| Title | : | White |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 |
| Publication | : | First published April 16, 2019 |
White Reviews
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Bret Easton Ellis is perhaps my favourite author. I own first editions of two novels and still own my original Vintage paperback of American Psycho from 2001, since high school. No other author has cast such a huge influence on my style, my aesthetic preferences, even down to the very typeface used in his novels (Electra). Thus, it was ever disappointing that Ellis has mostly given up novels and fiction and has instead pivoted to podcast host and near-constant complainer about what he calls Generation Wuss, ie millennials. He proves that Baby Boomerism isn't a demographic (he's Gen X) but rather a mindset. I've unfollowed him on Twitter and do my best to avoid reading news articles about him, as their subject is mostly whatever inflammatory nonsense Ellis has dashed off. He's become the old person version of what he's always been: a moralist masquerading as a satirist. White is his first book of nonfiction, a book somewhere between memoir and essays, some perceptive and sharp, the kind of cultural criticism you yearn to become popular, and others shrill and indistinguishable from FOX News, the worst kind of "old man yells at cloud."
The first two sections of White are more memoir than argumentative. Ellis tracks the development of his debut novel, Less Than Zero, and the aesthetic and thematic inspirations. He writes perceptively and beautifully on the allure of Paul Schrader's American Gigolo, which I hadn't known to be the huge influence it so clearly is, despite being a megafan of the author. Ellis admits the movie isn't good by most measures, but his appreciation of the aesthetics, of the way Richard Gere is queered by the male gaze speaks volumes about Ellis' own skill as a critic. It makes me want an alternative history where Ellis became a preeminent film critic, famous for his acuity and insight. This long section about acting and actors features the story behind his famous Vanity Fair hoax pulled off in part with Judd Nelson. Again, this kind of precise satirizing, cutting and ringing true, works so well, even if his worldview betrays a deep Baby Boomerist moralizing, an accusation I'm sure Ellis would reject vehemently. He's Gen X, he'd say. His apathy and irony are weapons against the establishment and products of the ways the Baby Boomer failed us all, he'd say. But how else to explain during his reminiscences his repetitions of the Gen X version of "I walked to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways"? These tears in the fabric of the otherwise fantastic bits are distracting, even if they're meant to prepare the reader for the political haranguing yet to come.
He moves on to Moonlight and King Cobra, one the winner of Best Picture at the Oscars and the other a movie largely forgotten except as another weirdo gay role for James Franco. Ellis' main bone of contention is that Barry Jenkins' movie is a victim narrative, its popularity only due to its uniqueness (a gay impoverished black man) and ideology. He claims people overrate the film because of their ideological stance, because they are toeing the "corporate ideology" which he vaguely refers to as being positive all the time, maintaining the groupthink of social justice. Ellis makes a strong point against the film, only one though, which is the film lacks the specific gaze of the gay filmmaker. Barry Jenkins is straight and though the cinematography is beautiful, the gaze, the voyeurism, the look lacks the specificity of queerness. This point, well taken, does do a good job undermining Ellis' invective against the supremacy of identity politics. Ellis writes:
this is an age that judges everybody so harshly through the lens of identity politics that if you resist the threatening groupthink of progressive ideology, which proposes universal inclusivity except for those who dare to ask any questions, you're somehow fucked. Everyone has to be the same, and have the same reactions to any given work of art, or movement or idea, and if you refuse to join the chorus of approval you will be tagged a racist or a misogynist. This is what happens to a culture when it no longer cares about art. (92)
Ellis imbues millennials with this incredible power to destroy people, but at the same time, he argues, they're politically powerless, completely out of step with the popular sentiment (whatever that is). He argues Academy members voted for Moonlight as a protest vote, as a signal Trumpism won't be tolerated. He is snide about this, saying this does a disservice to the film, even though he doesn't think the film is all that good in the first place (not surprisingly, he believes La La Land to be the superior film). Which is all the more frustrating because when he sticks to aesthetic judgements, he reveals a deep, perhaps innate understanding of film and narrative.
Where the book falters is, not surprisingly, when Ellis turns his eye to politics. He positions himself again and again as the rational centrist, the man swayed not by emotion but only by logic and arguments. He agrees with some of Trump's policies and disagrees with others. He chose not to vote as neither candidate appealed to him, but he's dismayed by the visceral reaction of millennials and affluent white coastal elites to Trump's success. His argument starts out small: at first he keeps the focus on his millennial boyfriend (22 years younger than Ellis). After Trump's election, the boyfriend grows his hair long, is untidy in his appearance, has nervous breakdowns, cajoles, shrieks, screams, argues, fights with Ellis over Trump. Reading between the lines, one wonders if the arguments are more over Ellis' apathy and political stagnation than Trump's policies.
Ellis then expands the scope to his white or Jewish affluent friends in California and NYC. Here the book is at its nadir, a repetitive series of short sections which begin all the same: "at yet another dinner I had with another two friends I hadn't seen since the election" or "I was having drinks with a friend" and so on and so forth. He never names the friends and I have to be a good faith reader and assume these "friends" are real. Each dinner ends the same: somebody says something about Trump and the friend unleashes this "deranged" rant; "I had never seen them this angry," he muses wide-eyed.
The rhetorical strategy is so irritatingly transparent I can't believe Ellis thought this would fly, especially as he repeats himself endlessly. Each dinner ends with Ellis the victim of these unhinged, completely emotional rants. He writes:
When I countered with something noncommittal about the day's events or perhaps offered another opinion, placing the supposed fuckup in context, they both lost their shit and became infuriated, lashing out at me in ways I'd never seen from either of them (159).
Let's examine the language used here. Where the friends are described with heated words such as "lashing" or "infuriated" but Ellis describes himself as merely "offering" an opinion. He uses a classic weasel word, "supposed," to dismiss whatever clearly fucked up thing Trump did. Where Ellis is presented as calm and bemused, the friends have "lost their shit." Ellis never presents himself as anything other than purely rational, amused by the vociferous hatred of Trump. His friends are described in emotional terms, without self-control and without self-awareness. He continually makes reference to how wealthy these folks are, how Trump's election doesn't affect their riches in any way. Readers could be charitable: maybe these wealthy friends are demonstrating empathy for the marginalized folks who are in danger from Trump's policies. It's ironic Ellis would miss this, considering he spends a couple pages talking about how being exposed to shocking art, to art which challenges taught him empathy. He can't seem to muster any empathy for millennials, ironically enough.
Ellis can't even keep his own political analysis straight. He refers to Trump as a disruptor who changed the rule book by throwing out the rules. He points out, accurately I think, the legacy media had trouble reporting on Trump. They created this reductive binary in which Hilary Clinton was the hero and Trump the villain, which completely disregarded the feelings of many people on the ground, the disenfranchised white people yearning for a populist leader to "say it like it is." The media couldn't report on Trump because he had thrown out the rule book. Ellis even compares him to *eyeroll* the Joker in The Dark Knight, just an anarchic force without foresight. And so it's doubly irritating when Ellis' suggestions for defeating the beast that is Trump was to "learn to play by his rules" and report "about Trump more objectively" (153). Which is it, Ellis? One can't play by his rules if he's thrown out the rules.
Over and over he claims other people are motivated solely by ideology but he never points that finger back at himself. His dismissal of Moonlight as a victim narrative comes from ideology and from his own subject position. He makes gestures towards acknowledging his class and racial privilege but these are just empty gestures, a kind of rhetorical covering one's ass. He positions his own ideology as common sense, as being natural and thus correct, a biological imperative (he explicitly uses this phrase) and therefore, he implies, his ideology is not ideology, but just how it is. So in his view he can't be accused of ideological bias. He's too rational for that.
His political worldview betrays a deep-seeded sense of fatalism. His impatience with millennials stems from their alleged dissatisfaction with how terrible the world truly is. He maintains millennials feel entitled to a world wherein each of them are special and recognized as such, but the real world is harsh and unfair and violent and cruel. Thus, Ellis has no practical political insight. The world is as the world is, homo homini lupus, and any attempt to change the world or express frustration is entitlement or facile or useless. Ellis upholds the status quo by his complacency, his lack of investment. He's a rich white man, so why does he need to make any political changes? It's political entropy at its finest. Nothing is at stake for him so there's no pressing need to fight. He blames millennials for their softness but he never asks himself if they're right to be mad.
