Russian Book Covers

Thanks to Konstantin for sending in these great Russian covers of Bret's novels. Below are Lunar Park and Less Than Zero.

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Old Articles About Bret

Ran across a reference to this old interview with Bret from back in 1994. It seems EW has put alot of their older articles online finally so there's more nostalgic stuff to read:
American Psychodrama
An American Tragedy
Bad Bret: Less Than Original

Spanish Book Covers

Thanks to Alejandro for sending in these Spanish covers of Less Than Zero, The Informers, and American Psycho. Pretty bland stuff really.

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Hungarian Book Covers

Thanks to Peter for sending in these Hungarian covers of Ellis' books. Everything is here except Lunar Park. Hover over each book if you aren't sure of its American title.

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American Psycho Foreign Covers

Via Marco here are a couple more international covers for American Psycho. The cover on the left is Romanian and the cover on the right is an Italian version.

The Italian version features a painting called The Feminist Husband (4th image in this Flash series).

Russian Covers

Via Andrey, here are some Russian covers of Ellis' novels. All of these can be purchased at Ozon.ru if you like to collect the foreign covers.

This first batch is from American Psycho:

Russian covers of Glamorama and The Informers after the jump.

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Ellis Interview, New To Me

Thanks to Mitch in the forum for pointing to this audio interview with Ellis by the BBC from mid 2005. Ellis talks about Lunar Park, American Psycho and a whole lot about Glamorama.

Ellis Interview

The Morning News has an interview up with Bret by Robert Birnbaum. Robert has chatted with Bret a few times over the past couple of years, so his interview is quite different than most folks because he doesn't have to ask the obvious questions. [Thanks to Tim and Settemod for sending this in]

The only real future project nugget is Bret's response when asked about The Informers:

BEE: And that has a script and looks like it's going to go, yeah.

This would be the Nicholas Jarecki script mentioned last year, so hopefully its still progressing.

Holidays With Patrick

Fan fiction: An American Psycho Christmas [thanks to t for the heads up]

Video Interview With Ellis

Here is a 25-minute interview with Ellis by a Danish TV host (its in English, though the introduction is not). Ellis talks about Lunar Park, American Psycho, fame, 9/11 and terrorism in what I found to be a great interview.

One of the things I was happy to hear was Bret saying that he would not apologize for American Psycho. He did say that he was more sympathetic with those that were shocked by the book, but wouldn't go so far as to apologize.

He did again say that he wanted to write a sequel to Less Than Zero as his next novel. He followed that up by saying he thinks its probably a bad idea, but that he's likely to do it anyway.

Thanks to Christian for sending this in.

Interview and Italian Book Covers

Andrew Billen interviewed Bret for The Times Online and I realized that I never posted it to the site. Included in the interview is the first definitive statements I've seen about who Michael Wade Kaplan was (the book is dedicated to him and Bret's father). As per usual though, the best is saved for last when Bret is asked about the scene in the book where he inherits all his father's suits only to find that the crotches are blood covered from a botched penile implant.

Assure me, I say, that that detail was made up. "No," he (Ellis) says. "That one's true." I blanch. "Sorry," he says, "you wanted to know."

Also, thanks to a comment left by Davidian in another thread, we now know what the Italian cover for Lunar Park looks like (pictured above). Its not bad, but certainly not great.

The Italian cover's for Bret's other books are after the jump.
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European Tour Dates

I don't know all of the European tour dates, but when I do, they'll be put here - and there will be a link to them in box on the top right hand corner of the site.

According to the official Netherlands BEE site, Bret is going to make an appearance in Koningsplein on October 15th at 3PM. [thanks Servaas]

I also notice that the Netherlands has a different book cover for Lunar Park than I've seen anywhere else - the moon is brown instead of grey, more of a harvest moon I guess. They also spell Bret's name wrong in the title and in alot of the head tags.

Here are the remaining foreign book covers from the site. Suprisingly nothing there for The Informers.

