’s mind” (this is the subtitle of the1850 version of his
autobiography The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind).
47 Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 279) explain becoming-imperceptible (or clandestine or molecularized) in their
own, rhizomatic fashion as “the immanent end of becoming, its cosmic formula”, toward which all other
becomings strive. They also connect the imperceptible with the plane of consistency or immanence (ibid, 252):
“Everything becomes imperceptible, everything is becoming-imperceptible on the plane of consistency, which
is nevertheless precisely where the imperceptible is seen and heard [...], where desire directly invests the field
of perception, where the imperceptible appears as the perceived object of desire itself, ‘the nonfigurative of
desire’” (ibid, 284).
48 He claims to have been peeping and stalking girls since the age of 10 (but also admits to showing an affinity
toward it even sooner (2010, 1)), and later “graduated” to minor crimes (especially shoplifting, breaking into
houses, and burglary).
144
never standard pretty or comely in prescribed ways. I was always looking for the
physical flaw or distinction that marked gravity. I looked in window after window at
face after face. I was looking for one face. There can only be one and she will be THE
OTHER. ‘The Other’: My real self made whole by an image” (2010, 19). This is
already another type of becoming: namely, becoming-woman (see Deleuze and
Guattari, 1993, 270), which Ellroy pursues (as the subtitle of his second auto-biography
reveals) throughout his life, starting with the death of his mother (or – probably – even
before). This is also what makes both autobiographies rhizomatic to a high degree:
although Ellroy time and again claims that it was his mother’s death that triggered his
becoming (“You made me. You formed me.” (2010, 188)), he also repeatedly admits
that he cannot say for certain that was the real starting point as there is no starting point;
there is just a preferred entry point (the murder of his mother). However, the map he
draws while searching for his mother (and himself ) is different every time.49 He
produces and constructs the map each time using the same material, but modifies it,
detaches elements, connects them in a different order, even reverses them, which is
very similar to Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the production of a rhizome
(1993, 21).
Apart from the two autobiographies and the aforementioned second novel Clan-
destine, Ellroy took another “confrontational swipe” (1996, 249) at Jean Hilliker in his
(probably) most famed book to date, The Black Dahlia (1996, 250): “I was burning a
lifelong torch with three flames. My mother, the Dahlia, the woman I knew God would
give me.” The Black Dahlia is a “symbiotic stand-in” (Ellroy, 1996,
24) for Jean Hilliker.50 The use of the adjective “symbiotic” points to the assem-blage
aspect, to the rhizomatic nature of Ellroy’s approach. The truth is that Ellroy knows (or
at that time knew) more about the death of Elisabeth Short than he did about the death
of his own mother. Although their lives never touched, he was at-tempting to approach
the secret of his own mother’s life and death via solving the unsolved murder of
Elisabeth Short (offering in the end just a possible scenario, the same as he did later in
My Dark Places for his mother’s murder).
49 In My Dark Places (which was the first direct approach to the subject of his mother) Ellroy admits that he has
avoided writing about his mother for a long time: “Jean Ellroy was 35 years and 9 months dead” (1996, 247).
He further writes: “I was afraid to stalk the redhead and give her secrets up” (ibid., 186). In 1996 he finally
crosses that line and “stalks” his mother throughout a whole book. All the other stalkings were a prelude to the
(retro-) stalking of his mother. And he revisits these other stalkings once again in The Hilliker Curse, in which
his mother (through all the other women in his life) again becomes an indirect subject (as he only writes about
her directly in the first chapter of sorts): “Jean Hilliker loomed as a fictive deity” (178).
50 Geneva Hilliker and Elisabeth (Betty) Short are connected in many aspects: “Betty was running and hiding. My
mother ran to El Monte and forged a secret weekend life there. Betty and my mother were body-dump victims.
Jack Webb said Betty was a loose girl. My father said my mother was a drunk and a whore” (Ellroy, 1996, 125).
This reads – on the surface – as an analogy, but it goes beyond that. Ellroy has not “chosen” Betty Short as a
“stand-in” for his mother. Her line of death crossed his line of longing and he deterritorialized his mother (and
himself ) into the Black Dahlia-case.