A disappointing read but not without its rare gems of insight. Ellis is a great writer of narrative but it's obvious he's had no training in political analysis or argumentation. If he had, he might not have deployed such base and transparent tactics. Stick to fiction or film criticism. -
Mr TWEET
La scrittura è del tipo che segue:
La mia reazione fu identica a quella che avevo avuto di fronte a ‘sentimenti’ simili espressi nel recente passato, ma stavolta fu più immediata e dura: Che. Cazzo. C’entra.
Ground zero? Come se scrivesse un qualsiasi post su qualcuno dei social che tanto critica e odia epperò tanto frequenta e usa?
Ho l’impressione che il mio diario sia più curato.
A BEE stanno (cordialmente?) antipatiche le vittime. Vorrebbe che restassero tali, cioè vittime, fuori dai riflettori e in silenzio: portarle al centro dell’attenzione è uno dei grandi problemi dei nostri tempi. Le vittime sono per BEE – però mai esplicitamente dichiarato – delle “pappamolle”:
Viene da pensare che chi è alle prese con tanta sofferenza debba provare a capire come attenuarla, per quanto possa costare, anziché sbatterla in faccia al prossimo aspettandosi che questo simpatizzi automaticamente invece che ritrarsi con irritazione e disgusto.
Tuttavia, senza mai asserire esplicitamente neppure questo (non sia mai), BEE si dipinge assai spesso come vittima: per esempio, di cyber bullismo, di attacchi da parte della stampa, ecc.
D’altra parte a BEE stanno (cordialmente?) antipatici gli hater che attaccano lui, ma non quelli che invece lo difendono. Lo stesso vale per i troll.
D’altra parte sembra di capire che per BEE esistano gli hater (e i troll) innocenti – lui e i suoi difensori – e quelli invece cattivi e rompi (tutti quelli che lo attaccano).
Considerato che neppure in un rigo, nemmeno per un attimo succede in queste duecentosessanta pagine che si parli di un argomento senza parlare dello stesso BEE (che collega tutto attraverso episodi e aneddoti del suo passato, privato e pubblico, che ci racconta vita morte e passione di ogni suo libro e tour promozionale e incontro con l’editor o l’editore o l’agente), BEE riesce comunque a esaminare – rigorosamente dal suo pov – alcuni argomenti che a suo (modesto?) avviso sono problemi spinosi e rognosi e letali della società contemporanea. Per fare qualche esempio: non esistono più le mezze stagioni (signora mia); si stava meglio quando si stava peggio; noi sì che eravamo adolescenti fichi e poi giovani fichi, mica quelli di adesso; i social sono una trappola, anche pericolosa, stanno rovinando il mondo (ma io li uso ogni giorno a ogni ora e momento perché io so come gestirli).
Nel 2001 BEE viveva a New York da una quindicina d’anni. A Manhattan, sulla Tredicesima. L’11 settembre era dal suo medico già alle 8,30. Il che gli permise di seguire gli attentati quasi in tempo reale: racconta sentimenti ed emozioni che suonano comuni e condivisibili. Ma suonano anche stonati: perché non riesce a trasmettere davvero nulla, tutto sembra finto e rimasticato.
Un miglior lavoro di editing avrebbe giovato e avrebbe evitato svariate ripetizioni che allungano il brodo e mi spingerebbero a dire: ehi Bret, ma questo me l’hai già detto, perfino due volte, me lo ricordo, non sono mica sempre bevuto e sballato come te.
Non sono un biografo di BEE, ma ho avuto spesso la sensazione che riportasse fatti che lo riguardano addolcendoli, stemperandoli: vedi la sua polemica con/su DFW (che per lui era chiaramente una pappamolla vittimista visto che si è suicidato).
La mia sensazione è che il modello cui aspira BEE sia Truman Capote. Che rimane forse un modello, di sicuro inarrivabile, per lui irraggiungibile.
Un pamphlet che spesso (e malvolentieri) mi ha fatto pensare potrebbe essere stato scritto da gente come Andrea Scanzi o Vittorio Sgarbi.
Per��, siccome condivido con BEE una grande passione, l’adorazione per Joan Didion – alla quale chissà mai perché lui sente d’assomigliare - sono stato vinto dalla magnanimità e ho raddoppiato le stellette del mio gradimento: da una a due.
Talvolta, ascoltando certi miei amici, li fissavo mentre una vocina all’interno della mia testa prendeva a sospirare: “Siete solo i cazzo di bamboccioni più cazzo di bamboccioni che io abbia mai sentito in tutta la mia cazzo di vita e per favore cazzo vedete di darvi una calmata cazzo – ho capito, ho capito, quel Trump del cazzo non vi piace ma cazzo ne ho abbastanza e che cazzo”.
Gli artisti, in ordine sciolto, sono Burri, Pistoletto, Fontana, Rauschenberg, Manzoni,O’Keeffe. -
Bret Easton Ellis's fiction books always had these bisexual, queer men who are mostly transgressive, and apparently 'cool' and they had nothing to do with coming out of the closets. He was a classical Liberal and probably believed in everything liberalism stood for, but now that he's so sick of his peers, he wants to switch sides and that has been harder than coming out as a queer. I recently read a book by Jewish Gay conservative Milo and to him, BEE is the prime example of eighties liberals switching sides in 2019. I've nothing to do with American politics and white skin, but for the love of his works, I'd read everything he writes and this one kept me reading with no boring spot. David Foster Wallace is another writer whose works I'd probably adore, and I always assumed DFW to be the opposite of whatever BEE is, you see, nihilism vs optimism, minimalism vs maximalism (though Wallace is the one who killed himself). And I'm surprised that there's actually a feud between them and BEE does talk about it. Either way, now I'm motivated to finish DFW bibliography.
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Bret Easton Ellis’ first foray into nonfiction, White, is disappointingly unimpressive. Part diatribe on the current state of the political landscape, part memoir, there really isn’t much here that’s especially brilliant or worth reading.
A lot of Ellis’ commentary on politics of the last few years is, if you’re as familiar with similar polemics as I am, simply regurgitated talking points from elsewhere. People these days are overly sensitive, social media witch hunts are reprehensible, the left has gone from seemingly being progressive to being actively regressive in its near-fatalistic censorship of free thinking, and so on.
Let’s see: Joe Rogan, Jon Ronson, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Bill Burr, Milo Yiannopoulos, Andrew Sullivan, Chris Hedges, Michael Wolff, Michael Lewis, Matt Taibbi, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and a host of YouTubers I can’t even begin to list off have all said as much, and more, in pretty much the same way. If this were the first time I was hearing all of this, it might leave more of a mark, but it’s not and it didn’t. Ellis’ gleeful recounting of triggering Millennials (or, as he labels them, “Generation Wuss” - har har...) on Twitter - one of whom is his much younger boyfriend - comes off as just sad and pathetic.
When he’s not stating the bleeding obvious, the memoir side of things is mundane and prone to pointless digressions of the movie biz. Recounting the writing of his first novel, Less Than Zero, Ellis goes off on a tangent about Richard Gere’s early movies and late 80s/early 90s Tom Cruise, who lived in Ellis’ apartment complex around that time (if you’re wondering, they met twice in the elevator and only said “Hi” both times).
It’s more accurate to say that there’s less on memoirs and literary matters and much more on Ellis’ rambling views on movies and actors. Which is probably not surprising given that he’s not written a novel in nearly a decade having lost interest in the form and has spent his time immersed in Hollywood, producing an indie flick called The Canyons, instead.
Which isn’t to say that he ignores the literary - I thought his account of the background to his masterpiece, Lunar Park, was compelling, and his views on David Foster Wallace were intriguing. He’s also able to provide a thoughtful explanation for his most famous novel, American Psycho, though it doesn’t make it any less unreadable!
Nor will I say that what he has to say on random movies and creators wasn’t interesting either. I agree that Moonlight is a vastly overrated film as is the director Kathryn Bigelow’s work. But pointing out Hollywood’s hypocrisies or that there’s an enforced likeability/conformity standard of behaviour to succeed in the business is hardly going to be news to anyone. The rest of the book is made up of inconsequential, name-dropping anecdotes (he did blow with Basquiat once AND he’s worked with Kanye West!) - it ain’t much.
I agree with a lot of what Ellis says: we shouldn’t coddle our kids and should prepare them for the harsh realities of the world; we shouldn’t block and/or censor anyone with opposing political beliefs; Trump’s election WASN’T the end of the world but nor was it something to be celebrated; there shouldn’t be uniform approved behaviour in the creative arts and artists should be encouraged to be provocative.
