“Social networks have taken away the power of literature”

2023-06-05 14:47:27

“For no one”. Clear, concise and forceful. This is the dedication with which Bret Easton Ellis opens his new novel, the destruction (Random House), which comes after thirteen years of literary silence. The author of American Psycho y less than zero He signs his most personal book, autobiographical in “60%”, where he takes a trip to his adolescent self through a story that mixes sexual desire, obsession and murderous rage. A volume that she wanted to start writing in 1981, but that she has needed more than four decades to see the light of day. A diary that she still keeps has been key to recovering the conversations, discussions and reflections included in the issue.

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Further

“It is the first novel in which I speak of the past,” the American acknowledged this Monday at his presentation in Madrid, hours before approaching the Book Fair to sign the title. Ellis has shared that it was something he discussed with Quentin Tarantino when he filmed Once upon a time in… Hollywood: “He told me that he did not want to make a film in which mobile phones were seen or they talked about the shit that is in the world right now. He wanted to talk about his youth and childhood. the destruction It is contextualized in that same environment”.

The author has argued that “artists reach an age where they say: ‘I want to go back’”. And he has cited Alfonso Cuarón as examples with Roma, Woody Allen con radio daysSteven Spielberg con The Fabelmans ya Federico Fellini with Amacord. “I have never had so much fun writing a book. I felt very free”, he celebrated. the destruction will have its own version for the small screen, since HBO acquired the rights to adapt it as a series with Luca Guadagnino (Bones and all, Call me by your name) as director. The writer will act as executive producer and writer, although the project is currently on hold due to the Hollywood Writers Strike which remains with no deal in sight after a month. It is also within his plans to direct: “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

American Psycho It was released in 1991, nine years before Marry Harron took it to the movies with Christian Bale as the protagonist in the skin of Patrick Bateman. Easton Ellis has stated that, to this day, he “would not change a thing” about the book.

“You have to live life with its mistakes, controversies, things that go wrong, unrequited love. There’s nothing he could have said to the Bret back then. That guy was smart enough to write and fight for this novel when he wanted to cancel and censor himself. I like to see that I stayed there despite the pressure that was there, even when I had been successful, to cut and remove parts of it. I don’t know if he was a spoiled child, but he really believed in the book. I knew that he was going to succeed ”, he has exposed. Although with a note: “I don’t know if he would have any advice for young Bret. Just like he took less cocaine. He didn’t need to get into this much to get into this book.”

Beyond the homicides that the protagonist ends up committing, the American has defended that he always saw the story as “a social comedy about man. With not being able to find a place in this world of the late 80s. “He had already written two books –less than zero (1985) y The laws of attraction (1987)–, but I didn’t like what the culture told me that a man had to be: rich, with abs, with a very big house and a friend of Trump. You can ignore all of this when you are old, but at 25 you are not fully formed. You need models and I didn’t have them. My father couldn’t be – he was an alcoholic – and he was looking for it. He didn’t want to write a novel about killing women. Patrick’s fury stems from the fact that he is trapped in society, ”he explained.

The advice you might give to the Bret who wrote ‘American Psycho’ is to do less cocaine.

Bret Easton Ellis
— Writer

Nostalgia for creative freedom

The writer has also spoken about generation X, of which he is considered a chronicler and a reference: “It has aged very well, I like being part of it. Some say I’m more of a boomer, but in the generation chart that I follow, I fall under X, which is very short compared to boomers and millennials. We are in the middle. Those of us from the X share a vision of life with all the clichés that have been heard so much. There is irony, a point of view on the world without enthusiasm, that wanting to offend you and laugh at everything. Because if you can’t laugh at everything, you can’t laugh at anything. We have grown up in a world of free speech. This does not exist today. We were in a world where you could say anything, make any movie. There wasn’t an army of people telling you ‘you can’t do this,’ or ‘if you’re going to pull that joke, you’re an exile.’ We had total creative freedom.”

Easton Ellis has valued that in some ways the X generation in the United States is “the most conservative” when compared to the boomers, “because they have experienced that freedom and they have not liked these authoritarian rules that have been imposed on opinions and tweets . I like that I had the chance to go to college at a time when there was all that freedom. It was normal. When we now see the reaction to it it is a nightmare, a disaster. There is no happiness with what is happening; which is rage, control power and try to cut all people by a pattern.

The writer has appreciated that in the United States, the liberals, in regards to the cultural field: “It is not that generation X are conservatives, but that they have had to go to that part to reject the approach of being silenced by the left ”. “I am not a conservative, but when among my friends we see that there is a movement of 12% to the right, it does not mean that it has to do with politics, but rather that culture conditions politics to a certain extent. It is the reaction to the left for his list of what can and cannot be said; and their punishments. It is what has made many people go to the right, they have come to think that because they can’t stand the conditions that the other party is imposing. Leaning to the right does not mean being right-wing, but being liberal and culturally free”

“Having a liberal feeling, which was what I had when I was growing up, and which has now been taken over and carried by the left… I don’t want to say that there is an army of the right in generation X, but that there are many of them who they had considered themselves liberal when being so included a freedom of expression that no longer exists. That is the problem, ”she has opined.

Many people have moved to the right in reaction to the punishments of the left

Bret Easton Ellis
— Writer

What power does literature exert?

Easton Ellis has stated that the global rise of the extreme right is not something that has affected him in his profession, but that he is concerned “for the younger generations who do not dare to express themselves because there are these censors.” “Can someone tell me that what I have written can hurt the feelings of certain people. And what happens? Whoever gets offended, let him get offended. Humor has to do with marginalization, with injustice, with not getting what you want”, he added emphatically: “I have never wanted to touch a key to provoke someone. If I write something and someone is offended, I’m sorry, don’t read it, but don’t let an editor come to me and tell me I can’t publish it. You have to get past that mentality.”

When analyzing the role that artists play from literature to combat –or not– a political context in which the right continues to escalate, Easton Ellis has been pessimistic. “I would love it to be possible. I don’t know if literature has power, social networks have loaded it, which is where it is now, ”he lamented.

Even so, he has shared that “things are cyclical”, in such a way that “generations always react to previous ones in the same way, and then things are rearranged and ordered. He wonders why a generation ended the way it did, and it is because they were reacting to their parents and the society that they had left them. Even so, the writer does not lose hope that “this terrible situation will end. I don’t know if he is going to do it from literature, but from culture in general ”.

The idea that writers are rich is a big lie that must be dismantled

Bret Easton Ellis
— Writer

An opinion formulated by an author who has been dedicated to writing for nearly forty years, a universe on which he has taken the opportunity to make a claim: “People are often struck by the amount of money writers have, but if they understood how The publishing industry is and works… Writers get 10%, there are taxes. I am well off money but this idea that we are rich is a big lie that must be dismantled for many people”.