Bret Easton Ellis
It's either revolting and alarming, or rote and predictable, but I really love Ellis' writing. I like him more than Palahniuk, to be honest. Usually, I don't read articles about creators of my favorite things, probably because I'm sick of being disappointed by the writer/actor/musician and their ego/idiocy/hypocrisy. But, well, for one, if Ellis didn't have all of these things, THAT would be a disappointment, and sometimes you stumble upon an interesting enough article that you stick around to read it all. And I found an article about Ellis that struck my fancy.
See, the thing is, I know he's playing the reporter. The reporter knows. It doesn't matter. There's something so stupidly shallow and image-heavy, and still HONEST about his bullshittery, because he's not trying to hide that it's a game. At the same time, there's so much that I want to have in my own writing. I don't want to write the next American Psycho or Informers, because that would defeat the point. I could recite, parrot, whatever. I want to have something so self-aware and vulnerable and arrogant that it embodies the spirit BEHIND Ellis' work, fuck the haters. But that takes balls and maybe a sensitivity that I haven't quite perfected.
So sensitive as to be able to write a handful of infinitely shallow characters that reflected all the gross parts of everyone and everything. Yep. That's deep as shit.
Oh, and the article is here.
See, the thing is, I know he's playing the reporter. The reporter knows. It doesn't matter. There's something so stupidly shallow and image-heavy, and still HONEST about his bullshittery, because he's not trying to hide that it's a game. At the same time, there's so much that I want to have in my own writing. I don't want to write the next American Psycho or Informers, because that would defeat the point. I could recite, parrot, whatever. I want to have something so self-aware and vulnerable and arrogant that it embodies the spirit BEHIND Ellis' work, fuck the haters. But that takes balls and maybe a sensitivity that I haven't quite perfected.
So sensitive as to be able to write a handful of infinitely shallow characters that reflected all the gross parts of everyone and everything. Yep. That's deep as shit.
Oh, and the article is here.