Ellis' Connection With Elvis Costello

A Reuters interview with Ellis on his book tour in Frankfurt. Unlike alot of the interviews, I actually learned something new from this one:

Q: The title of your first novel, Less Than Zero, and the title of your latest book, Imperial Bedrooms, are taken from a song and album by Elvis Costello. Why?

A: When I was a white, upper middle-class, educated young man, I felt that Elvis Costello spoke to me. The word-play, the cleverness, the intellectual height seemed really cool to me. I liked the song Less than Zero and what it meant in regard to the book I was writing. Both play with the idea of emotional fascism. I like Costello's song 'All This Useless Beauty' too, but Less Than Zero seemed the most relevant at the time.

I'm not a Costello fan and have never noticed this being mentioned before.

Also thought this was an interesting statement:

My writing broke up a lot of my friendships... I never saw my writing as a career though, only a hobby, and that's why I don't regret the fact that it ruined a lot of friendships.

New Cover For Less Than Zero Paperback

To go along with the release of Imperial Bedrooms, Less Than Zero is getting a new cover.

Also looks like Less Than Zero is getting a new hardcover release in the UK this July.

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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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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Advice For Bret Easton Ellis

The NY Times has an essay up today called Name That Book wherein they present some trivia and let you guess the answers multiple choice style. Question 6 deals with Less Than Zero.

Bret Easton Ellis's mentor, Joe McGinniss, had two pieces of advice after reading the manuscript of Less Than Zero. One was that Ellis should not use his middle name ("You'll sound like such a twit"). The other was, "And you should call your book..."

a. "Home for the Holidays"
b. "Winter Vacation"
c. "Season's Greetings"
d. "Kids Today: Who Can Figure Them?"

The answer is in the extended entry after the jump

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Lunar Park Nominated For World Fantasy Award

Couple of interesting tidbits via the SciFi channel. According to this story, Ellis has re-located back to Los Angeles to work on his previously mentioned 'sequel' to Less Than Zero.

We also find out that Lunar Park has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. The winner will be announced at their convention in November 2006. Here are all the nominees:

Hal Duncan, Vellum (Macmillan; Del Rey)
Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park (Knopf; Macmilln)
Graham Joyce, The Limits of Enchantment (Gollancz; Atria)
Patricia A. McKillip, Od Magic (Ace)
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (Harvill; Knopf)
Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania (Tor)

It seems very odd to see Ellis listed among that group of authors.

Song For Clay

UK indie band Bloc Party's upcoming album is going to have a track called Song for Clay that was inspired by the character from Ellis' novel Less Than Zero. [Thanks to Jay for the link]

At the link above, there is an interview w/ the band, and a listing of their US tour dates that runs thru August.

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.

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.

Less Than Zero Sequel Seems Likely

JAM! Books has another interview with Ellis about Lunar Park and the future. There isn't much new information in the interview, but Ellis does put some additional weight behind the idea that he's going to write a sequel of sorts to Less Than Zero.

"I have a Nicholas Sparks book in me somewhere," he laughs. "Seriously though, I've been thinking about it a lot. I've been thinking of Less than Zero, and where those characters are now. Part of me thinks it's a truly terrible idea, but unless I'm hit by a bus it looks likes it's going to be the next book."

A 'Less Than Zero' Love Story?

Elizabeth Barr has a good interview with Bret in the Buffalo News. Like many of his previous interviews this year, he continues to speak ill of American Psycho.

"Patrick Bateman becoming an icon made me resentful. Of course, as a writer you resent that. That will be on my tombstone, that I created that character. And I resented the character haunting me."

And, he's still toying with the idea of re-using the characters from Less Than Zero in a future novel.

"I've always written about people my age at any given time. It's not surprising that I'm no longer interested in writing about youth culture. I don't want to hang out with 20-year-olds. I don't want to write Less than Zero again," he said.

"However, I am interested in returning to Less than Zero, " the novel that was published while he was a 21-year-old Bennington College student. "I was back in L.A. recently after a long time away, driving around, and I would think about where Blair and Clay are and that they probably have kids and that their kids would be about the age of the kids in Less Than Zero. That is something I cannot not think about.

"I don't know if it's a book yet. Part of me thinks it's a really cheesey idea - there are so many pitfalls, so many traps. It might be a love story. It's just this idea that's been haunting me."

Open Thread: Less Than Zero

An open thread for discussions of Less Than Zero.

German Cover

Another German cover from Denmark (thanks Christian) for Less Than Zero.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 26

French version of Less Than Zero.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 25

French version of Less Than Zero.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 24

French version of Less Than Zero.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 23

German version of Less Than Zero.

Foreign Cover Art: Day 22

German version of Less Than Zero.