The Eternal Return of Bret Easton Ellis

THESE days I am digging into Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel of sorts to Less Than Zero, one of the most famous and at least initially controversial novels ever written about Los Angeles.

It makes me think back to the stories I've written on Ellis over the years and our conversations about literature, fame, the heartlessness of Hollywood and the records of Elvis Costello. Here is the most extensive of those stories, an LA Times Sunday story.

I kick it off this way:

In his 1985 breakout novel, "Less Than Zero," Bret Easton Ellis, then all of 21 years old, created young, jaded Angelenos who just didn't care about anything: They recounted cocaine scores and semi-anonymous sex in the same tone with which they lamented their fading suntans. That ennui became Ellis' literary signature, and as he began to grow up in public, he became known as a photogenic and glamorous figure who liked booze and excess.


Most of the piece looks at a critical groundswell around this often dissed and neglected novelist: writers and critics including Jonathan Lethem, A.O. Scott and Alex Ross have argued that he is a more profound and complicated figure than he is usually taken as.

Many see him as an overlooked figure, one whose literary heft grows with time. It may be that like a lot of things that emerge from California, the style and vision of Ellis' work creates problems for East Coast intellectuals, but will become as enduring as psychedelia, surfing, the hard-boiled novel or fast food.

The new novel is very dark indeed, with a murder mystery plot, and shows the characters from Less Than Zero and their city grown grimmer and meaner. Ellis has several appearances coming up and I will keep readers of The Misread City alerted to them. The novel pubs on Tuesday June 15.

The Return of Bret Easton Ellis

NEW yorker scribe dana goodyear turned out an engaging "talk of the town" piece on brat pack novelist bret easton ellis and the new film made of his story collection "the informers."

i've had several encounters with the "less than zero" author over the years, and HERE is one of the latimes pieces i'm proudest of. the piece looks at his early breakout, the backlash against "american psycho," the gradual assumption that he was some kind of 80s relic like duran duran, and the underground appreciation of him among bona fide intellectual types like a.o. scott, alex ross and others.

it's also one of the longest piece i ever written: it was envisioned by my genius editor maria russo as the first of a "reassessments" series that would consider major west coast writers and wrestle with their critical reputations. because maria and i were both drop-kicked form the times the following year, this stands as the first and only in that ambitious series.

bret was a cool guy to hang with.

Photo credit: wikipedia

John Updike Redux

There's so much to say about the prolific john updike that i've filed a second story... and still didnt have room to get into topics like his take on male sexuality, his very funny Bech books, or his very fine art and book criticism. (his new yorker review of "my name is red" turned me on to turkish writer orhan pamuk, for instance.)

this piece came out of something i noticed over the years: when interviewing writers -- especially younger ones, experimentalists, literary science-fiction types, or west coast partisans -- i could often set my watch by how long it took them to knock udpike. it was a way of saying, "i dont do that stodgy, patriarchal realist stuff."

some of this, i imagine, is the usual generational warfare, as bret easton ellis suggests in my piece: eliot and his generation of modernists tore into the entire romantic tradition just as punk rockers initially  dismissed almost the entire school of '60s songcrafted that preceded them. but there's more to it than that.

anyway, hope readers enjoy the piece and i welcome comments. i must admit that in college, where i was a thomas pynchon devotee, i had some sympathy for the anti-updike argument.

Photo credit: Flictr user 19