As Bret Easton Ellis knows, the danger of being precocious is to never mature. Starting with Less Than Zero, a glittering and grotesque odyssey of hedonism and decay in LA which Ellis sold to Penguin Books at age 21, he has become one of contemporary literature's most compelling icons and strongest talents. Since American Psycho was first published in the United States in 1991, every cold-eyed coke-fuelled i-banker suddenly seemed like Bret Easton Ellis was feeding him his lines. However, creating searing satires of society's soulless has also earned him the reputation of being a callow egotist, loudly self-destructing in public.

Few writers have produced such sleek, slick and sharp representations of their era. Now relatively grown-up and self-reflective he is unnerved by being frequently confused with his chic sociopath characters, and his just published novel, Lunar Park (Picador), shows him questioning the depth of his own shallowness. At times facile, yet overall insightful, the novel tells the story of a fictional fashionable writer (named Bret Easton Ellis) whose suburban zip-code does little to temper his drug-use or apathy until his past and characters from his (and the "real" Ellis) novels begin to cross into his physical reality requiring him to realize the difference between being a writer and an adult.

Additional Info
BBE site
BBE celeb-blog
The Times audio interview (10/2005)
Suicide Girls interview (09/2005)
Powell's Books interview (09/2005)
Index interview (2001)
Old interview (1994)
Old audio interview (1984)
Guardian article (01/1999)
Salon article (01/1999)
The Times LP review
The Guardian LP review
Slate LP review

This interview was conducted via the phone on 04/10/05.

Ana Finel Honigman: Hello, this is Ana Finel Honigman, from KultureFlash.

Bret Easton Ellis: This is Bret Ellis.

AFH: Hi.

BEE: You seem hesitant.

AFH: I think I sound like I have a terrible cold. If it sounds like you're talking to someone with a cold, it's because you are.

BEE: No, it's not that. You should be fearful. I think the person I am talking to is just a little uncertain of what's going on and who they are talking to, just the usual, what I'm usually used to.

AF: Do you usually make people hesitant? Are people aggressive with you? Are you surrounded by sycophants?

BEE: No, not aggressive at all. Phone interviews are always awkward. Did you expect me to pick up the phone or did you think someone else would answer for me?

AFH: I figured you would be in hotel room near the phone.

BEE: It is a very big room. There would be a lot of space for assistants to wait to pick up the phone. Where are you calling from?

AFH: My kitchen table in Oxford.

BEE: What are you wearing? No, don't tell me.

AFH: Why not? I was flattered. No one ever asks me questions. It was nice. So tell me, what do you think people want from you?

BEE: I don't think people want anything from me. I really don't.

AFH: Don't you think strangers who encounter you have expectations they want you to fulfil?

BEE: They might want the experience of encountering me but certain people want something else. Most people don't know who I am.

AFH: Do you think the people who recognize you and approach you are confronting a particularly unrealistic image?

BEE: Why wouldn't they? I have preconceived notions of celebrities too. I'm no smarter than anyone else when it comes to sussing out the truth from the hype.

AFH: Does it bother you how your movies have been cinematically interpreted?

BEE: I like the money. Also it does enlarge my readership. It's an undeniable thing. It just happens. Whether a book like the Rules Of Attraction was made into a movie reviled and despised by critics which closed in the United States within two or three weeks, still sells an enormous amount of books. I noticed on this tour that a big percentage of my audiences were introduced to my work through the films. I hadn't toured since American Psycho and Rules of Attraction came out as movies and, regardless of what I think of them aesthetically, this tour was a big shock to learn that I had a new audience because of those movies; neither of which was a big blockbuster.

AFH: Were there literary icons whose writing or lifestyle you emulated when you were young?

BEE: I emulated Hemingway. I emulated Joan Didion.

AFH: Stylistically, right?

BEE: Stylistically I emulated Joan Didion. I wanted to live like Kerouac, before I grew up and realised I didn't want to live like Kerouac, but by then it was too late and I was already living like Kerouac.

AFH: Well, at least you didn't die like James Agee.

BEE: He wasn't on my radar till much, much later. When I was emulating writers it was Hemingway, Fitzgerald but my own self-destructive act was not particularly interesting after a while. It got tiresome but I must admit it was romantic and I liked the idea of it, the notion of it. I even liked the idea that some people thought I was a hell-raiser. Compared to the real hell-raisers, I wasn't even in their class.

AFH: So, is it a mistake to confuse you with your characters?

BEE: No, it's not a false assumption to link me with my characters. There is a corollary between me and all my characters. Every character I have written about has a strong corollary with me.

AFH: Marriage and fatherhood are the catalysts for the Bret Easton Ellis character's maturation in Lunar Park yet you've never been married or a father. Why did you decide to add children and a wife to him?

BEE: That character was very much based on my Dad, who failed at being a father. That character fails at being a father and a husband, which is clearly something he never wanted to be in the first place. Once he really wants to be a father, it's too late. The damage is irreparable, which was also like my Dad. So, in a lot of ways, there is a strong corollary between me and the character in Lunar Park, but it is also based on my father, and I was basing the son on aspects of myself. It is complicated.

AFH: Do you want to be a father?

BEE: At one point in my life, there was this weird male biological clock ticking. I didn't think it was possible but in my early thirties, when I was 31 or 32, I wanted children. And then it disappeared just as quickly. I was surprised by it actually. I've been in relationships where it seemed like that was where we were going but I never thought I would start wanting it.

AFH: Did you want kids or did you want to be a dad?

BEE: What is the difference between those things? That's an interesting distinction.

AFH: I'd think wanting kids means wanting to have these separate little people in your life whereas wanting to be a dad is something more selfish, it is the egotistical desire to be in the role of a parent -- to be loved and inflict one's personality on someone else.

BEE: In some strange way, I wanted to be a father I never had. I am only guessing that now, since eight or nine years have passed since I last felt those twinges. I feel maybe my wanting a child was a very natural thing. I know a lot of men who want children. Men want children. It's natural but I feel like I maybe wanted to correct the damage that was inflicted on me by my dad. I thought, I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it right. I suppose that it a selfish reason for wanting to have a child but it's not a bad one, really. I wanted to not fuck someone up. What is wrong with that?

AFH: Is part of writing about wish-fulfilment for you?

BEE: Obviously if I was I would have ended Lunar Park on a much happier note. No, I don't use my writing as wish fulfillment. I want to control certain aspects of my emotional life and I want to explore them but I don't necessarily view my writing as a series of purely autobiographical exorcisms like the last scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. I don't take things that didn't work out for me and fix them in my writing.

AFH: Does it frustrate you that the press is always trying to psychoanalyse you?

BEE: Let them. It's fine.

AFH: Do you like feeling like strangers are worried about your mental health?

BEE: I don't care. Do I want to be misunderstood by the press? What do I want, to be understood by the press? Is that my option? Why? What difference does it make? There is nothing I can or will do to change the way the press views me. Actually the press has been nice to me. I have no negative feelings towards them. They seem to like me. American critics don't always get me but the general press seems to like me. I think it might be my fault sometimes too. I might be evasive at times. I might be too upfront but I generally don't find the press more parasitic than any other profession, and even if they were, it wouldn't bother me.

Ana Finel Honigman is a senior writer at KultureFlash and is a frequent contributor to such publications as Artnet, ArtReview, Art in America, Modern Painters and Tema Celeste. She is also a PhD candidate in the history of art at Oxford University.