The novelist explains why an odious parent spurred him to become a writer
Elizabeth Day , The Observer, Sunday 18 July 2010
Portrait of the novelist Bret Easton Ellis, at Claridges, London. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer
Bret Easton Ellis is reclining on a chair in the bar of Claridge's hotel examining an unsightly stain on the silk-lined ceiling. "What is that?" he asks, readjusting his thick, black-framed spectacles in order to get a better look. "Is it water?" "Perhaps," I say, thinking of the bit in American Psycho where the serial killer Patrick Bateman pins his ex-girlfriend to the floor with a nail-gun, "or it might be blood." "No," Ellis replies matter of factly, as though he has seen blood stains on ceilings a thousand times before. "It's not blood."
Still, he's feeling edgy in the bar, especially when a man talking loudly on a mobile sits slightly too close to us. "We're not doing this here," Ellis says, his voice as dry as an afternoon martini.
We abandon the ginger ale he has ordered and make our way upstairs to his suite where he relaxes into a plump armchair, propping up his legs on a coffee table so that I get a close-up view of his soft leather, slip-on shoes. These are disappointing. These are not the hell-raiser kind of shoes one might expect from a one-time literary brat-packer, the man who, after the publication of his debut novel, Less Than Zero, at the age of 21, was touted as the enfant terrible of American literature.
"I'm certainly now the oldest person at [book] signings," says the 46-year-old Ellis with a sigh. "There'll be 600 people there and I'll be the oldest person in the room."
He has revisited his youth with his latest novel, Imperial Bedrooms, a sequel to Less Than Zero. "Mostly, in my case, writing comes from pain, confusion, stress," he says, before helpfully reciting a list of motivations: "I have father issues. Somebody didn't love me. I became famous too young..."
Full interview/story at The Guardian.
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