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European Interviews Start

Now that Ellis is kicking off his European book tour, the interviews will start anew - The Independent is first. The most poignant moment in the interview comes when Ellis is asked if he ever wished Less Than Zero had never become a success:

"Ahhhh..." he says. "You know, I don't know why I suddenly feel like crying when you ask me that. I suddenly just feel incredibly emotional, and I suddenly feel... uh... like crying. Why? I don't know."

"Yes," he says quietly. "I often wonder - sometimes - if that book had not been... well, say it hadn't been a success, or hadn't been published at all, what my life would have been like. Would it have been happier? That's the question that haunts me a lot. Would it have been another life without all the complexities and weirdness that this life had?

"I wanted to be a musician," he goes on. "Just writing songs, making music, that always made me happy. And right now, when I'm in this mid-career retrospective and I'm going through some sort of midlife crisis, I am vulnerable to accepting the idea that maybe there was another road that could've been taken. And maybe I'd have ended up happier. But I hope no one ever asks me that again, because I don't want to burst into tears in front of a reporter."

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