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Bret Easton Ellis: 'I was always suspicious of wealth'
His latest novel, "The Shards", sees him revisit Buckley, the posh high school he attended in the early 1980s.
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In this file photo taken on September 20, 2019, US author and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis poses during a photo session in Paris. Bret Easton Ellis writes about the rich because it's funny to see them screw up, says the American writer who publishes his seventh novel “Les Éclats“ which appears on March 15, 2023 in French.
(AFP/Joel Saget)
B
ret Easton Ellis is characteristically blunt about the central theme of all his work -- in his words: "the rich, and how fucked up they are".
His latest novel, "The Shards", sees him revisit Buckley, the posh high school he attended in the early 1980s.
Despite a fictionalised serial killer plotline, much is drawn from his real life, as Ellis and his comrades lounge around their pools and drive to class in sports cars. Sex and drugs punctuate their free time.
"It is a privileged set of characters. I write about the rich and I always have," he told AFP during a visit to Paris.
"We were much more privileged than I ever thought when I was younger. The first time we began to get some acne, boom: expensive dermatologist. In Beverly Hills none of my friends had acne," he said.
Buckley's school alumni include famous names such as Matthew Perry from "Friends" and Kim Kardashian.
But Ellis's family life disabused him of any romantic notion of wealth.
