Bret Easton Ellis

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Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964 in Los Angeles, California) is an American author. He is considered to be one of the major Generation X authors and was regarded as one of the Brat Pack. His novels feature a "flat affect" and a glossy, empty style that garners him extremely polarized reviews. Ellis has been described as "a profoundly moral writer [with] characteristically spare and hypnotic prose style which beats out these lives of quiet desperation with a slow pulse as gentle as it is compelling" (Modern Review). He has called himself a moralist, while he has been pegged as a nihilist. His characters are young, generally vacuous people, who are aware of their depravity but choose to enjoy it. The novels are also linked by common, recurring characters, and dystopic locales (such as Los Angeles and New York).

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Biography

He was born in Los Angeles and raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, the son of Robert Martin Ellis, a wealthy property developer, and Dale Ellis, a housewife. His parents divorced in 1982. He was educated at The Buckley School, where he did not distinguish himself, and then took a music-based course at Bennington College in Vermont, which is thinly disguised as Camden Arts College in his novel The Rules Of Attraction and his other books. He was a part-time musician in some minor 1980s bands, such as The Parents, before his first book was published while he was still a student. Less Than Zero, a tale of disaffected, rich teenagers of Los Angeles, was well received by the critics and sold respectably (50,000 copies in its first year). He moved to New York in 1987 to release his second novel.

His most controversial work, the graphically violent novel American Psycho, was intended to be published by Simon & Schuster but they withdrew after external protests (NOW, and many others, considered the novel dangerously misogynistic and worse) and pressure from Gulf & Western. The novel was later published by Vintage. Some consider this novel, whose protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is both a cartoonishly materialistic yuppie and a serial killer, to be an example of transgressive art. American Psycho has achieved considerable cult status.

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Personal life

He was known to be bisexual for most of his life, but in August 2005 he broke his silence about his sexual orientation and told The New York Times that his best friend and lover for six years, Michael Wade Kaplan, died in January 2004, at the age of 30.

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Bibliography

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Films

Less Than Zero was made into a film in 1987, directed by Marek Kanievska and starring Andrew McCarthy, Robert Downey Jr and Jami Gertz. American Psycho was filmed in 2000, directed by Mary Harron and starring Christian Bale. The Rules of Attraction was filmed in 2002, directed by Roger Avary and starring James Van Der Beek and Shannyn Sossamon. A film based on Glamorama is in pre-production. Additionally, there is a film called Glitterati being made that takes place in between the events of The Rules of Attraction and Glamorama, which is slated for release before Glamorama.

A film about Ellis, titled This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis, was made in 2000. The film is a combination of a documentary on his life as well as dramatizations of scenes from his books.

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Trivia

Ellis often uses recurring characters and settings. Major characters in one novel may become minor ones in the next, or vice versa. Camden College, a fictional New England liberal arts college is frequently referenced. It is based on Bennington College, which Ellis himself attended.

  • Less Than Zero - Camden is referred to several times. Both Clay, the novel's protagonist and narrator, and Daniel, are said to be attending it.
  • The Rules of Attraction - Clay appears as a minor character and narrates one chapter. He is referred to as "The Guy from L.A." before being properly introduced. Main character Sean Bateman is younger brother of Patrick Bateman, who will later become the protagonist of American Psycho. Patrick appears briefly and narrates one chapter. Camden is the main setting of the novel. Additionally, the creations of Ellis's friend and fellow author Donna Tartt's 1992 novel The Secret History are referenced in the form of a passing mention of "those creepy Classics kids, off in the woods performing human sacrifice or whatever".
  • The Informers - Chapter 3: The son of one of the many Narrators in the book The Insiders, Graham, buys concert tickets from Julian, a character from Less Than Zero. The Daughter of the Narrator, Susan, goes on to say that Julian sells heroin and is a male prostitute (which he is). Graham refutes the claim that Julian in a male prostitute. In this Chapter, Susan also hangs out with Alana and Blair, characters from Less Than Zero.
  • The Informers - Chapter 8 consists solely of letters written to Sean Bateman, of The Rules of Attraction, by a girl named Anne who leaves Camden to visit her grandparents in L.A. The letters never reveal Sean's last name, but they reference one of his catch phrases: “Deal with it.” The letters are also never replied to (as is evident from the way Anne begs for a reply during each letter) which is typical Sean Bateman behavior.
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See also

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External links

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