American Psycho Review

I'm not sure why its being run so many years after the fact, but the South End Newspaper of Wayne State University has put up a review of American Psycho.

Open Thread: American Psycho

An open thread for discussion of American Psycho.

Bateman Makes Top Villain List

Waterstones (a bookstore in the UK) has produced a list of the Novels Featuring the 20 Best Villains - Patrick Bateman from American Psycho comes in at #14. The top 5 were:

1. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
2. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
3. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
4. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
5. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Also, Lunar Park has been added to the Random House site.

American Psycho Liberty Cover

An unknown alternate cover for American Psycho.

UPDATE: Via email from Patryk. Thanks!

The cover is actually from a Polish edition of AP (out of print for quite some time now). To the best of my knowledge it was the only BEE book translated and published in Poland.

Alt American Psycho Cover

An unknown (Dutch - thanks T) alternate cover for American Psycho.

The James Bond / Patrick Bateman Connection

I don't think I would have ever noticed this one myself.

Brands mark decisiveness and sagacity. Once Bond has discovered what is best, he never veers. When in London, his breakfast is "always the same": coffee from De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex, drunk from Minton china; toast with Norwegian heather honey from Fortnum's; a single brown egg, from a French Marans hen. Even the chicken sounds like a luxury brand.

(Ian) Fleming originated this tactic. Now we are habituated to novelists' use of brand labels, often lazily, to persuade us of the credibility of a character, or a way of life.

Our new age of novelistic product placement is represented with satirical excess by the pursuit of Fleming's device in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991). This novel's psychopathic yuppie narrator, Patrick Bateman, cannot separate character from object of consumption. "Courtney opens the door and she's wearing a Krizia cream silk blouse and Krizia rust tweed skirt and silk-satin d'Orsay pumps from Manolo Blahnik." There is a kind of absurd poetry to it. Even in solitude, Bateman clutches at his brands. A visit to his own bathroom becomes a materialistic hymn. "I stand in front of a chrome and acrylic Washmobile bathroom sink - with soap dish, cup holder, and railings that serve as towel bars, which I bought at Hastings Tile ... Then I squeeze Rembrandt on to a faux-tortoiseshell toothbrush."

I wonder if Ellis has ever been asked about Fleming's work - I certainly can't recall any discussion on the topic before, but its an interesting observation.

Christian Bale was asked about the Bond/Bateman similarities back in August of 2001. Here's what he had to say:

"I suppose there are actually a number of character traits that are similar between Bond and Patrick Bateman ... a complete lack of remorse in killing people, both are utter misogynists."

ALA's Banned Books Week

Yesterday kicked off the American Library Association's annual Banned Books Week. Ellis' American Psycho ranks as the 60th most challeneged book.

American Psycho - The Last Shocking Book?

There was an article in the LA Times this weekend (available on the web only to Calandar Live subscribers) that talks about the mainstreaming of pornography and how the 'envelope' has been pushed so far, there's nowhere left to push it. Shock is dead (tell that to Marilyn Manson).

Ellis gets dragged into this because the author feels that American Psycho was the last novel to truly shock America.

Is there such a thing as a pornographic book anymore? Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic, is not so sure. "The last book that shocked people was 'American Psycho,' " Entrekin says, referring to the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. "That book elicited a response of the sort you hadn't seen in 20 or 30 years. I happen to think it came from a misreading of the book. It enraged people. Bret got death threats. There were book boycotts."

Originally scheduled to publish "American Psycho," Simon & Schuster backed out of the deal. Vintage published it. The book, it should be noted, was decried mostly for its misogyny and violence. And its shock is muted now that the Internet and the World Wide Web infiltrate every corner of American culture.

The whole article is quite interesting, and true in alot of respects.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 30

Belgian version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 27

UK version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 21

European version of American Psycho. This cover is actually based on this illustration by Marshall Arisman.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 20

Spanish version of American Psycho.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 8

Spanish version of American Psycho.

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.

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.