This month, Bret Easton Ellis, a novelist based in Los Angeles, came to New York to promote his frightening new novel, “The Shards.”
How do people put up with this? “How the f*ck does anyone live here?” the author asked in Vanity Fair,
That constant bane of life in New York City, having to wait for one’s bags at the airport, is what finally set poor Ellis off.
Of course, that scare followed on the heels of yet another urban nightmare, when he reportedly showed up “during this horrific storm.”
They must have lucked out and avoided his Doheny Drive home in Los Angeles when the city received a record 8.95 inches of rain in January.
Ellis said, “I landed on a Wednesday night during this horrific storm, and then the normal issues of obtaining your bags, an hour waiting at Delta carousel, and then the ride into New York.” How does anyone even live here? I wondered. “How the hell does anyone even live here?
He enjoyed his time here in the ’90s, when he hosted parties (Tom Cruise was a neighbour) and took the better part of a decade to write 1998’s Glamorama, the last vestige of the era he would come to call “Empire”—the time before September 11, 2001, and the beginning of the decline of the United States and the rise of the millennial generation.
“Ellis said, “It was a fantastic time to be in New York.” To be young(ish), to be living in New York at that time, and to be active in the magazine world, the lovely magazine world, is a dream for many individuals I’ve spoken with.
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Biography of Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis, an American writer, is a notable representative of the so-called “intellectual Brat Pack.” Ellis, who was born on March 7th, 1964, was raised in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks. His career as a writer has been, at best, contentious due to the unorthodox and sometimes outlandish themes and characters he has created.
He had a privileged upbringing as the son of a successful real estate developer, but his father’s alcoholism and abuse ruined his childhood. Ellis admitted that his father had an impact on the notorious Patrick Bateman character in one of his most unsettling works, American Psycho.
The Buckley School, a prestigious institution catering to the affluent, was where he completed his formal education. He was set to graduate high school when his parents split up. He initially enrolled in a music class at Bennington College in Vermont, but eventually switched to one in writing. Here he also became acquaintances with Jonathan Lethem and Donna Tartt, both of whom would go on to publish critically acclaimed books.
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About The Novel The Shards
Set in a vividly dramatised Los Angeles in 1981, when a serial murderer begins targeting kids in the city, Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel is a story about the end of innocence and the treacherous path from adolescence into adulthood.
Bret, a senior at the elite Buckley prep school, is seventeen years old when a new student arrives with a murky past. Robert Mallory is a brilliant, gorgeous, and charismatic newcomer to Bret and his close group of friends, but he is keeping a secret from them.
Bret’s growing fixation with the Trawler, a serial murderer on the prowl who seems to be getting ever closer to Bret and his pals, tormenting them—and Bret in particular—with macabre threats and brutal, starkly local acts of violence, is almost as disturbing as his obsession with Mallory.
While the coincidences are eerie, they are also interpreted by the mind of a young man whose skills at weaving a story out of the threads of his own life are going to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation.
A mesmerising blend of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, The Shards brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life as a seventeen-year-old, including sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage, against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of Los Angeles before Less Than Zero. Ellis excels in The Shards, which is gripping, cunning, suspenseful, immensely unsettling, and frequently darkly humorous.
Bred Easton Ellis Complained About NYC
When asked by Vanity Fair about his former New York City apartment, Bret Easton Ellis famously moaned, “How could anyone survive here?” However, columnist Steve Cuozzo argues that the author of “American Psycho” is in the wrong.
While in town this month promoting his new filthy — oops — “disturbing” book, The Shards, based author Bret Easton Ellis lobbed a drive-by grenade at New York City.
Someone might ask, “How do you make a living here?” She hasn’t met a member of the Left Coast art world’s “icon” status that she doesn’t adore, but she still wonders “how the heck does anyone live here?” in Vanity Fair.
Ellis was frustrated by that age-old New York City complaint: having to wait for one’s bags at the airport.
And after all that, he showed up “during that dreadful storm” in the city, so it was a double nightmare.
The 8.95 inches of rain that fell on Los Angeles in January narrowly missed Doheny Drive.
Ellis, a twenty-year New York resident and member of Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz’s literary “Brat Pack,” disregarded the golden rule of New York bitch.
Ellis, although having spent many years in New York City, broke all the norms when it came to complaining about the city.
Conclusion
To paraphrase Bret Easton As he criticised the place he had called home, Ellis openly wondered “how the f*** anyone can live” in New York.
The 58-year-old author of “American Psycho” recently made his long-awaited return to the Big Apple in order to promote his latest novel, “The Shards.” Unfortunately, Ellis didn’t seem to be enjoying his time back in Manhattan, the setting of his most well-known work, because of the many difficulties he’d been having since his return.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ellis was candid about his urban aversion, saying that all he wanted to do after giving a talk in Brooklyn to promote his new book was go back to his hotel.
Ellis stated, “All I wanted to do was go back to my hotel room, get some room service, have a glass of wine, watch the Food Network in bed, and check my emails.”