But it’s stuff I’m already familiar with and which has been floating around the cultural ether for a while now and been expressed many times before. There’s nothing original, thought-provoking or exciting about anything Ellis is saying. The only new material on offer is the memoir/film rambling aspects, most of which is unremarkable and forgettable. It’s well-written and occasionally interesting but White is basically for undiscerning and patient Bret Easton Ellis fans only. -
So wonderful to read BEE’s voice again. First, I loved the “I don’t give a shit, I’ll write only about what I want” attitude. For that in itself, this book gets 5 stars. Authentic, clear, yes of course self-centered, and it’s including some pieces that he discussed in his podcast, but that’s absolutely fine.
This is the author’s first non-fiction book, and it’s a very autobiographical work, although selectively so. A lot of BEE’s inner life through his young years - including his actual “growing up” - is narrated through the movies that he watched as a kid and as a teenager.
Horror movies as education, for example, that his psyche benefited from as they somehow reflected the harshness of reality. I found that part fascinating.
I’m also grateful I read this book because this is the voice of someone who experienced the Trump era exactly the way I did (despite my different background, as an Italian who moved to the US a few years ago): far from being a Trump supporter, but disgusted by the media’s reaction (i.e. the once-admired NPR and CNN, that morphed into the piles of fecal matter that they are now) and in shock at the hysterical scenes performed at dinners or work or elsewhere by liberal friends who had NEVER lost their cool as bad as that before. Ferrari-red faces, spit and foam at their mouth, purple veins growing from their necks. Screams of “Nazi!” and “Hitler!”. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like that, if not in a baby throwing a tantrum.
Living in California, I found myself very often in social situations where, only because I didn’t join the choir of insults thrown at Trump and the exchange of regurgitated SNL and CNN quotes, I was seen as “the enemy” or as a Trump supporter, even if I’m not (what if I was? Who cares?), when all I was trying to do was to try and put things in context...to try and think about these times with a cool, independent mind.
BEE’s book helped me feel like I’m not completely alone in my shock and utter confusion in front of these tantrums. I’m grateful he wrote about this particular type of experience, that could be summed up as:
“being showered by liberal hysteria during the Trump era”.
I’m with the author in seeing these behaviors as a kind of thought-dictatorship, but mainly as immaturity and a lack of character - or, to be blunt, as an utter inability to think.
Many people have lost friends for this reason in the last few years. I have as well. Sorry, but I’d say, what a wonderful, overdue riddance.
—- And a very interesting review / interview on The Guardian here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
È meraviglioso leggere di nuovo la voce di BEE. Innanzitutto, ho adorato l'atteggiamento "Non me ne frega, scriverò solo su quello che voglio". Per questo di per sé, questo libro ottiene 5 stelle. Autentico, chiaro, sì naturalmente egocentrico, ma va benissimo.
Questo è il primo libro di saggistica della autrice, ed è un lavoro molto autobiografico, anche se in modo selettivo. Un sacco di vita interiore di BEE attraverso i suoi giovani anni - compresa la sua "crescita" reale - è narrata attraverso i film che ha visto da bambino e da adolescente. I film dell'orrore come educatori, per esempio, che la sua psiche ricordava la durezza della realtà. Ho trovato quella parte davvero affascinante.
La cosa più importante, sono grato di aver letto questo libro perché questa è la voce di qualcuno che ha vissuto l'era Trump esattamente come ho fatto io (come un italiano che si è trasferito negli Stati Uniti alcuni anni fa): lontano dall'essere un sostenitore di Trump, ma completamente disgustato dal comportamento dei media (cioè l'NPR e la CNN un tempo ammirati che si sono trasformati nelle pile di materia fecale che sono ora) e sotto shock per le scene isteriche eseguite nelle cene o altrove da amici liberali che non avevano MAI perso la loro bello come prima. Facce rosse Ferrari, sputi e schiuma alla bocca, vene viola che crescono dal collo. Urla di "nazista!" E "Hitler!". Giuro, non ho mai visto niente del genere, se non in un bambino che fa i capricci. Che è esattamente ciò che è.
Il libro di BEE mi aiuta a sentirmi come se non fossi completamente solo nel mio shock e confusione a questi comportamenti. Sono grato che abbia scritto su questo particolare tipo di esperienza (da far piovere dall'isteria liberale durante l'era di Trump).
Vivendo in California, mi sono trovato molto spesso in situazioni sociali dove, solo perché non mi univo al coro degli insulti lanciati a Trump e allo scambio di citazioni SNL e CNN, ero visto come "il nemico" o come sostenitore di Trump , anche se non lo sono, quando tutto quello che stavo cercando di fare era cercare di mettere le cose nel loro contesto ... per cercare di pensare all'era di Trump con una mente fredda e indipendente.
Sono con l'autore nel vedere questi comportamenti come una sorta di dittatura del pensiero, ma principalmente come immaturità e mancanza di carattere.
Molte persone hanno perso amici per questo motivo negli ultimi anni. Anch'io ho. Scusate, ma direi che probabilmente era ora! -
your cranky uncle wrote a whole book about being put on blast via twitter
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This book has already stirred up controversy – as the author no doubt intended – but a week after reading it, I already find myself without much to say. It's a loosely-strung-together set of essays that are part cultural critique, part rant and part memoir; mostly chaotic, with some (not enough) good bits.
'Acting' is probably the best of the bunch – Ellis writes so beguilingly about the film American Gigolo that I was immediately dying to see it. 'Post-Sex' also has its moments. The author's analysis of [an overrated film I daren't even name] is spot on. He writes brilliantly about film in general, especially depictions of male sexuality and the gay male gaze in cinema. If this had been a whole book of film criticism and film-based essays, it would have earned a much higher rating from me.
The political stuff... well. I normally hate it when someone criticises a piece of writing by saying it's 'like a blog post', as though a blog post is an inherently bad/poorly written thing. But reading some of the essays in this book, I began to grasp what people mean when they use that comparison. The worst bits of White are rambling and unfocused; they repeat the same points numerous times; they contradict themselves; they make assertions without any evidence. According to online hearsay, much of the book is adapted from transcripts of Ellis's podcast; I can well believe that.
And I was completely lost every time he started going on about his idea of 'Empire', which is never clearly defined. (Looking it up online and reading part of an interview gave me a better understanding than anything that's actually in the book!) It feels like you're expected to know what he's talking about already – so perhaps White is, after all, intended for hardcore fans only.
But, for all its messiness, I did actually find this entertaining to read for the most part. It's difficult to be offended by Ellis even when he's trying very hard to be offensive, mainly because so many of his arguments are based on a) absolutely nothing, b) something he read on Twitter once, or c) something a very rich and famous friend of his said over dinner. He's best when writing about what he actually knows, i.e. has direct experience/insider knowledge of (queer cinema, the film industry, his own novels) and at his worst when writing about things he doesn't (politics, millennials).
I received an advance review copy of White from the publisher through
Edelweiss.
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This collection of essays is enlightening, but not in the way Bret Easton Ellis intended it to be; rather, it shows how some well-supported criticism can easily morph into an anger that dismisses all logic and measure, which is the very behavior the author wanted to attack in the first place: "And the hyperbole I was accusing others of, I realized, I was now voicing myself - but I couldn't help it", he states towards the end of the book. The thing is, Bret, you totally could, if you wanted to, we all could, and this is the true problem of the culture wars: It's sometimes not about tackling issues and solving problems anymore, but about feeling good about one's own position, about the chance to feel superior - and self-righteousness is not particularly progressive. Ellis criticizes that when looking at parts of the left, and then proceeds to do the exact same thing while at the same time confusing indifference with tolerance.
Ellis' arguments often lack logic and are partly contradictory (him insulting Kathryn Bigelow: Okay; Sam Bee insulting Ivanka Trump: Mean), and he conflates aesthetic and content: He talks about Trump as a guy who wants to stir things up, a prankster who shouldn't be taken literally, as if he was a character in a novel - but his policies literally aim to take away women's rights, he literally defends racists and cages kids, he literally ruins the healthcare system and America's reputation (or do you think the rest of the world sees all those insults and his incompetence as a funny performance?). This is not art, it's life, and that's not the same thing...
