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Foreign Cover Art: Day 7

European version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 6

German version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 5

2nd French version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 4

French version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 3

Note that this book was titled Simply Irresistible in Germany.

2nd German version of The Rules of Attraction.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 2

Note that this book was titled Simply Irresistible in Germany.

German version of The Rules of Attraction.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 1

Over the next three weeks, I'm going to be posting the foreign cover art from each of Bret Easton Ellis' novels. Foreign cover art has always interested me because I find it amazing that a novel can be packaged and presented so differently from one country to another.

This is a UK version of The Rules of Attraction.

American Psycho Influencing Furniture Trends

The NY Times Home & Garden section has an article on furniture trends this year that compares one company's products with the set pieces in American Psycho.

The minimal-as-a-knife-edge design and dressed-to-kill attitude in the Bernhardt group were reminiscent of another Christian Bale movie, "American Psycho," based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of 1991. Patrick Bateman, the protagonist, also believed in life as a perfect surface.

Their furniture designs definately would have fit in with the movie, and Bateman would have appreciated the prices as well.

Ellis Recommends A Million Little Pieces

UPDATE: Pretty much this entire book has been exposed as a lie by The Smoking Gun. Don't buy it. Don't buy anything from Frey ever again.

While we are waiting for another Bret Easton Ellis novel to drool over, I'm going to read James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. Frey is a fiend of Ellis and has written a memoir that chronicles his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. Here's what Ellis had to say about the novel:

A Million Little Pieces is this generation's most comprehensive book about addiction, a heartbreaking memoir defined by its youthful tone and poetic honesty. -Bret Easton Ellis

Here are a couple of recent favorable reviews from the Chicago Sun Times, the Denver Post, and the Clevland Plain Dealer. What follows is the first paragraph of the book:

I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut. I open them and I look around and I'm in the back of plane and there's no one near me. I look at my clothes and my clothes are covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood. I reach for the call button and I find it and I push it and I wait and thirty seconds later an Attendant arrives.

You can get the first 10 pages of the book sent to you via email from the official site.

UPDATE: The Independent has yet another glowing review of Frey's book.

Explaining Che Guerava Thru Ellis

Here's something you won't see everyday. A discussion of Che Guerava that involves Ellis' American Psycho.

I suppose that's why he goes insane and kills people (ed-Bateman), because of what a meaningless life he lives, or because he doesn't want to see what a meaningless life he lives. Wow, that involves some interestingly existential anxiety. No wonder Kurt Cobain killed himself - he became a shallow image. Anyway, it's so appropriate that a culture that is generally devoid of meaning reduces Che Guevara and Kurt Cobain and Bob Marley to near-meaningless symbols.