The Chutzpah of Bret Easton Ellis: Calls David Foster Wallace “The Most Tedious, Overrated, Tortured, Pretentious Writer of My Generation”

We have been in Bev­er­ly Hills shop­ping most of the late morn­ing and ear­ly after­noon. My moth­er and my two sis­ters and me. My moth­er has spent most of this time prob­a­bly at Neiman-Mar­cus, and my sis­ters have gone to Jer­ry Magnin and have used our father’s charge account to buy him and me some­thing and then to MGA and Camp Bev­er­ly Hills and Priv­i­lege to buy them­selves some­thing. I sit at the bar at La Scala Bou­tique for most of this time, bored out of my mind, smok­ing, drink­ing red wine. Final­ly, my moth­er dri­ves up in her Mer­cedes and parks her car in front of La Scala and waits for me.

–Bret Eas­t­on Ellis, Less Than Zero

Tedious? Check. Over­rat­ed? Check. Pre­ten­tious? Check.

Well, no one will say that Bret Eas­t­on Ellis isn’t an author­i­ty in this area.

via Bib­liok­lept


by | Permalink | Comments (20) |

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Comments (20)
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  • Doug S says:

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  • Kitty K says:

    Has­n’t Ellis any­thing bet­ter to do with his life than trash­ing a dead author on Twit­ter?

  • b., from afar, says:

    I’m a lit­tle bit puz­zled :
    isn’t it a bit easy to take an excerpt from any writer, and make it look stu­pid and dead­pan ?
    Let’s take, for exam­ple, Mr Bur­roughs : he plaued with dif­fer­ent styles, from low-brow west­ern writ­ings to tongue-in-the-cheek sci­ence fic­tion, I can eas­i­ly pick up some lines to make it look stu­pid. It’s even been done, and we found it unfair.
    Now, Mr Ellis.
    He’s writ­ing way too much on twit­ter, for sure.
    But ‘Less Than Zero’ is quite a piece of lit­er­a­ture ! It’s about form enclos­ing void, about life gone stu­pid, about spec­ta­cle becom­ing phi­los­o­phy.
    Eng­lish isn’t my native lan­guage.
    But I began to read in eng­lish with Ker­ouac, then Bur­roughs, then Gins­berg, then every­thing I found, includ­ing Ellis. It’s fine. Good writ­ings, real pieces of books.
    Now, that the author deserves the art is no recent news…

  • b., from afar, says:

    I’m a lit­tle bit puz­zled :
    isn’t it a bit easy to take an excerpt from any writer, and make it look stu­pid and dead­pan ?
    Let’s take, for exam­ple, Mr Bur­roughs : he plaued with dif­fer­ent styles, from low-brow west­ern writ­ings to tongue-in-the-cheek sci­ence fic­tion, I can eas­i­ly pick up some lines to make it look stu­pid. It’s even been done, and we found it unfair.
    Now, Mr Ellis.
    He’s writ­ing way too much on twit­ter, for sure.
    But ‘Less Than Zero’ is quite a piece of lit­er­a­ture ! It’s about form enclos­ing void, about life gone stu­pid, about spec­ta­cle becom­ing phi­los­o­phy.
    Eng­lish isn’t my native lan­guage.
    But I began to read in eng­lish with Ker­ouac, then Bur­roughs, then Gins­berg, then every­thing I found, includ­ing Ellis. It’s fine. Good writ­ings, real pieces of books.
    Now, that the author is ‘less than’ the art is no recent news…

  • dogsbody says:

    @HR, Ellis meant “deuce­bag”, a deri­sive term for a man with two balls, said by a man who has none.

  • victor stone says:

    Note how incred­i­bly lame BEE’s insults are. Can imag­ine what a Hitchens or DFW could have done with those emo­tions?

  • Ernesto says:

    The literati often lav­ish praise upon the dead regard­less of their mer­its so it is per­haps refresh­ing to hear Ellis buck the trend — it is sure­ly the most notable thing he has writ­ten for years in any case.

  • Laroquod says:

    Sure­ly, all lit­er­a­ture is pre­ten­sion. All writ­ers are tor­tured with the desire to have writ­ten it, or else they’d nev­er do it. It sim­ply isn’t worth it, oth­er­wise. And giv­en the pure breezi­ness with which the word “genius” gets tossed around at all lev­els of soci­ety, it’s not a stretch to say any­one or any­thing is over­rat­ed! As for tedious, well… I find sev­en tweets in a row all express­ing the same opin­ion redun­dant­ly, fair­ly tedious, as an exam­ple. No one is real­ly above this kind of crit­i­cism; might as well call him an organ­ic gas­bag of self-impor­tant water.