...which brings us to the next problem. I recently read
Wie frei ist die Kunst? Der neue Kulturkampf und die Krise des Liberalismus, a book written by a liberal journalist that discusses the problematic attempt to restrict art by trying to turn it into a moral tool (think: The discussions about Houellebecq etc.). I agree that this is a real danger, but Ellis' again applies this argument to politics, refusing to talk about moral standards and the real-life repercussions of political phenomena, but it's one thing to ask whether people like Patrick Bateman should be allowed as characters in novels although they hate women and are, well, potentially triggering sadistic serial killers, and it's a completely different thing to ponder what people should run an actual country. Politics and art simply serve different purposes.
That to Ellis, politics seem to be mainly a question of taste (because he seemingly does not expect consequences for him) also becomes obvious when you look at this quote: "I was far more interested in what people were really like, not who they voted for." What people do and what they believe in are important factors when it comes to judging what they are like - how else do you judge "what people are like"? This doesn't mean that you shouldn't talk to people who hold different opinions than yourself - on the contrary! - but what kind of policies you support reflects your beliefs, obviously.
And then there's the "oh, the goold times"-undertone. I am more than 20 years younger than Ellis, but if I read stuff like
Less Than Zero and
American Psycho correctly, this author had a lot to criticize about the good old times, so maybe today is just... different? Maybe some things are better, others worse? Maybe there are like, um, layers to this, Bret?
As Fukuyama explains in his latest book
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, identity politics can mean that marginalized groups strife for dignity and equal rights, and to support these movements means to contribute to a more just society. At the same time, there need to be values and ideas that connect people with different personal backgrounds, narratives that guarantee societal cohesion. "White" does not care about cohesion. Ellis' blind spots reveal that he basically feels like the current political situation is mainly a spectacle. There is no discussion of Trump's actual policies in the book, the people who fear him are not taken seriously - Ellis' could of course try to challenge their views, but he just refrains from talking about any issues that might be the cause of their fear. What this author sees as tolerance is merely indifference, and this indifference is just as toxic as the self-righteousness he criticizes.
So why did I give this book three stars anyway? Ellis also talks a lot about his career and his books, and I really enjoyed reading these passages. On top of that, I feel like this book reflects a twisted dynamic that we are increasingly encountering, and Ellis, who is no dummy, gets caught up in it - to witness this, to dive into his way of thinking is interesting, because it reveals some deeper cultural issues Ellis certainly didn't intend to reveal. So while there is a lot to get upset about in this book, I'm glad I read it anyway. -
Snowflakes are having epic meltdowns over this book. Although Bret Easton Ellis, the all-time provocateur, isn’t just triggering social justice warriors: he’s just voicing a very personal ‘opinion’, a notion that no longer exists in the contemporary world, a time when free speech means denouncing and censoring anyone who doesn’t follow an imposed and so-called “progressive” narrative. It’s also his finest piece of writing, but tell that to the mainstream media.
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“I never succumbed to the temptation to give an audience what I thought they might have wanted: I was the audience and I was writing to satisfy myself, and to relieve myself from pain.”
It’s not something I typically do, as I prefer to go into a book without any preconceptions, but before reading Bret Easton Ellis’ “White”, I skimmed a few reviews of it online.
Oh my….
I’m curious about how many people read the entire book before calling him a right wing racist, misogynist, or Trump apologist, among many, many other things however. How many heard this was a right wing book and just decided it was not only not worth reading but worthy of condemnation and permanent exile to some remainder stand? If it should be “allowed” to be published at all of course?
It is for those critics, that Ellis perhaps had in mind when writing this book.
This book is many things, many of them untidy in a world that demands uniformity of thought depending on which “team” you are on. Ellis writes:
“We’ve had to rethink the means with which to express our feelings and thoughts and ideas and opinions in the void created by a corporate culture that is forever trying to silence us by sucking up everything human and contradictory and real with its assigned rule book on how to behave. We seem to have entered precariously into a kind of totalitarianism that actually abhors free speech and punishes people for revealing their true selves.”
This book is most assuredly not for the “woke”, the twitter police, cultural censors, those involved in identity politics, or anyone who needs the assurance of a safe space before picking up a book. Ellis is brutal but also I think insightful when he writes:
If you’re a Caucasian adult who can’t read Shakespeare or Melville or Toni Morrison because it might trigger something harmful and such texts could damage your hope to define yourself through your victimization, then you need to see a doctor, get into immersion therapy or take some meds. If you feel you’re experiencing ‘micro-aggressions’ when someone asks you where you are from or ‘Can you help me with my math?’ or offers a ‘God bless you’ after you sneeze, or a drunken guy tries to grope you at a Christmas party, or some douche purposefully brushes against you at a valet stand in order to cop a feel, or someone merely insulted you, or the candidate you voted for wasn’t elected, or someone correctly identifies you by your gender, and you consider this a massive societal dis, and it’s triggering you and you need a safe space, then you need to seek professional help. If you’re afflicted by these traumas that occurred years ago, and that is still a part of you years later, then you probably are still sick and in need of treatment. But victimizing oneself is like a drug, it feels so delicious, you get so much attention from people, it does in fact define you, making you feel alive and even important while showing off your supposed wounds, no matter how minor, so people can lick them. Don’t they taste so good?"
This book in fact starts with Ellis’ recollections of growing up in California in the 1970’s which was a very different place than it is today. It was a childhood with very little parental structure where kids often fucked things up, fought, and were generally free to work out the occasional unpleasantries of life on their own. It was no utopia but for Ellis, it was real and it provided the perfect training ground for him to mature into an adult. This kind of self reliance Ellis argues is what today’s society lacks. While expressing an opinion that may be unpleasant or offensive used to perhaps land you in a verbal or physical argument that was temporary, today you are seized on by a twitter mob waiting to pounce with cameras and tweets. At minimum you will spend an unpleasant day being attacked by total strangers telling you how awful you are. At worst, your career, family, or friends may be altered irrevocably.
I don’t believe Ellis is saying it was a better time when people could be mean and offensive to each other. He writes:
“Very few people want solely to be negative or difficult, but what if those exact qualities were attached to the genuinely interesting, compelling and unusual and couldn’t there then be a real conversation? The greatest crime being perpetrated in this new world is that of stamping out passion and silencing the individual.”
Rather he repeatedly draws a distinction between hurtful words and actual violence. He is arguing that society has had and will always have its offensive elements. The test of what kind of man or woman you are is how you deal with it when it inevitably confronts you. Do you run and hide from it or do you learn how to function in a society with people you disagree with?
“This narrative is about how we wish the world worked out in contrast to the disappointment that everyday life offers us, and it helps us to shield ourselves from not only the chaos of reality but also from our own personal failures.”
While I’m not completely on board with the nihilistic view that we should be able to say anything to anyone at anytime, Ellis I think is correct in his assessment that we live in a society today that seemingly waits to be offended by someone or something.
That being said, I do think Ellis is a bit disingenuous when he argues that people shouldn’t care about what he says on various media platforms. He expresses surprise and annoyance at the reactions he receives, but why? While there is nothing inherently wrong with being provocative, I have little patience with those who express shock and dismay that their statements which clearly will provoke a reaction, do exactly that. When you speak, you should expect to be spoken back to.
That being said, I have no problem with say, the Steve Bannon’s of the world, speaking at Universities. I disagree with his world view but reacting to his words with hysteria or finding comfort in stopping him from speaking is at the very least unproductive and at the most fundamentally un-American.
Surely free speech is a two way street. The Bannon’s, the Ellis’, and yes even the Donald Trump’s of the world have the right to speak no matter how odious their speech is. The people who want to hear them have the right to hear them as well.
Conversely we have the right to answer them without suppressing them or being surpressed ourselves.
There are also some interesting pieces here on Joan Didion, pornography, Richard Gere, the crippling panic Donald Trump inspires in some (Ellis hseems equal parts bemused and bewildered by how virulently people react to this man), horror movies, David Foster Wallace, and how books and their protagonists often take on lives of their own long after their creation.
Ellis is opinionated, often abrasive, sometimes simply a bit of a jerk. And yet he is in many ways a thoughtful and wonderfully talented writer. You don’t have to like him personally (Ellis doesn’t particularly care if you do anyway), or agree with him on much of anything, but not reading him (or anyone we disagree with) for these reasons hurts ourselves and our ability to navigate a turbulent world far more than the author we shun. -
Bret Easton Ellis, my dude bro-soft spot.
