Bret Easton Ellis was born (1964) and raised in Los Angeles, California, as the oldest of three children. Ellis attended Bennington College in Vermont, where he wrote his debut novel Less than Zero for one of his creative writing courses. Its publishing in 1985 launched Ellis' writing career, as it caught the media's attention and received good reviews. His second novel The Rules of Attraction did not enjoy the same broad success as Less than Zero. In 1990 Simon and Schuster gave Ellis a $300,000 advance for his third novel American Psycho. One year later they backed out of publishing it after woman's groups and women within the company protested. The book was quickly picked up by Vintage who published it only months later. American Psycho caused such outrage that Ellis received death threats over the book. Also, a movement emerged in Canada to ban it following a suspected copycat crime. Three years later, his fourth novel, The Informers, a collection of short stories, was published. The book returned Ellis' literary focus to the 80's Los Angeles, but the novel was released without great attention. In 1999 Ellis' fifth novel was published; a project it had taken him ten years to finish. With Glamorama Ellis returned to the media spotlight and the number one spot on the best-seller list.

Ellis considers himself to be heavily influenced by Hemingway, Joan Didion, James Joyce and Don DeLillo.

Sex and Violence

All of Bret Easton Ellis' novels contain more or less shocking scenes of sex and violence. American Psycho is probably the most violent novel of all time, and it has therefore scared and disgusted readers all over the world. Upon its publishing it met great actions to have it banned because of fear for unstable minds picking up on the detailed description of macabre murders. Less than Zero presented a whole generation of Hollywood youth that had no respect for hard work, money or fellow human beings. This makes casual sex and violence an escape from their lives. The young age of the characters participating is disturbing. The Informers and Glamorama follow in the footsteps of these two very successful novels, bringing the topic to a new level: The 90's. Entertainment or political statement The question one might ask after being presented such an amount of graphical violence is: Was this really necessary? The entertainment purposes of ten pages of torture, blood and gore are not too obvious. Instead, it makes me believe that Ellis is trying to prove a point. Ellis has on many occasions stated that shocking and appalling never has been any of his goals when writing. He claims that making readers aware of what society can do to weak minds, always has been his main aspect. Surely, Ellis also aims at entertaining his readers. Whether he does this by making political statements or writing shocking scenes of violent horror is unknown. American Psycho leaves one shocked and horrified, but not only by the violence. At some point when reading the novel, one comes to realise that not only do characters similar to Patric Bateman exist in real life, society and the materialism of our time create them. This makes American Psycho genuinely frightening. The violence has a function, which exceeds the one of pure entertainment. Less than Zero uses the sex and violence of a young generation as a wake-up call for the society. Ellis' political statement in the novel is obvious and present throughout the entire novel. Ellis' novels are without a doubt entertaining, but at the same time they are important.

Who is Patric Bateman?

Already before American Psycho was published in 1991, journalists speculated in whether the novel was based on an actual diary. Ellis' publishers denied the existence of such a manuscript, although the accusations have never been proven wrong. The realism and accurate descriptions made by Bateman in the novel makes it easy to believe that the experiences described has to be self- experienced. And since Ellis is not very likely to have committed the murders in the novel, Patric Bateman must be real- or? Another thing that makes Bateman so real is the fact that he is so common. Everyone knows a Patric Bateman; the picture perfect businessman, with a dark side no one knows about. As Bateman himself puts it: (23) 'You're the boy next door, aren't you dear?' 'No. I am a fucking evil psychopat', I whispered. Fyodor Dostoevsky states on the first page of American Psycho (Norwegian version): 'Both the author of these notes and the notes themselves are of course fictional. Still, people like this exists in our society, and they have to, as a matter of fact, when one considers what our society has become'. (Notes from Underground) Patric Bateman is not real, but he very well could have been. And that is the whole point.

Ellis' lack of international success

The fact that Ellis was only 20 years old when writing Less than Zero, made him one of the most talked- about debuts of 1985. The automatic PR included herein gave him a free 'sales boost' in the US. American Psycho also 'sold itself' due to the massive media attention the novel received even long before it was published. The effects of this attention was expected to reach the rest of the world as well, which might have made Ellis' publishers neglect international PR. Because of the lack of international sales success when the books were published, they have been tried re-released in several countries. This has not been a major success, as some of the hype surrounding the novels has worn off. Still, Glamorama had success all over the world, without having received nearly the amount of media attention as its successors. In the US, several reviewers wrote that the media attention given to Bret Easton Ellis made him highly overrated as a writer. Most of these critical articles were written before American Psycho was published and ironically enough, many of those same journalists gave Ellis great reviews for his book. People around the world have read Ellis' books and they have been shocked and horrified by all of them. More importantly Ellis' books have made them think- and realise- that everything is not as it is supposed to be.

'And as things fell apart Nobody paid much attention'

Talking Heads