– All my books are about loneliness and isolation, about not fitting into the society I am placed in. I have always felt outside.
Bret Easton Ellis is reclining in a comfortable velor sofa. The hair is grey, the gaze is framed by a pair of striking glasses. Hooded jacket over a black T-shirt, well-worn sweatpants. He looks tired.
– If I’m tired? Yes. It’s tiring to be on a book tour as a 58-year-old, soon to be 59. It’s no fun anymore. I am an elderly man who is concerned with my routines and who prefers to stay at home.
Dream of being loved
He rubs his eyes, lists the ingredients for a good day: Wake up at his own pace, make coffee, read books and work until cocktail hour at 19.30 sharp.
– When I have to travel around to all these countries to talk about a book I finished a long time ago, it feels… tiring.
– Many would think that you live an extremely privileged life?
– Yes I understand. It sounds mean to complain about a book tour, but you asked and I won’t lie. I’m tired.
– Why do you bother giving interviews?
– The question is rather why you bother to interview me! I’m a dinosaur, I’ve been here forever, and I’ve said what I have to say.
– Er, the new book…
– Yes, okay. But another interview with Bret Easton Ellis, I don’t know if anyone can bear to read it.
– Now are you flirting?
– No! It actually amazes me that journalists still want to interview me after all the criticism I’ve received over the years, the outright hatred I’ve had directed at me.
– Maybe it’s because your books tend to become cult classics?
– Hmm. To be honest, the fact that so many people hate me might be why I’m still hanging around and bothering with this. I still have a dream in me to be loved.
He believes that the hatred he feels is rooted in the depictions of violence in his books, his anxiety about whether he is as crazy as some of the novel’s characters, and his previously decadent lifestyle.
– It seems as if I provoke a lot of people.
Ellis made his debut as a 21-year-old with the book “Less than zero”, which he wrote in school, and had a smash hit with the horror satire “American Psycho” in 1991. The book was made into a film a few years later, with Christian Bale in the role of the mentally disturbed Patrick Bateman.
One hundred percent honest
Bret Easton Ellis is in Oslo to talk about the brick he is dealing with, a book with a weight of one and a half kilos, distributed over 767 pages. “The Shards”, in Norwegian “Skår”, is about the year when he himself was 17 years old and spent his last year at high school in California together with rich girls and boys with Wayfarer sunglasses and questionable morals. It was the year when everything fell apart.
– The main character in the book is called Bret like you. Is it autobiographical?
– Yes, I would describe Bret aged 17 one hundred percent honestly, what is written in the book is exactly how I felt. In that sense, the book is completely authentic.
COLLEGE: Student Ellis has turned into a novel character. Photo: Bret Easton Ellis
sea view
– And the more… bizarre part?
– It is the author Bret who uses his imagination. I’ve always found it easy to imagine things, really live into what I imagine.
Like “American Psycho”, the new book is also about a serial killer. He has always been fascinated by serial killers, he admits.
– Maybe because I grew up in the epicenter of serial killers. Serial killers almost abounded in California when I was growing up.
He lashes out with his arms, and rams up in a loud voice.
– We had “the scorecard killer”, “the hillside strangler”, “the golden state killer”, DeAngelo, the Manson family… The list is almost endless.
Terrorized by psychopath
Drug addict
For a long time he was unable to get hold of the material, which has now ended up behind two stiff binders.
– I cannot force a novel, I have to feel it. It is a physical experience, painful and painful, a sore that I have to pierce.
When he finally got going, it was a liberation to write.
– There was so much terrible in my life when I wrote the book, that writing became a way of escaping from reality.
– What happened?
– My boyfriend became addicted to drugs, and that completely turned my life upside down. I’ve had boyfriends who have taken drugs, I’ve taken drugs myself, but dealing with a full-blooded drug addict was very difficult.
The book saved him from perishing.
– I let myself be completely absorbed by the writing and got a break from the horrible reality I found myself in.
– How is your girlfriend doing now?
Bret Easton Ellis leans forward on the sofa.
