Our pal Robert Birnbaum chats with one of our least favorite novelists, Bret Easton Ellis, but Brother Robert always puts on a good show, and the two chat about "Italian concrete, Jay McInerney, Rat and Brat Packs, Gary Fisketjon, Joe McGinniss, the joys of writing, reviews—writing and receiving them, Roger Rosenblatt, "American Psycho", the time of "Less than Zero", Los Angeles, writers in the movies, his mid life crisis, Mark Spragg’s "An Unfinished Life", his picks for the greatest books of his generation, "Gilead", James Wolcott and James Wood and James Atlas, Phillip Roth, Jayne Dennis, his next book and his Yankee cap. And other stuff."
RB: James Woods [sic] published a novel that received warm notices, but I don’t think his reputation was adversely affected.
BEE: I felt the same thing about James—I also felt he was a very boring critic. And I found that novel equally boring. So that didn’t bother me. James Wolcott seemed to be a very vital, exciting critic, and I suppose if you hadn’t read his book, he still might be. He just wrote an interesting review of the Jim Atlas book [My Life in the Middle Ages], and it was very cruel, very funny, and very intense review, but I kept thinking of The Catsitters the whole time. And I kept saying, “How dare you have the right to go out and criticize these people when you have written a terrible novel?” On the other hand, you don’t have to be a chef to know when a meal tastes bad or not.
Which only serves to reinforce our opinion of BEE ...
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