Bret Easton Ellis

Interview by Dennis Widmyer

Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Pscyho, The Informers and Glamorama... do these titles sound familiar? Of course they do. You're on Chuck Palahniuk website, so you know who the hell Bret Easton Ellis is. His novel American Psycho made the term "transgression" a literary household item a full five years before Fight Club was even published. Now he returns, after six years, with his latest novel Lunar Park, a pseudo memoir about fatherhood, a failed marriage and the attempted redemption that comes after a career of drugs, booze, women and men.

In Lunar Park, Ellis tackles these topics... and somehow, also includes everything from creepy stuffed animals, a haunted house, and an obsessed fan who poses as Patrick Bateman and recreates the murders from American Psycho.

After reading an advanced reader's copy of Lunar Park last month, I had the awesome opportunity to conduct an email interview with Bret. I fired 11 questions his way and he fielded every one.

Dennis Widmyer: Lunar Park is a deeply personal book in which you wrestle out demons about your celebrity, drug & alcohol habits, and the ghost of your father. Because of this, was it a tough book to write, or a deeply liberating one?

Bret Easton Ellis: Well I don't think any book should be tough to write. You should be inspired enough by the material to find the experience exciting. I don't understand writers who mope about how tough it is to write a book. When I'm not feeling it that day then I simply take a break. I don't sit at my desk with my head in my hands groaning. You can't will creativity. It comes when it comes. Sure, the book is your focal point while you're writing it and you're often driven by it much to the detriment of other things going on in your life--other things can get left behind. But writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour. I also do a fairly long outline so that by the time I'm ready to write the actual prose I'm pretty convinced by what I'm about to commit to. Saying that: I suppose there were moments during the writing of Lunar Park that made me sad because I was writing about unresolved feelings I had about my father and I was drawing on a lot of negative stuff that had happened between the two of us. On the other hand by the time I finished the book I felt liberated. I did feel I had worked something out between the two of us--even though my main intention was to write a fun genre novel. When his ashes are spread at the end of the book I felt something lift off me. The celebrity and drug stuff was just funny by comparison, though in their own way liberating as well. Spoofing myself and delivering a character that even my staunchest defenders would have problems with was very entertaining.

 Dennis: Throughout the novel, many friends and fellow employees of yours are mentioned. Everyone from novelist Jay McInerney to David Duchovny to your publicist and agent. What was the reaction you got from some of these people when they read the novel?

Ellis: The only one who took it personally was Jay--who, I think, misread his cameo. I thought he was the moral compass and the voice of reason in the scene he's in. But what he really objected to was the comparison to Jerry Lewis, which he said was probably the worst thing written about him in his 20 year career. I disagree. There have been worse things written about Jay. Plus it was just another example of the Bret character belittling a rival and putting him at a safer, less serious, distance.

Dennis: On the subject of real people in Lunar Park have you spoken at all with your ex-wife Jayne Dennis about the novel since its completion, and if so, what was her reaction to it?

Ellis: We haven't spoken. All I know is that she read a draft of the manuscript when it was vetted by the legal team at Knopf and she had her objections, but when asked what they were she was vague (I think the book just reminded her of Robby and made her sad) and I think most of Jayne's complaints had to do with privacy issues (in particular the scene in which I wrote about the meltdown in our couples counseling session). But she didn't stop publication because everything I wrote about us was true. I also think she comes off very sympathetically. Regardless of how I ended up with Jayne during those months, I did love her and I wish her the best.

Dennis: On one level Lunar Park is a novel about fatherhood and attempts at reconciliation with ones past. On another it's a great ghost story about a haunted house and monsters in dark hallways. Did you set out to make it so scary? And if so, where did a lot of these influences come from?

Ellis: The impetus to write the novel came from wanting to mimic the books I loved as a boy and a teenager--specifically the Stephen King novels I devoured as well as both the Warren Comics of the 70's (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirilla) and the slightly less edgy EC Comics (Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt). I guess I basically wanted to re-experience the pleasure I got from reading something like The Shining or The Dark Half. (This also holds true for Glamorama--I wanted to update the international espionage novels--the Robert Ludlum books--I read as a kid. Another experiment in writing genre fiction that got a little out of control.) Lunar Park was initially going to have a fairly basic story but a couple of things happened to me that ultimately made it a more deeper and more meaningful book to write. I worked on the outline on and off for about ten years (while I was writing Glamorama) and during that time the American Psycho controversy occurred, my father died, and I became more interested in the actual process of writing fiction and what it means to devote your life to writing fiction. All of these extra elements became weaved throughout the basic haunted house concept and changed the book inordinately--though the structure pretty much stayed the same. I guess I thought it was scary while I was writing it and since a lot of the stuff in the book actually happened to me, the process of finishing the novel was kind of like an exorcism. I laid a lot of demons to rest.

Dennis: I want to talk about American Psycho. I read recently that in researching Lunar Park you went back and read it for the first time in over a decade. What was the experience like and how did it help you with the new novel?

Ellis: Well, it helped with the new novel because there were certain facts within American Psycho that corresponded with the events in Lunar Park. That was the only reason I picked up the book in the summer of 03. I wasn't looking forward to it. I hadn't read it since its publication in 1991. I was worried that its detractrors were going to be proven right, and that I was going to be reminded of the punky kid who was interested in conceptual fiction and transgression and experimental tropes and list making, etc. I thought all of that stuff was going to stick out like a sore and withered thumb. But I was surprised. I liked the book and all the things I was worried about encountering weren't there, or at least were overshadowed by how fast the thing moved and how funny the book was. The voice--that I thought was going to seem labored to me now at 40--was much more compelling and I forgot how much I agreed with Patrick Bateman about society and the implied criticism of the world he inhabited. His misery seemed justified and I found him oddly sympathetic. However, I became squeamish during the violent sequences which I thought were so horrific I had to steel myself while reading them. They were upsetting to the point of being distracting. I wouldn't change anything about the novel and I was relieved when I finished rereading it that it wasn't as pretentious as I thought it was going to be, but the violence bothered me and I was surprised by that.