Re-read in 2023. I liked it better than the first time around
4*
Moments of brilliance but also passages that I found quite boring and too self congratulatory.
3.5* rounded down. -
Reading White felt like jumping into a cold lake and your whole being at once is wide awake, this is a certifiably FRESH new read. My meter for a really good book is when you stop page counting and get lost in the pages, I got completely lost in White, especially towards the end when Ellis just completely shredded the lefts pretty little picture of their faux tolerance. Plus it clarifies American Psycho’s protagonist Patrick Bateman and finally after thinking about the book since I’ve read it about 3 years ago I finally understand what actually happened, thanks for the Clarification, I needed it.
“This was why it seemed to many of us in that summer that the left was morphing into something it never had been in my lifetime: a morally superior, intolerant and authoritarian party that was out of touch and lacked any coherent ideology beyond its blanket refusal to credit an election in which someone they didn’t approve of had, at least legally, technically, won the White House. The left had become a rage machine, burning itself up: a melting blue bubble dissolving in on itself.” -
A semi-autobiographical diatribe about the culture of intolerance that exists in the present and how it impinges on our freedom of expression. Political and artistic. Republican and Democratic. Pervasive and nearly impossible to root out. Ellis is putting it under the spotlight. Unfortunately that very fact will bring the criticism. Great read.
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I listened to the audiobook version of this release, read by the author, which was fucking great. Obviously he knew exactly which words to stress, the correct tone to use, and made it an enjoyable experience that flew by. I laughed at several points throughout.
It was a collection of anecdotes, essays, and arguments about the society that is changing around us. Stories from childhood, his early success, and how life is years later as a literary badass. Of course, the reviews that seem to catch people's eyes and have already floated to the top with the most 'likes', are probably part of the problem he addresses in these pages. But, like he says repeatedly - they're just opinions.
You're welcome to disagree, we don't all have to look and feel and act and think the same. Life's much better when you stop worrying about relatability, the cult of inclusivity, online likability, and a bullshit image of decency in the overreaction epidemic. He's just a guy sick of identity politics, the victim mindset, and the fucking whining.
Beautiful stuff.
His love of cinema and literature shines through in the stories he shares, some references to the sex and drugs that are required at parties in Hollywood apparently, a few problems with social media, and an insider's look at some of the things surrounding his incredible writing and the stories we all love.
So yeah, I enjoyed it. I took a star, because I wanted to, but who cares?
Final thought: If you're one of the many instead of one of your own, you probably won't like it. -
56th book of 2023.
White got a lot of flak, and I see why; frankly, it would be easy to blab some crap about white privileged males, Gen X mentalities, whatever. Ellis is problematic, and that makes him interesting. Most artists are: they’re interesting. I’ve known some wonderful people in my life but the nice ones, the really nice ones you’d trust with anything, are usually the most boring folk in the pub. Ellis’s White is just a big rant about Millennials, Twitter, the portrayal of gay men, movies, DFW… and, though I was less aware of it in 2019 than I am now, cancel-culture. He doesn’t pull his punches and I’ll be typing out some of his longer and more deliciously caustic passages. There’s stuff I agree with, stuff I don’t. As ever (because, he is, only human, even if he is a writer-human), there are contradictions, hypocrisy, made all the more funny because Ellis seems to be approaching the reader with his hands up, fingers splayed, saying, Look, I’m being as honest as I can here, I’m laying it all bare. The voice of reason. One minute empathetic, pragmatic, the next sharp and a little excessive. Surprisingly, this was Ellis’s first non-fiction work, interesting for a writer who began at 21. Ellis is also the man who said he was ‘done with fiction’ but here we are in 2023 with The Shards.
I’ve read most of his books, annoyingly not his supposed magnum opus Glamorama, but I’ll try and finally get to that this year. American Psycho has made a re-emergence on the internet, made fresh again by a new wave of young men (no doubt young men, if you’ll allow me to generalise), who pine—ironically?—for Patrick Bateman’s coldness/steeliness. Christian Bale is plastered over videos that only appear to celebrate loneliness and depression, in favour of being a ‘sigma male’. A sigma is a new desired type of dominance, forgetting the previous goal men seemed to have, proving themselves as being alpha-males, the sigma male is apart from the rest of the pack, not a leader, but a lone wolf. I suppose it’s leaning into personal strength, maybe even apathy; it’s hard to tell. Christian Bale himself came out and said the sigma ‘community’ are all ‘losers’. I never adored American Psycho when I read it, nor did I adore the film, but I do think, now all the boycotting and banning is over with, it’s an extremely clever novel, and one that, clearly, is surviving. 90s yuppies to post-COVID teenagers imaging themselves on a murderer and rapist with no feelings. Even Ellis admits throughout the essays in this book that he didn’t know then and he doesn’t know now whether Bateman is doing all the things he’s doing or whether it’s all invented. Though a collection of essays, it’s all woven together. The writing and publishing of American Psycho is the beginning of his discussions on, essentially, cancel-culture. He, so he claims, had never considered the fact that he might get in ‘trouble’ for the book. Why? Because, Ellis says, he’s never been offended by art. And so,
If you’re a smart white person who happens to be so traumatised by something that you refer to yourself in conversation as a “survivor-victim,” you probably should contact the National Centre for Victims and ask them for help. If you’re a Caucasian adult who can’t read Shakespeare or Melville or Toni Morrison because it might trigger something harmful and such texts could damage your hope to define yourself through your victimisation, then you need to see a doctor, get into immersion therapy or take some meds. If you feel you’re experiencing “micro-aggressions” when someone asks you where you are from or “Can you help me with my math?” or offers a “God bless you” after you sneeze, or a drunken guy tries to grope you at a Christmas party, or some douche purposefully brushes against you at a valet stand in order to cop a feel, or someone merely insulted you, or the candidate you voted for wasn’t elected, or someone correctly identifies you by your gender, and you consider this a massive societal dis, and it’s triggering you and you need a safe space, then you need to seek professional help. If you’re afflicted by these traumas that occurred years ago, and that is still a part of you years later, then you are probably still sick and in need of treatment. But victimising oneself is like a drug—it feels so delicious, you get so much attention from people, it does in fact define you, making you feel alive and even important while showing off your supposed wounds, no matter how minor, so people can lick them. Don’t they taste so good?
This widespread epidemic of self-victimisation—defining yourself in essence by way of a bad thing, a trauma that happened in the past that you’ve let define you—is actually an illness.
And this is riding the great wave of book-banning, trigger-warnings and celebrity hating that has swept through the Internet (and I say Internet because half the opinions I read online, I’ve never heard in the flesh; I have never had someone at a party turn to me and say, You know what, I think The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is awful and should be banned! (And you know what, I’ve only ever met women who love Ellis and his books, in fact, I lived with a girl for a year who had a huge poster of the Marshall Arisman painting that graces so many copies of American Psycho)). It’s not difficult to go online and find articles about Ellis and his essays/books; I found plenty that are written softly, incredibly limp, and have bizarre apologetic little prefaces that say things like ‘I’ve never read Ellis but…’ or ‘I have no desire to read Ellis, now or ever…’ before taking apart some essay of him, some drunken tweet, some secondary source they’ve found about one of his novels. Article names fall anywhere along the lines of Star Wars puns (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) and the usual BEE buzzwords: GAY, GEN X, WHITE, PRIVILEGE, etc. What’s interesting about Ellis is he does appear to have a level of self-awareness, at least on certain things (and, let’s be honest, he named this book WHITE); but I’m not convinced if this self-awareness, sometimes only half-arsed, makes things better or worse for him.
He also turns on DFW (as he’s done on Twitter, too [1]). I showed fellow GR reader and friend Alan one of his comments from the essay, ‘I often considered David the most overrated writer of our generation, as well as the most pretentious and tortured’… There’s not much to back Ellis’s adjectives. DFW just was ‘pretentious’. (As opposed to Franzen, who Ellis clearly thinks highly of because he, apparently, often says that The Corrections is a book he wished he’d written himself.) ‘I also think he was a genius’, Ellis also writes, in the same essay. There’s an arrogant remark about the obvious Less Than Zero influences in Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System and there’s the smattering hypocrisy that shows itself. Ellis rants about the Wallace’s legacy, where the man is remembered as some saint. The movie, with Segal playing DFW, makes it even worse. Ellis reminds the reader that Wallace wasn’t a perfect person, far from it. His insistence over this is a little uncomfortable considering he also ranted, in an earlier essay, about people who were unable to sever the artist from the art. John Lennon hit women, but he was a great musician.
