Bret Easton Ellis - Work

Work

Ellis' first novel, Less Than Zero, a tale of disaffected, rich teenagers of Los Angeles written and re-written over a five-year period from Ellis' sophomore year in high school, earlier drafts being " more autobiographical and read like teen diaries or journal entries—lots of stuff about the bands I liked, the beach, the Galleria, clubs, driving around, doing drugs, partying", according to Ellis. The novel was praised by critics and sold well (50,000 copies in its first year). He moved back to New York City in 1987 for the publication of his second novel, The Rules of Attraction - described by Ellis as " an attempt to write the kind of college novel I had always wanted to read and could never find" - which follows a group of sexually promiscuous college students. Influenced heavily by James Joyce's Ulysses and its stream-of-consciousness narrative technnique, ...Attraction sold fairly well, though Ellis admits he felt he had "fallen off", after the novel failed to match the success of his debut effort, Ellis reflecting in 2012 " I was very obsessive, very protective about that book, perhaps overly so". His most controversial work is the graphically violent American Psycho, which Ellis states " came out of a place of severe alienation and loneliness and self-loathing. I was pursuing a life—you could call it the Gentlemen’s Quarterly way of living—that I knew was bullshit, and yet I couldn’t seem to help it.". The book was intended to be published by Simon & Schuster, but they withdrew after external protests from groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and many others due to the allegedly misogynistic nature of the book. 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.

His collection of short stories, The Informers, was published in 1994. It contains vignettes of wayward Los Angeles characters ranging from rock stars to vampires, mostly written while Ellis was in college, and so has more in common with the style of Less Than Zero. Ellis has said that the stories in The Informers were collected and released only to fulfill a contractual obligation after discovering that it would take far longer to complete his next novel than he'd intended. After years of struggling with it, Ellis released his fourth novel Glamorama in 1998. Glamorama is set in the world of high fashion, following a male model who becomes entangled in a bizarre terrorist organization composed entirely of other models. The book plays with themes of media, celebrity, and political violence, and like its predecessor American Psycho it uses surrealism to convey a sense of postmodern dread. Although the reactions to the novel were mixed, Ellis holds it in high esteem among his own works: " t’s probably the best novel I’ve written and the one that means the most to me. And when I say “best”—the wrong word, I suppose, but I’m not sure what else to replace it with—I mean that I’ll never have that energy again, that kind of focus sustained for eight years on a single project. I’ll never spend that amount of time crafting a book that means that much to me. And I think people who have read all of my work and are fans understand that about Glamorama—it’s the one book out of the seven I’ve published that matters the most." Ellis's novel Lunar Park (2005), uses the form of a celebrity memoir to tell a ghost story about the novelist "Bret Easton Ellis" and his chilling experiences in the apparently haunted home he shares with his wife and son. In keeping with his usual style, Ellis mixes absurd comedy with a bleak and violent vision.

One reviewer called Lunar Park "a book that lacks honesty" from a "narcissist bored with himself."

Imperial Bedrooms (2010) follows the characters of Less Than Zero 25 years later; it combines the violence of American Psycho and the postmodernism of Lunar Park with the unaltered ennui of Ellis' debut novel. The book was met with disappointing sales.

Ellis has expressed interest in writing the screenplay for Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation. He has discussed casting with his followers, and even mentioned meeting with the film's producers, as well as noting he felt it went well.