Bret Easton Ellis is a hack

[muse0fire]

just got into a conversation with someone on book_club about Bret Easton Ellis - she's a fan, I think he's a hack. She asked me to elaborate, so I did - here's my response, and I'm curious about the opinions from my other literate friends

Comments

[notgruntled]

Literature, as opposed to just "books", denotes something great that should be added to the canon because there's something truly amazing between the covers. When you read literature your whole sense of humanity is enriched, and your mind is opened to worlds beyond your own. You learn something about the world that came before, that is to come, or that you've never noticed before. Yada yada yada. I just finished "The Salmon of Doubt," in which Douglas Adams talks about his dislike of books that *try* to be literature. That's a judgment to be made later; Dickens was a serial writer for popular magazines, and Shakespeare was the Chris Columbus of his day. I'd bet that some of Stephen King's work will be taught as literature generations hence, Alice Walker will endure (if I'm an English prof in 20 years, I'll teach The Color Purple and To Kill a Mockingbird in tandem), and Adams himself will be remembered his generation's Wodehouse, without Wodehouse's longevity

[supergoober]

The way to create literature is to write good stories well, to create worlds that are real and characters that are universally human, and to make it sing.

I liked this criticism of the state of modern adult literary fiction today by Philip Pullman that I read in this article yesterday: "In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness.... The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They’re embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do."

[muse0fire]

I just finished "The Salmon of Doubt,"

Sidebar: Loved "Salmon of Doubt", hate Death for stealing Adams too soon.

I'd bet that some of Stephen King's work will be taught as literature generations hence

Oh I would definitely argue that some of King's works qualify as excellent literature (and some qualifies as schlock.)

The way to create literature is to write good stories

Absolutely, and I don't think a writer has to be linear, European, or "classic" in order to qualify - but I do think they have to have a point (of some sort) and as you say, have a good story. Have you read "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith? One of my favorite "good stories" of recent years.

"That said, Brett Easton Ellis is a hack whom I would love to see anonymously cowriting Sweet Valley High books

LOL

BTW, do you want your jacket back?

[supergoober]

The only book of his I've read was Less Than Zero, which was not even as good as the crappy movie. However, there were a couple of images and phrases that have stayed with me, so I guess I can't say that I got nothing out of it. My favorite line was when the main character (about whom I remember exactly nothing) was in a nightclub watching "a bunch of bored people listening to 'Tainted Love' and trying to look turned on." I thought that pretty much summed up the kinds of people I met when I went out dancing, the people who would never, ever do anything that wasn't contrived to look cool and who stood around the walls of the club, smoking and drinking and trying to look sexy and basically doing everything except have fun. Oh, how they puzzled me, those people. They still do. I don't know whether I feel sorry for them because they can't have any fun or whether I'm jealous that they at least figured out how to pretend to be cool, which is much more than I was ever able to accomplish.

I think I got off topic...