The essay collection should have been called Post-Empire. Ellis coined these terms, Empire and post-Empire; ‘If Empire was the Eagles, Veuve Clicquot, Reagan, The Godfather and Robert Redford, then post-Empire was American Idol, coconut water, the Tea Party, The Human Centipede and Shia LaBeouf’ [2]. Or, as an easier marker, Empire is up to about 9/11; the world changed after that. It’s similar to the false quotation of Adorno that people always wrongly quote about there being no poetry/art after Auschwitz (in reality, Adorno said that to write a poem after Auschwitz would be barbaric, not that it could not be done). I found these terms and the exploration of them, namely through Charlie Sheen, the most fascinating part of the book. The rants are fun but, like all rants, get tiresome after a while. Ellis seems to be going for humble, whilst at the same time proving his importance.
He didn’t vote, he likes no one. I don’t blame him for feeling self-involved and prophetic after making Donald Trump Patrick Bateman’s hero back in the 90s. Who wouldn’t. I’ll just end it by saying again that I agree with a lot of stuff in here, and disagree with others, but of course I won’t specify what falls into what camp. Ellis will keep on Tweeting drunk. He may even keep on writing books now. My favourite Ellis tweet to finish: ‘Come over at do bring coke now.’
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[1] ‘DFW is the best example of a contemporary male writer lusting for a kind of awful greatness that he simply wasn’t able to achieve. A fraud.’ — 6th September 2012, Twitter
[2] It’s also no real surprise that Ellis’s vision of post-Empiricism, his poster-boy, is Charlie Sheen. But not once does he reflect on his own self post-Empiricism, as if to say, It goes without saying. -
Despite its provocative title and author, White is not an in-your-face screed. It’s not an angry book, and the title is a joke, it seems.
Ellis was a rebel in the early 90’s, American Psycho being turned down by its publisher as it was bound to be controversial. He was a young, bad boy writer who wrote transgressive novels, was hired to write interviews and profiles, and was then chastised for doing that in a transgressive fashion as well. You hired the American Psycho guy, and then you’re pissed because he and Judd Nelson played a prank by writing an article about hip spots in L.A. that turned out to be totally unhip? What did you expect?
Ellis enjoyed a period where his work was understood and appreciated for what it was, blatant satire, and people stopped accusing him of actually being an image-obsessed murderer. But he’s once again in bad boy jail, Twitter jail, and this time he’s locked up by a liberal group with which he once identified instead of the conservative group that American Psycho eviscerated. Again, he’s found himself in trouble for sharing his opinions on arts and culture, and again we’ve misunderstood. In the 90’s, it was like, “My god, what if people start emulating Patrick Bateman?” Which is a ridiculous idea as Bateman was himself a creation that reflected the darker sides of real people. In the 2010’s, it’s like, “Ellis’ rhetoric emboldens bad people,” which is the new “Somebody think of the children.” Which is so annoying. It implies that someone WANTED to do a bad thing, didn’t have the courage, then read essays by a writer of dark literary fiction and said, “NOW I have the guts!” As critiques of books go, that seems like a stretch and a half, inventing a hypothetical person who might, hypothetically, do something that they were considering, and an essay gave them that last shove. It’s an argument all adults have discounted in popular music, most adults have dismissed in the case of video games and film (as applied to adults), and yet somehow we think that it’s Bret Easton Ellis who we need to protect people from?
Ellis is a rebel, but I feel for him because after reading White, I don’t think he’s trying to be. He honestly seems to have been oblivious to the fact that American Psycho would get him in trouble, and he outright admits that he’s seemingly incapable of predicting what will set people off.
You’ll see that most of the reviews are middle-of-the-road, and I think it’s because most reviewers expected something polarizing, that it would be a long political takedown, but instead it’s a mixed bag of essays on everything from writing to horror movies to, yes, Trump’s election. The book presents some unpopular opinions, but they are opinions that are self-aware and very rarely and sparingly critical of any individuals. And while they’re unpopular and no reader is going to agree with all of them, none of them seem cruel or thoughtless, and I’m not using “unpopular” as a tarp to smuggle in racist, misogynist, horrific ideas. They really are well-formed, unpopular, but mostly harmless ideas. Which is why I think reviews are what they are. People expected something insane, something Milo Yiannopoulos, but what they get is a solid collection of essays with opinions that are against the grain, will age well, and probably seem quaint before long.
And this is where we need to talk about the recent interview/hit piece Ellis did with Isaac Chotiner in The New Yorker. Which, spoiler alert, I disliked when I first read it, and after reading White, I really hated.
The interview starts off with a preface that calls White “a sustained howl of displeasure.” Chotiner read the book as angry, whereas I didn’t. Disagreeing, sure, maybe a little curmudgeonly, but there’s a difference between a middle-aged man muttering to himself that the damn neighborhood kids are always out on their skateboards and the geezer flinging the door open, half-dressed, to scream slurs at them from his front porch. I definitely read it as the former, Chotiner DEFINITELY read it as the latter.
Chotiner’s preface tells us that Ellis wasn’t a fan of Moonlight. From Ellis’ entire essay about Moonlight, comparing the movie to The Weekend, King Cobra, and also discussing Fruitvale Station amongst others, Chotiner pulls this quote:
"When did people start identifying so relentlessly with victims, and when did the victim’s world view become the lens through which we began to look at everything?"
What Chotiner is doing is setting readers up to dislike Ellis, who dares to say negative things about Moonlight, the movie about a gay, black man that won an Academy Award. What Chotiner doesn’t mention is that Ellis’ review of Moonlight is long, complex, and brings up a lot of relevant points about the depiction of gay people and the fact that “gay people” are not a monolithic group that think, vote, and feel the same way. He talks about Eric Stonestreet playing a very specific type of gay stereotype and winning an Emmy for it. He talks about the depiction of Turing in The Imitation Game and how the Hollywood treatment of Turing makes him a much less complex, less problematic, less interesting individual than he was in real life.
To put it shortly, Ellis feels that gay characters are generally in one of a few categories, which are palatable to straight viewers, and that gay men in film are not allowed to be bad, flawed people on screen. They are, however, allowed to be victims. Ellis is very much over the victim status of gay men in films. Always being beaten up, ostracized, and, as Ellis puts it, winning awards after discovering they’re HIV positive and flinging themselves out a window in front of Meryl Streep.
Chotiner’s intro quotes Ellis’ line on Moonlight and Ellis’ critique of Michelle Obama’s Low/High statement, and then talks about Ellis’ defense of Roseanne and Kanye West. The intro is an obvious ploy to show readers, “See, this guy is an asshole, so he’s opened the door to the treatment I’m about to give him.” It’s putting Ellis on a side by picking out a few lines from the book, ignoring completely the overall themes, ideas, and left-of-center ideology you’ll find in the pages.
Isaac Chotiner clearly has an obsession with Donald Trump. Check his bylines, but you can also read the interview and see that EVERY question to Ellis regards Trump.
I’m tired of this. I read several interviews over the last year with musicians, writers, whatever, and for some reason, every interviewer wants to talk about making art or being a musician in the Trump era and what that means. And the artist in the hot seat throws out a couple lines about how separating families is probably a bad idea (thanks for the insight!) and generally distances themself from Trump. We are treated to this line of Q&A over and over, artist after artist, letting out a sigh of relief that we weren’t listening to an album by someone stupid enough to commit career suicide and admit they voted for the wrong person. It’s like the fake apologies people make to save their careers now and again. Can we stop doing this? Do I really care if someone made a tasteless Twitter joke 10 years ago? Do they owe ME an apology for making a joke that hurt someone else’s feelings?
With Ellis, there are going to be Trump questions. In portraying Trump as a hero to American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, I’d argue that Ellis saw the man for being a dildo way before the rest of us. In the 90’s, many saw Trump as a punchline, and Ellis portrayed him as an idol to a morally bankrupt, unreliable narrator misanthrope. Which is why you kind of have to excuse Ellis’ “No shit” attitude about Trump. He saw this side of America 30 years ago. He wrestled it into a groundbreaking novel. And you’re just now getting around to asking him whether he thinks Trump might be a bad role model?
If Chotiner’s theme is “Trump is bad,” Ellis’ theme is that he isn’t particularly interested in talking about Donald Trump. Chotiner, like that one relative at Thanksgiving, continues to badger Uncle Brett even after Uncle Brett has repeatedly, politely, declined to discuss the topic he finds uninteresting.
