“There are very good writers that I would avoid at cocktail parties in New York, and some not-so-very-good writers who became close friends—and I’m not naming names.”
Bret Easton Ellis, recipient of the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, talks to Hungarian Literature Online:
You have come to Hungary to receive the Budapest Grand Prize (previous recipients include Umberto Eco, Günter Grass and Mario Vargas Llosa). What does receiving it mean to you?
I’ve received so few prizes that I’m not sure how to react. It’s nice. Somewhat humbled to be in such company. But then again I’m very self-critical so… maybe I deserve it and just don’t realize it.Sometimes you sum up the essence of your books with the words ”The world sucks”. Does it suck even more today than back in the 80s when you started your career?
Well, the basic nature of man never changes. The clothing changes, the lifestyles change, but man and his appetites don’t change. So when you ask me if I still think the world sucks—well, it does. And why does it? Because of how man is built. The flaw of life is that we’re emotional creatures and so we tend to feel deeply about things that are beyond our control (hunger, desire, love, death, aging, pain) and we become damaged. Yet we’re always trying to stop the inevitable with coping mechanisms which often just intensify our suffering. In many ways people numb themselves to what society expects of them and it’s usually the beginning of their downward spiral. As a writer this is what I’ve been interested in exploring: people buying into the things that society demands of them and then getting damaged by that.Does it bother you when people react to your books negatively?
It depends on the person. If it’s someone I respect—it can bother me. Usually, it doesn’t. I don’t write for praise. No writer should.
Don’t you think there are too many readers who like your books because of the violence and not because you abhor that violence?
Of course. But I’m not thinking of readers when I write a book. I’m thinking of myself and I’m thinking about the book. So if someone has read the book for whatever reasons and responded to something—making it the focus of the book whether it was my intention to do so or not—there’s nothing I can do. The book has its own life after it goes out into the world and you have no control over how people interpret it.
Via Literary Saloon // Further: How Andy Warhol influenced Bret Easton Ellis / The LA Times on the work of Bret Easton Ellis
First posted: Tuesday, May 6th, 2008.
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“The book has its own life after it goes out into the world and you have no control over how people interpret it.” Amen to that!
/ Posted by Bii on June 28th, 2008 at 12:23 pm / Permalink /