The Works of Bret Easton Ellis

[swanflake]

Firstly, is "Easton" a middle name, or a last name? I only ask so I won't sound stupid if I were to refer to him as "Easton Ellis" instead of just "Ellis".

Anyway, the only book of his I have read is The Rules of Attraction, and to get this thread going, from the thread for the movie, from Moldy Tofu:

I'd add that you have to have a pretty strong stomach for Bret Easton Ellis's stuff. I'm one of those who find it disgusting, offensive, and poorly written garbage, however I also know people who adore it. I know very few people who are "meh" about it. It seems that people either love him and think he's brilliant or hate him and think his stuff is disgusting crap.

Thoughts?

[Deleted]

The only book of his I read completely was The Informers, which was a short story collection. (Although I swear I thought it was a novel at the time.)

Less Than Zero was less than captivating and The Rules of Attraction held no attraction. American Psycho I borrowed from the library around the time the movie started getting press because of Leonardo DiCaprio. I didn't finish it (if you've read it, I quit when he got the rat out of the sink), but my opinion on it is that it was a horribly-edited fashionlogue with violence - there were at least two instances where he miraculously changed ensembles without leaving the lunch/dinner table. The movie wasn't bad, especially since it explained the ending (I skipped to the last page or two in the book, which made no sense to me) plus a buff Christian Bale.

In short, give me Jay MacInerney any day. Other people are free to disagree.

(And I think Easton is a middle name, because I think I've seen just "Ellis" used.)

[Deleted]

Spordelia -- Funny, I had the exact same confusion with The Informers. I was going crazy trying to tie the "chapters" together.

Anyone read Glamorama? It was entertaining and pretty interesting till about half-way through. Then the tone completely changed and it turned into one scene of nauseating violence after another. I had this creepy feeling that BEE secretly hates and wants to torture his readers.

And American Psycho? I heard about the rat scene, and will never, ever go near that book. (You know, I should have realized that I should've avoided Glamorama simply because it was by someone capable of writing the rat scene... Well, live and learn.)

[Deleted]

I read American Psycho. I thought the book was more about tone than story. Setting a scene and getting inside someone's head. Trying to understand the motivations of the character and/or figure out what was really going on wasn't the point (that I could see). YMMV, of course.

[swanflake]

bonsai said:

Spordelia -- Funny, I had the exact same confusion with The Informers. I was going crazy trying to tie the "chapters" together.

As I mentioned in the movie thread for The Rules of Attraction, when I read the book, I could never figure out how I was supposed to interpret the way the characters would contradict one another. I assumed Ellis meant some kind of symbolism/underlying meaning/etc by the way the characters told completely different accounts of the same occurence, but I couldn't figure out what the underlying meaning was supposed to be.


SPOILER >>> Like, Sean and Paul's relationship. In Sean's account, they hardly spoke and just smoked pot or whatever, then Sean would leave, usually kind of annoyed. In Paul's account, they had a sexual relationship, and an emotional relationship as well. So what gives? Which one are we supposed to believe? I had no idea how to interpret all of that.<<<

[monsterzero]

I got Less Than Zero from a used book sale and I never got it. There's just nothing there in Ellis's writing that really appeals to me a decade out of the '80s and as for American Psycho....no thanks, I'm just not that interested.

I did read that Spy Magazine had a major beef with Ellis and tormented him relentlessly. Anybody know about this?

[Deleted]

I'd love to know about the Spy Magazine beef, too.

He's said that he likes to "play" with his characters -- Such as having a character from one book show up unexpectedly in another. Maybe having the characters' experiences contradict one another (as Swanflake mentioned) is part of that. Or maybe BEE's just willfully inconsistent.

I heard that Jay McInerney was mad at him (justifiably!) because BEE took one of McInerney's characters and inserted her into one of his own books. Hey! It's one thing to "play" with your own characters, but to usurp someone else's?

[queequeg]

Swanflake:

I could never figure out how I was supposed to interpret the way the characters would contradict one another.

I was so underwhelmed by the book that I fogot about that. >I just kind of took it literally and assumed he was using the old 'unreliable narrator' device and that Paul's account was wrong and just part of his fantasy or something because, if I remember correctly, the accounts from the other characters fit more with Sean's?< I didn't really get the point of the book though.

What I did like was the fact that the characters in The Rules of Attraction go to the same college as the one's in Donna Tartt's The Secret History. I think they mention the weird people who take classics and never hang around with anyone else or something.

[Deleted]

What I did like was the fact that the characters in The Rules of Attraction go to the same college as the one's in Donna Tartt's The Secret History. I think they mention the weird people who take classics and never hang around with anyone else or something.

Oh, that's cool. I loved The Secret History, but I've never read The Rules of Attraction. Well, cool for me, as a reader. Borrowing a school name is kinda like borrowing characters, although isn't imitation the highest form of flattery? "Wierd Al" Syndrome?

[Deleted]

queequeg said:

What I did like was the fact that the characters in The Rules of Attraction go to the same college as the one's in Donna Tartt's The Secret History. I think they mention the weird people who take classics and never hang around with anyone else or something.

Part of that may be that Ellis and Tartt met at Bennington College, and he helped her find an agent - she did dedicate The Secret History to him.