The Bret Easton Ellis “Interview”Posted by dhoffman on June 13th, 2010
Something about the following is just fascinating to me:
The Bret Easton Ellis Meets the Press Routine
It’s from Carolyn Kellogg’s web-site (I love the “who? huh?” link in the navigation bar) and, as someone who tends to read author interviews and wonder just how much is spontaneous and how much is — while not being untrue — engineered for the marketing process, it’s a great, interesting read.
Listen: if you’re Bret Easton Ellis (and if you’re reading this and you don’t know who he is, shame on you) of course you’re presenting at least a somewhat manufactured face to the press. You’re a controversial figure and you’re fascinating, to boot. The books you write detail a certain kind of lifestyle and, yes, readers expect their author to have real-world experience in such a lifestyle.
Not that anyone thinks, say, J.K. Rowling has a lot of experience fighting evil wizards.
Or that Peter Benchley has a lot of experience fighting sharks.
Or that Johnathan Carroll . . . actually, scratch that. I met Jonathan Carroll once and it wouldn’t shock me in the least to discover he’s living 100% in the world he writes about. And I write that in the absolute best possible way one can write such a thing.
Animals, to turn this around to me, is a story that has elements people familiar to me would probably not have a rough time seeing through the lens of knowing me. Similarly, there are fantastical elements to the story and I hope friends and family wouldn’t read the book and think, “oh yeah, I could totally see him doing that”.
Writers write about “things they know” but how do you really limit what you “know”. My next book is going to take place on a submarine, for instance. Aside from the old ride at Disney, I’ve never been on a submarine. Still, after thinking about and researching the story for more than a year, I think I’m comfortable saying I “know” the world of that submarine and her crew.
That’s what being a writer is all about. You have an idea and you build a world around it. Sometimes you write about the world outside your door. Sometimes you write about a world that exists wholly in your own imagination. What you “know” is what you see when you think about that world.