  • Mark says:

    I enjoy Bret Eas­t­on Ellis and agree he is tedious, but i think to quote from his debut nov­el which was pub­lished when he was 21 years old is pick­ing low-hang­ing fruit.

  • D.A. Harris says:

    This is a great way to gar­ner a read­er­ship; slan­der the best author you know and watch the big bucks roll in! Pret­ty rich com­ing from a man who sold his novel(s) to Hol­ly­wood. Bret­t’s prob­a­bly just mad that David’s dic­tio­n’s big­ger (wink, wink; nudge, nudge).

  • Evan says:

    Why is BEE not enti­tled to his opin­ion? He thinks DFW is over­rat­ed and tedious. Why the out­rage? Guess what, I think the same of Jonathan Franzen. Dif­fer­ent strokes, peo­ple.

    Anoth­er thing: most of BEE’s vit­ri­ol is not direct­ed at DFW, but at the cult of DFW. Think about it.

  • Kate weinman says:

    I had not read either author till the DFW obit. I’d heard of him but now I was curi­ous after read­ing that he wrote the ulti­mate sen­tence. Prompt­ly, I down­loaded Obliv­ion and began. I think I found the sen­tence but that’s about all. It was such a strug­gle to become engaged. I found myself speed read­ing ahead hop­ing to land on some­thing that would draw me in but, I’m sor­ry, DFW leaves me cold.
    So, now I’m curi­ous why he is wor­thy of a cult, which is why I will con­tin­ue on into Obli­vian.

  • Kate weinman says:

    Obliv­ion.

  • Grumpy says:

    Kate, there are a few miss­es in that one, but at least make sure you put in the effort with the sto­ry “Good Old Neon”

  • Kate weinman says:

    ok- thanks.

  • I say, A POX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES.

    But if you real­ly want pre­ten­tious and over-rat­ed, then the Twin-Tow­ers of all tedious, pre­ten­tious, and over-rat­ed authors has got to be: Ernest Hem­ing­way, and F. Scott Fitzger­ald.

    When will Amer­i­ca’s love affair with self-destruc­tion and self-indul­gence final­ly come to an end.

  • Polly Math says:

    Both DFW and BEE are plagued by the suc­cubus of ego. Which is why their work, to me, is so dead­en­ing.

  • Vivienne V says:

    I think it might be more apt to say that DFW “was” plagued by the suc­cubus of ego, since he han­dled his demons rather final­ly. I think even that might be an unfair state­ment, as most of the inter­views I’ve read por­trayed a deeply thought­ful and trou­bled man.

    We live in an age where the clever tend to per­ceive any­one trou­bled or thought­ful as indul­gent wankers, a top­ic Wal­lace often engaged, some­times with BEE as an implic­it or explic­it exam­ple. In that sense I can under­stand his anger, espe­cial­ly giv­en DFW’s post-humous pop­u­lar­i­ty. As Ernesto point­ed out, these tweets will prob­a­bly spark more con­ver­sa­tions than any­thing he’s writ­ten in years. It does lit­tle to dis­suade the notion of DFW as a sym­pa­thet­ic white-hat to BEE’s mean and small-mind­ed black hat, regard­less of whether that’s fair or rel­e­vant to a dis­cus­sion of lit­er­a­ture.

    Re: read­ing, I’d agree that Obliv­ion’s a shit­ty place to start, and isn’t his best; his non-fic­tion is more approach­able and his ear­li­er short sto­ry col­lec­tion (The Girl With Curi­ous Hair) is bet­ter. Infi­nite Jest is a mono­lith and isn’t for every­one, but it’s an incred­i­ble nov­el and it can’t hurt to give it a shot.

  • Maxwell says:

    Yes, Brett Eas­t­on Ellis is a ter­ri­ble author, but all of his points are still valid, and you did­n’t address any of them. Frankly, he’s 100% right about Wal­lace in spite of the irony of him say­ing it.

  • Luke Aaron says:

    BEE makes you see and feel things you wish you had­n’t, and you wish you’d nev­er read it. DFW makes you feel noth­ing, and you wish you’d nev­er read it. BEE wins. But in al way every­one who’s read their work los­es.

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