– This is the first time I have traveled from him after he came home after detoxification. I was worried about him when I left, but we talk and text every day and I think it’s going well, he wouldn’t have answered me if he fell out again.
– How is your own relationship with drugs?
– I grew out of my drug addiction.
He shrugs his shoulders.
– I got to a point where I didn’t get high anymore because it didn’t feel good anymore.
RUS: – There was cocaine everywhere, Ellis says of his own youth. Photo: Casey Nelson
sea view
Snowed from cocaine
New York was snowed in by cocaine in the 80s and 90s. There was also Bret Easton Ellis.
– There was cocaine everywhere at the time, everyone used it, me too. But I had some control over my substance abuse.
– How?
– I might have taken something on Thursday night, but often I waited until Friday. Then I had a full party weekend, before I came to myself on Monday. The rest of the week I wrote, so I wasn’t as far out as many people got the impression.
A river of addiction runs in his family, he says.
– My father was an alcoholic. Maybe I also drink too much, but again, I’m in control.
– Do you have a routine?
– Yes. There will be a couple of drinks when I finish work, but then I’ll switch to wine. Wine with the food, wine with the movies I watch. Then I have to have a couple more glasses of wine to fall asleep. I can’t drink more than that.
– But it’s quite a lot if it’s every day?
– It’s every day, yes, maybe it’s too much? Hmm. But I never drink during the day, and I’m not addicted to alcohol.
He leans his head back on the green velor sofa and thinks about it.
– Except when the clock approaches half past eight, then I feel like alcohol, because then it’s time to relax.
– Swelling and swelling
More fun than sex
He never drinks when he writes.
– Writing is more fun than anything else, more fun than drinking, even more fun than having sex.
He laughs out loud.
– There you have your headline: Bret Easton Ellis thinks it’s more fun to write than to have sex! Along with a picture of my ugly snout, ha, ha, ha.
– If you love writing so much why has it been thirteen years since the last book?
Bret Easton Ellis takes a long sip from his coffee cup.
– I thought TV series were the new novel. You know, Hollywood… I call Hollywood a casino, you think you’re going to hit the jackpot, but there are disappointments all around. I have been associated with so many projects that turned out to be stillborn.
Naked boys
He gets a dreamy look when he talks about Los Angeles, the city he grew up in and now lives in with his rehabilitated girlfriend.
– Are you living the dream in Hollywood?
– Many people think so, but my apartment in West Hollywood is barely 110 square meters, I don’t even have my own garden. And my BMW is fifteen years old, at least. I don’t wake up surrounded by naked boys, but I’m very happy with my life – when I’m at home.
He laughs out loud.
– I’m done with the party life, and feel best with my girlfriend, family and a few good friends.
Growing up, he pasted posters of scantily clad men on the walls of the boys’ room.
– “American Gigolo” with Richard Gere – Oh my God! And John Travolta’s dancing in “Saturday Night Fever”… Those two guys beat any hot girl for me.
– How did your parents react?
– We never talked about my being gay, I never came out to them. Mum told me later that she had understood it all along, and my father probably understood it too, he was disappointed that I was not the typical sports boy he had wanted.
He scratches his eye with his index finger.
– Being gay was never the problem, having a bad father was much worse.
ANALYZED: Bret Easton Ellis missed a loving father as a youngster. Photo: NTB
sea view
Violent drunk
The father died in 1992, aged fifty.
– He drank himself to death, I think he wanted to die. Dad didn’t care about me, he was never the loving father I needed as a boy.
He claims his father could be violent when drunk, but it was his emotional absence that was the most painful to deal with.
– Maybe that’s why I’ve had difficulty trusting men, it did something to me.
– And maybe that’s why your books are about destructive men?
– It can certainly happen.
There is a knock on the door. The interview is over.
Bret Easton Ellis yawns loudly.
– Fuck. I feel like I’ve been in psychoanalysis, I almost laid down.
He thanks for the conversation and empties the coffee cup, stretching his arms high above his head.
– Now I have to pull myself together and give a proper interview.
