Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis’s debut, Less Than Zero, is one of the signal novels of the last thirty years; his new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, follows those infamous teenagers into an even more desperate middle age.

From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe for the Financial Times:

Who are your literary influences?

Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Stephen King.

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What book do you wish you’d written?

Sentimental Education by Flaubert. I think it’s a book I could have written whereas I could never have done something like The Great Gatsby.

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What are you most proud of writing?

“In the Islands” and “On the Beach”, two stories from The Informers [Ellis’s 1994 short-story collection]. I’m proud of them for some reason I can’t explain.

Read the complete interview.

--Marshal Zeringue