We watch Chotiner quibble with Ellis over Trump’s approval rating, correcting that it’s not 50% but 42%. To do some correcting of my own, Chotiner is looking at overall approval, not the Latino approval they were discussing, and he links to overall approval ratings in the article, ignoring what Ellis said literally while also derailing what Ellis was saying rhetorically. As an interviewer, he’s looking up (the wrong) stats to prove his interview subject wrong rather than listening to him. Is it any wonder that Ellis starts to retreat from the interview at this point, when his interviewer obviously doesn’t care about what he’s saying?
Chotiner doesn’t interview Bret Easton Ellis. He interviews Donald Trump through the Bret Easton Ellis lens, and he runs into trouble as Trump is a topic Ellis is expressly disinterested in. Ellis speaks over and over about what he sees as an overreaction in the media to Trump, and Chotiner’s incredulous. Which is unbelievably ironic as Chotiner, three years into the Trump presidency, makes an interview with Bret Easton Ellis all about Trump. Chotiner is displaying exactly the sort of overreaction Ellis is talking about. He’s trying to prove that his own heightened reaction is a reasonable one, but instead comes off as an obsessed weirdo who simply can’t accept it when Ellis says, in essence, “This is not a topic I care all that much about.”
Claiming a disinterest in politics and the political scene is seen as a sin in today’s world. It wasn’t always this way. Being disinterested in politics was fairly normal. In fact, people would be interested in politics and it would be their “thing” the way church, a type of music, or modifying a Honda Civic would become someone’s “thing.” And an apathetic approach to politics was no more offensive than being indifferent to your neighbor’s Civic...except at 6 A.M. every day when it woke you up. Damn, you Jeremy. Damn you.
Today, disinterest is seen as batting for the other team, weirdly, by BOTH sides. If there’s one thing both sides can agree on, it’s the disdain for the disinterested.
Why? Here’s the limb I’m going on:
We don’t like to be confronted with the fact that our opinions and ideas probably don’t mean a whole lot, and our individual impact on the wider world of politics is immeasurably small. Fuck the 1%, do you know what percent of the American population holds a seat in congress? .000002%! When you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem super insane to look at politics and shrug.
For someone to be disinterested in something that they have such a small impact on is not ridiculous, in my eyes, and it’s not necessarily going against the cause. I don’t buy the idea that “the kids” are going to stop advocating politically because Bret Easton Ellis doesn’t think it matters. And as someone who occasionally runs into personal problems because I’m overly pragmatic, I can relate to someone getting a boatload of shit for saying something that is logically sound but causes someone else to go emotionally bonkers.
Ellis seems to feel that Trump ain’t good, and we should vote him out of office. Beyond that, he simply doesn’t share a current American obsession. And that’s...fine by me. But it’s not cool with Chotiner, and it’s not cool to the extent that Chotiner starts letting his contempt show.
Contempt is not just hatred or disdain. It’s dislike combined with a feeling of superiority. In a contemptuous relationship, not only is there disagreement, but the individual with contempt views the other as less than. Chotiner starts claiming a position of moral superiority over Ellis, confident that he’ll receive the backing of not only the 50% of the country that agrees with him on Trump (sorry, 58%), not to mention the vast majority of New Yorker readers and people who are likely to pay attention to an interview with a literary fiction author. From the very start, Chotiner is attempting to “win” the interview over Ellis.
The interview is so bad, so badgering, that Ellis eventually asks Chotiner, “I don’t know, what do you think?”
How badly is your interview going if you ask the interviewee a question and he stops and says, “I don’t know, what do you think?” How clear a signal is that?
And what’s disgusting is that Chotiner equates Ellis’ disinterest in the interview with disinterest about human rights issues like immigration and segregation. Dude, I’m sorry, but someone being disinterested in your shitty attitude and combative questions about immigration does not mean the person is disinterested in families that have been separated.
I’m going to suggest that, just maybe, treating your interview subject with contempt is what prompted the mechanism of disinterest, which is a mechanism many of us have found useful when talking to someone who is clearly upset and not willing to move on to other topics.
But, Dear Reader, I think you should know that Chotiner doesn’t just have contempt for Bret Easton Ellis.
The headline for the interview reads:
Bret Easton Ellis Thinks You’re Overreacting to Donald Trump
The truth is that Ellis does not attribute anything to you in the interview or in his book. He talks about an overreaction he attributes to self-identifying coastal elite types (one somewhat disturbing paraphrase I’ll make from the book: “Damn right I’m a coastal elite. New York and California should pick the President, not all these idiots who don’t know what’s good for them.”) Are you a film producer? Wealthy New York socialite with an apartment overlooking Central Park? Because if you’re not, then Ellis isn’t talking about you.
The person attributing an emotion to you is Chotiner. Chotiner, draws you in, sets you up to feel outraged that Bret Easton Ellis is attacking you, and then swoops in to save you by putting Ellis in his place. Bret Easton Ellis doesn’t think you’re overreacting to Trump. Isaac Chotiner is telling you that so he can swoop in, save you, and put Ellis in his place. Because that’s what you needed? A savior to rescue you from this rampaging author who’s never tweeted at you, never corresponded with you, and you’ve probably never read?
Chotiner the hero. It’s so self-aggrandizing and gross.
So what’s our part in all this?
The interview is much shared and lauded, precisely because it’s a hit piece. We do not care what Bret Easton Ellis has to say as much as we want to watch someone, who isn’t particularly upset about Donald Trump, get torn to shreds. Bret Easton Ellis was led into the public square and humiliated for our enjoyment. Many folks have retweeted portions, especially the seemingly cutting:
BEE: I think I am an absurdist. I think politics are ridiculous.
IC: Maybe don’t write a book about it. Would that be the solution?
The idea that politics are ridiculous...where would that come from? Maybe the fact that we have our second President in my lifetime who lost the popular vote? Maybe the fact that we were looking to a porn star to bring down the President? Maybe the fact that the President was a host of a fairly lousy reality TV show just a few years ago? Or maybe it’s politicians grilling tech executives about how their phones operate with the know-how of a grandpa asking their grandson how to snap a chat? Maybe it has something to do with climate change somehow exiting the realm of science and entering the realm of politics?
Is Chotiner’s position, that this is all very serious, morally superior to Ellis’, which is that this seems like a big farce and humans exist in a purposeless, chaotic world?
Chotiner’s suggestion that Ellis’ interpretation of politics has no place in public discourse is so asinine, especially for a journalist, and the sense of satisfaction people seem to be getting from this exchange makes me feel so deflated.
I’d just like to say to Chotiner, hey, if the left-of-center opinion of a Bret Easton Ellis is too much for you, maybe don’t do an interview with him. Would that be the solution? -
shockingly... i loved it. part memoir and part social commentary on where we are as a society, i found it controversial, entertaining and thought-provoking. while i don't necessarily agree with some of the things he says (king cobra being a good film) i do appreciate that he doesn't want to dictate how i should feel
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I am an admirer of Ellis’ provocative work such as American Psycho and believe Rules of Attraction to still be the most accurate and necessary satirization of elitism in liberal arts colleges I’ve come into contact with, but this is simply not a good book. White could have been fascinating, thought provoking, and provocative. Instead this reads as a collection of angry, boastful rants which become repetitive quickly. Ellis’ wit is all but absent, his subtly non-existent, but his furor and hollowness are on full display. Gone is the Ellis which satirized masculinity, capitalism, and higher education, in comes the Ellis who has become Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. White is then, surprisingly enough, the most accurate title this foray into non-fiction could have been called—blank on substance, nuance, and intrigue.
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Hey Bret,
How do you fit in?
About to re-watch
The Rules of Attraction - spectacular cinematography. How's the royalty situation?
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It must be hard being a sad old white man who wrote his best work in the 1980s, when he was a bright young thing.
These days he dumps on the current bright young things, including his millennial boyfriend. Toxic relationship much.