145
One can observe a symbiosis of three heterogeneous points or “stand-ins”: the three
points (women) are not contiguous – they are far apart in space and/or time; not
connected by a line of territorialization, but rather by a line of flight, along which Ellroy
deterritorializes himself. His deterritorialization line never actually touches “his
mother” (he cannot – she is dead) or “the Dahlia” (he cannot – she is dead), nor is it
really touching the “woman, he knows God would give him” as she is (at that time)
unknown. Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 293) speak also of a “line of becoming,”51
which “has neither beginning nor end, departure nor arrival, origin nor destination”,
but only “a middle”, which is “the absolute speed of movement”. Although Ellroy
tentatively identifies the origin (the point) of his becoming as the death of his mother,
we must not see this as an instance of real causality, but rather as “the movement by
which the line frees itself from the point, and renders points indiscernible” (which is
another definition Deleuze and Guattari offer for “becom-ing” (1993, 294)). Ellroy
identifies this becoming as becoming-Hilliker: “I knew it was true – then. I sided with
him – then. I hated her then. I was an Ellroy then. I’m a Hilliker now. Our pride, my
bifurcated identity” (Ellroy, 2010, 13).
While My Dark Places was still describing a process of detection (of external facts
that would help him understand what happened to his mother) bound to lines of
territorialization that would discern his mother as a molar entity (separating her
from him, his father etc.), The Hilliker Curse is all about molecular lines and lines
of flight, about explaining himself (to himself ) via becoming his mother, via
becoming-woman.
What could be considered a break line, a molar line in Ellroy’s life? Segmenting it
in a clear, cutting manner? “She gave me the time and death of her place to
extrapolate off ” (1997, 249), he says. His mother’s death could be considered a
significant molar line, having rendering him motherless, an orphan, assigning him
a position in his father’s “segment”. On a molecular line many small cracks
appeared, simultaneously, but also previously to the great break on the molar line.
He calls Jean Hilliker the “hushed center” (1997, 249) of his fictional world, but
in truth it is not the centre or even a centre; she is simply the entry point of a
rhizome that includes his fictional world (the world of his fictional works), his own
life, his reflection of and about his life in the context of his autobiographical works.
He started thinking about revisiting his mother’s life when he married his second
wife, Helen Knode. She encouraged him, played the conjuring game with him
(eliminating the brooding aspect of it, breaking him – at least temporarily
51 The definition of this line is very similar to both the line of deterritorialization and the rhizome (such
interchangeability is characteristic of their definitions in A Thousand Plateaus).
146
– out of his solitude), imagining Jean Hilliker in various scenarios with real life
historical figures of her times. Jean Hilliker was partly deterritorialized in Helen
Knode – who was her “advocate and agent provocateur” (Ellroy, 1997, 252). But
that is also the role that Jean Hilliker has always played for Ellroy: triggering the
mapping of his life. She did that by leaving a hole on at least two planes: as a lack
of information about her (life before Ellroy’s birth and) death, and con-sequently
as a lack of material (factual and emotional) to draw upon in building his own
personality and positioning himself in the world.52 These holes triggered the
deterritorialization lines that would first lead Ellroy away from Jean Hilliker and
toward many surrogates (fictional and real) in order to finally reterritorial-ize her
in a book not only dedicated to her (or based on her thematically), but a book that
recognises her rhizome-building power and eventually ends with the
acknowledgment that she is not to be found, that she is the search itself and (in true
rhizomatic nature) a search that has no end.53
Let us take a look at the stages of Ellroy’s becoming, specifically at his exceptional
observational skill that helped develop his “superbly honed memory”, as he calls it on
page 11 in The Hilliker Curse. His process of memory training consisted of a specific
conjuring, envisioning, which he calls “my time, my spells in the dark, my alone -in-
the- dark perceptions, my time alone-in-the-dark” (Ellroy, 2010) that was preceded by
minute observations during his stalking episodes. This conjur-ing (which he often
refers to as “brooding”) entailed and mixed two processes: the recollection of facts,
gathered during observation (which was centred, from the early age of 7, on girls and
women), the merging of these with other types of information not gained directly (but
through secondary sources), and the com-bination of these into a narrative which
included Ellroy himself as a protagonist. This transposed the recollection into the realm
of imagination, which is specific to his “voyage in place”. He describes his
extraordinary observation skill as be-coming the “Man Camera”. This is a term Ellroy
coined for a special detection technique, where the mind (through the eye) becomes a
camera, roving over and recording a (crime) scene, to be replayed over and over again.
The first mention of the technique itself (which is also very descriptive of Ellroy’s own
approach to writing) appears in Silent Terror (1990) that was written as a fictional
memoir of
52 In fact she “helped” him to not position himself in the world; she helped him become rhizomatic. We could
say that she sent him on the voyage of his becoming.
53 “There are knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots [...] the root-tree and canal-
rhizome are not two opposed models: the first operates as a transcendent model and tracing, even if it engenders
its own escapes; the second operates as an immanent process that overturns the model and outlines a map, even
if it constitutes its own hierarchies, even if it gives rise to a despotic channel” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 41).
Both models are at work in Ellroy’s autobiographies, but more so in My Dark Places. Writing a rhizome can be
exhausting, the need to revert to the arborescent model is therefore ever present.
147
a serial killer, who bears several traits of Ellroy as a teenager and young adult;54
here it is called “(screening) brain movies” (Ellroy, 1986, 20). However, the first
mention of the term “Man-Camera” appears in The Big Nowhere. The invention of
“Man-Camera” is attributed to Hans Maslick, a fictional character from The Big
Nowhere, supposedly a famous German criminologist, and it is described as an
investigative technique that “involved screening details from the perpetrator’s
point of view” (Ellroy, 1988, 81). The brain (or better, the eye) operates like a
camera lens: it has the ability to zoom in and out, “freezing close-ups, selecting
background motifs” (ibid).
In The Hilliker Curse he uses other terms to describe the technique (which is here,
of course, attributed to him), like “brain-screening” (Ellroy, 2010, 8). This skill is
linked directly to the experiential aspect of autobiography: the re-living and recon-
structing of experience. His “brain-screenings” attempt just that. One could liken
Ellroy to a “far-seer”, a term that Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 202) use for rare
individuals who have long-distance vision and have “telescopes” that “are complex
and refined”. What they see is entirely different from what the others see. They see
“a whole microsegmentarity, details of details, ‘a roller coaster of possibilities’, a
whole rhizome” and are very susceptible to cracks and uniquely equipped to detect
ruptures; and after “real ruptures” (1993, 279) one becomes clandestine, impercep-
tible; they trigger the becoming-imperceptible.
If becoming-imperceptible comes at the end of all the molecular becomings that
begin with becoming-woman, what does it actually mean? Becoming-impercep-
tible means many things. It is connected to the (asignifying) indiscernible and the
(asubjective) impersonal (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 279). The development of
Ellroy’s superb observational skills as well as his method of brain-screening leads
in his final stage not to greater discernibility or ultimate clarity, but to indiscern-
ibility, to asubjectiveness.
This is also reflected in the title of the first and the last part of The Hilliker Curse,
which is “Her”; the word also appears in capitalised form throughout the book
whenever Ellroy refers to his mother in the very specific way of revealing her as the
line of becoming, leading to indiscernibility. In the preface to the book he says: “My
obsessive will is too stretched. Their story must eclipse Hers in volume and content. I
must honor Them and distinguish each one from Her. [...] They are all gone now. I am
unbodied without them” (Ellroy, 2010, 114). This is a direct ex-pression of his need to
change his rhizome, to make it change shape and quality,
54 Such as being a Peeping Tom and breaking into women’s homes to steal undergarments.
148
because it has reached the point of being “stretched (too) thin.”55 And the way to
change it is via his main line of flight.
7.5 Becoming Everybody/Everything
The main line of flight of The Hilliker Curse (and the rhizome it builds with Ell-
roy’s life and his other works) is Geneva Hilliker, “Her”. By following it, he could
actually transform his rhizome into another (rhizome), basically by means of reter-
ritorialization of “Her”. But who is the final “Her” in the title of the last part of
The Hilliker Curse? Is it Erika Schickel (his current partner) or (the now finally
found) Geneva Hilliker, or is it Ellroy himself? The pessimistic view would be:
none of them, because his deterritorialization is forever ongoing.