Get the short version from his angry old man podcast or twitter. -
Full Review
While Ellis proves he hasn't gotten any less cynical with age, he's also not the old man screaming at the damn kids on his lawn that many have painted him to be, either. Despite all the uproar surrounding this book, I can't say it lives up to the hype of being terrible at all. While it isn't a mind-blowing book, it's still a solid work of art and cultural criticism and memoir that people who enjoy and are familiar with Bret Easton Ellis's fiction will likely find a fulfilling read. -
Videorecensione:
https://youtu.be/bgX87fsVFvA -
When I said the other day to a friend that I stopped reading newspapers she was shocked. How was that even possible? I explained that I have been closely following the news for the last ten years and enjoyed it for the majority of that time. But in the last couple of years both the right and the left wingers have become unbearably hateful and toxic. And so the media as well.
This tension led to the so called quality media outlets to join the left in their fight. It is not uncommon that journalists will call themselves activists. I am not interested in reading the opinions of activists. Now I have counted myself to the spectrum of the political left for a very long time but when it became an „authoritarian moral superiority movement“ (as Bret Easton Ellis accurately calls it in this book) I started to point out flaws that seemed important to correct. This was greeted with indignation and loaded terms like privilege, inclusion or awareness. The irony is that I am a child of refugees myself. I might know a little bit about these terms from experience.
The sheer amount of contradictions and (dare I say it?) stupidity of both the right and the left have made me lose interest in these discussions. Being woke does not mean being intelligent. Criticism should ALWAYS be welcome because it offers a chance for improvement. I was not surprised to find out that Bret Easton Ellis, an author I have respected and enjoyed reading for a long time, shared these sentiments with me. It seems like more and more authors are expressing these thoughts as well. This is a very positive development.
However Ellis does not bring up many points that haven’t been thoroughly discussed already. Numerous people on platforms like YouTube have already criticized and ridiculed the self victimization, the fetishistic portrayal of suffering and the exclusivity and lack of empathy of the people who preach inclusivity and love. (People on the left and on the right become so hateful when talking about their counterparts, something they have very much in common but always fail to acknowledge.)
But what this book also explains is what kind of influence the regressive left has on art and entertainment. This is something very curious. In the past art stood for its own sake. And that was enough. Nowadays a movie is challenging you to subscribe to its ideology. If you don’t subscribe you are a redneck gun lover. This explains why movies like Moonlight or Black Panther manage to be so successful. (The former not being a bad movie.)
White by Bret Easton Ellis reminded me of why I stayed away from these topics for the last couple of months. I think I’ve had enough of it already once again. As the great Ariana Grande says, „Bad vibes get off of me, out of here with that fuckery“ -
The most ok-est boomer-est book you may ever read. A rich white male conservative who has had it good since young adulthood is here to tell you how things are for women and black people and youth, and if you disagree you're probably upholding the cult of victimhood. Marvel at blind privledge as Bret dismisses Black Lives Matter because he doesn't like its 'aesthetics'. Watch as Bret uses his homosexuality as a shield to critique all social empowerment ventures as wussy disempowering victim worship. Hear gay male hot takes on the female experience, such as boys will be boys, critiques of the male gaze are disempowering to women (and hey, if Bret objectified a man then would feminists be as unhappy and if they weren't do they even want equality?), and pornography really exploits the male users because they are sad they can't fuck the woman on their screens. While there are valid criticisms to be made of Millenial cancel culture and the rise of identity politics, none of Bret's jabs land because the nuance of his social critique barely goes beyond yelling 'victimhood' at all things, he's busy patting himself on the back for being a brave Twitter contrarian, he's busy pretending to be an ambivalent centrist while functioning as a Trump apologist, and he's sadly just somehow devolved into a cantankerous Fox News grandpa parody of himself. There are few things to be thankful of that David Foster Wallace didn't live to see, but the sadness of Bret reduced to regurgitating a handful of tired conservative talking points may be one of them.
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White, originally going to be called White Privileged Male is a provocative commentary on the changes in the society Ellis has observed. It is mostly a memoir with some side comments thrown into the mix. Being a long time fan, I can really see how his writing came about, this was a close up examination of his brilliant mind.
The book was hardly provocative unlike what the absolutely TRIGGERED critics were saying, the book consisted mostly of his reviews on FILMS. The perpetually offended will also be offended by something. Well, I could see why they would be offended, because Ellis was specifically praising films for what they are, not the journalists trying to politicize a piece of art for propaganda and their virtue signalling, learn to code.
Ellis like most people, is sick of the media shoving identity politics down our throat, and ellis' expression of resentment for the false portrayal of the homosexuals in media is particularly relatable, he's talking about a minority group within a minority group who are sick of tired of being used as a political tool. His fallout with GLAAD was a beautiful example of the rebellious within the gay community that is missing in the past decade. Ultimately, Ellis saw that victimhood is the biggest problem facing our society as a whole, and he refuses to apologise for whatever opinion he has. His writing may be blunt in this book, but it's so authentic and genuine, it made me love him even more. -
68th book for 2019.
I enjoyed most of this book. Ellis's discussion of politics, of his childhood watching horror movies and porn, of the dangers of creating too safe environments for children, of NYC in the late 1980s, or political correctness destroying good queer cinema. The analogy between actors hiding their private dark secrets behind happy public personas with those of most millenials using social media so they can remain marketable seemed spot on.
Where things fell apart for me was when he turned to politics. It's not like I was "triggered" by what he said. It was just boring. His rants against the left seemed to be mostly pro forma attempts to get rise from the audience. It was a shame, because he just came across as some old has-been enfant terrible desperate for attention, but with little to say.
3-stars. -
I REALLY enjoyed this. It was fantastic back story to Bret's work and life in Hollywood. Highly recommend.
“There was a romance to that analog era, an ardency, an otherness that is missing in the post-Empire digital age where everything has ultimately come to feel disposable.”
“The litany of what I did want? To be challenged. To not live in the safety of my own little snow globe and be reassured by familiarity and surrounded by what made me comfortable and coddled me. To stand in other people’s shoes and see how they saw the world—especially if they were outsiders and monsters and freaks who would lead me as far away as possible from whatever my comfort zone supposedly was—because I sensed I was that outsider, that monster, that freak. I craved being shaken. I loved ambiguity. I wanted to change my mind, about one thing and another, virtually anything. I wanted to get upset and even be damaged by art. I wanted to get wiped out by the cruelty of someone’s vision of the world, whether it was Shakespeare or Scorsese, Joan Didion or Dennis Cooper. And all of this had a profound effect. It gave me empathy. It helped me realize that another world existed beyond my own, with other viewpoints and backgrounds and proclivities, and I have no doubt that this aided me in becoming an adult. It moved me away from the narcissism of childhood and into the world’s mysteries—the unexplained, the taboo, the other—and drew me closer to a place of understanding and acceptance.”
“But most of us now lead lives on social media that are more performance based than we ever could have imagined even a decade ago, and thanks to this burgeoning cult of likability, in a sense, we’ve all become actors. We’ve had to rethink the means with which to express our feelings and thoughts and ideas and opinions in the void created by a corporate culture that is forever trying to silence us by sucking up everything human and contradictory and real with its assigned rule book on how to behave.” -
You might assume that “White,” a collection of essays by the author of “Less than Zero” and “American Psycho,” would focus narrowly on topics of interest to folks in NYC and LA. And you wouldn’t be wrong. Bret Easton Ellis takes readers inside the uppity enclaves that define American pop culture and art. And much of what he reveals is sensational and sad.
But there’s more going here. If its autobiographical essays sometimes read like high-class gossip, Ellis’s concern throughout “White” is with creativity, ideology, identity politics, and freedom in American art and culture. The personal and aesthetic realms are, he discovers, becoming insidiously political for people who should know better. Given what’s at stake, the consequences are appalling.
The final two sentences in this highly readable book are worth the whole ride. -
As a long time reader of Ellis, and the last books were not my favorites, I was a little bit worried about this new book, mostly I was afraid of being disappointed again. Instead, and I am very happy to underline instead, I was really happy, mostly because it's a non fictional essay about the life of the author, of his political ideas and some other stuff about movies and literature, that were a real pleasure to read.
Come lettrice di lunga data di Ellis, e anche delusa da tempo, avevo quasi paura ad affrontare questo libro, perché non so se avrei retto ad un'altro romanzo orrendo, ma per fortuna, e sottolineo per fortuna, questa raccolta di vari pensieri dell'autore che ripercorre la vita dell'autore, dall'inizio ai suoi successi e fallimenti, alla sua visione sulla politica e sul mondo del cinema, neri ed omosessuali compresi. Non fa sconti a nessuno, ma é un piacere leggerlo.
THANKS EDELWEISS FOR THE PREVIEW!