If we take a more optimistic view, we can interpret the changing of Ellroy’s rhi-zome56
in the sense of “becoming everybody/everything”, which is to “make a world ( faire
monde), become-world” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 281). This is – according to
Deleuze und Guattari – the final stage of becoming in a rhizomatic book. Be-coming-
world means that “one has suppressed in oneself everything that prevents us from
slipping between things and growing in the midst of things. One has combined
‘everything’ (le ‘tout’): the indefinite article, the infinitive-becoming, and the proper
name to which one is reduced” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 280). It also means to
have “dismantled love in order to become capable of loving, to have dismantled one’s
self in order finally to be alone and meet the true double at the other end of the line. A
clandestine passenger on a motionless voyage” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 218). The
proper name to which Ellroy has been reduced is in fact the one used in the title of his
second autobiography: Hilliker. This is the name that connects and com-bines him with
infinitive becoming. And who is his double? Is it Erika? In the final paragraph of The
Hilliker Curse he suggests that through Erika he is now experienc-ing glimpses of his
becoming everybody/everything, as there is nothing that would separate Erika from
“Her” and subsequently from him; he claims to have found the woman God had sent
him, but it seems to be a premature assessment as his life is still ongoing and there is
no way to tell if this is really the ultimate (re)territorializa-tion . So is it just a case of
him wanting her to be his “double”?
The question whether or not he found his “double”, equals the question whether
or not The Hilliker Curse is a modern, rhizomatic, hybrid autobiography (and
55 Ellroy repeatedly references the state of being “stretched too thin”, specifically in connection with his
obsession, his desire, his becoming (2010, 101, 111, 141).
56 The shape and the quality of Ellroy’s rhizome are tentatively changing in the last chapter of The Hilliker Curse
as he makes an attempt to end his “pursuit of women” by declaring Erika Schickel his real “Her”.
149
the question that we asked in the first subsection regarding Ellroy’s desire). But
no matter what answer we give or which view we take, Ellroy made a world by
conjugating with and continuing the lines of both Erika and Geneva, and all the
other “stand-ins” of “Her” that came before (the imagined ones as well as the real
ones).57 And “it is by conjugating, by continuing with other lines, other pieces that
one makes a world that can overlay the first one, like a transpar-ency” (Deleuze
and Guattari, 1993, 279–280). And that is what a rhizome, a hybrid text (including
the modern autobiography), aims at: at making a world in a Deleuzian sense. In
my opinion, he succeeded: his desire still stirs, his rhizome is still active, he is still
becoming.
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Summary
Autobiography is a text type that defies classification in the sense of being literary or
non-literary, especially in its contemporary incarnations; it is positioned in the
interspace between the two. This position suggests a hybrid nature of autobio-graphical
texts that – according to most theoreticians – manifests itself in a blend-ing of
heterogeneous (factual and fictional) elements. The chapter argues that the hybridity
of autobiographical texts can also be understood in the sense of Deleuz-ian
rhizomatics: as a multiplicity, a rhizome. To prove this point I chose to analyse the
autobiography of the American author James Ellroy, entitled The Hilliker Curse
(2010), by using the method of schizoanalysis. I contend that this autobiography
(together with the previous one, My Dark Places (1996), as well as his other literary
works), builds a rhizome with Ellroy’s life and that The Hilliker Curse represents one
of the plateaus of this rhizome.
Povzetek
Avtobiografija je besedilna vrsta, ki je ni moč enoumno opredeliti kot literarno ali
neliterarno, še posebej, če govorimo o moderni avtobiografiji z vsemi njenimi
različicami. Umeščena je v medprostor med leposlovjem in neleposlovjem. Ta po-
zicija sugerira hibridno naravo avtobiografskih besedil, ki jo večina teoretikov ra-zlaga
v smislu mešanja in spajanja heterogenih (realnih in fiktivnih) elementov. V poglavju
trdim, da je hibridnost avtobiografskih besedil moč razumeti tudi v smislu Deleuzove
rizomatike: kot mnogoterost, kot rizom. Namen poglavja je potrditi to hipotezo z
analizo avtobiografije ameriškega pisatelja Jamesa Ellroya, z naslovom The Hilliker
Curse (2010), in sicer z uporabo metode shizoanalize. Moja hipoteza je ta, da omenjena
avtobiografija (skupaj z avtorjevo prejšnjo avtobiografijo, My Dark Places (1996),
kakor tudi z njegovimi literanimi deli) tvori rizom z avtorjevim življenjem in da je The
Hilliker Curse eden od platojev tega rizoma.
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