3:AM’s editor-in-chief Andrew Gallix on Andy Warhol as writer, and his influence on Bret Easton Ellis:
Andy Warhol was a painter, illustrator, designer, photographer, filmmaker, producer, journalist, editor, anchorman, and model. In her book Warhol Spirit Cécile Guilbert argues, more contentiously, that he was also a serious writer.
She makes much of his influence on Bret Easton Ellis, himself one of the most influential authors of recent years. In one instance, an extract from American Psycho and a social column penned by Warhol in 1973 are printed side by side. The similarities are striking: same tonal blankness, compulsive name-dropping and seemingly endless lists of designer goods. (Fittingly, the film adaptation of American Psycho was directed by Mary Harron, whose previous movie had been I Shot Andy Warhol.)
Warhol’s name has frequently cropped up in reviews of Ellis’s work, but the connection has been most clearly established by Ellis himself. One of the characters in Glamorama is mocked because she only owns two books: the Bible plus the Andy Warhol Diaries (”and the Bible was a gift”). The inference here is that the Diaries appeal to superficial hipsters, but the juxtaposition with scripture is just as significant. The Pope of Pop presides over the celebrity culture and branded environment Glamorama is steeped in, but his presence runs the paradoxical risk of being overlooked - it is part of the novel’s wallpaper. When Victor, the protagonist, quotes one of Warhol’s epigrams (”Baby, Andy once said that beauty is a sign of intelligence”), it is immediately disproved by his girlfriend’s admission that she has no idea who he is (”Andy who?”). The fact that she could have walked straight out of the Factory or the Chelsea Hotel adds a nice touch of dramatic irony.
Apparently, the two men met at a launch party for Less Than Zero in 1985. Warhol had not read Ellis’s debut, but was much taken with its title (a nod to Elvis Costello) that resonated with his own rhetoric. Cécile Guilbert zeroes in on the quasi-Zen minimalism of his interview performances. She sees Warhol as a Candide-like figure rather than the usual sub-Wildean ironist: a mystical idiot savant whose very passivity turns him into a mirror or a tape recorder. In his memoir, POPism, Warhol claimed that the words he uttered during interviews always seemed to be “coming from someplace else, someplace behind [him]”. This oracular ventriloquism raises issues of authorship, as does his approach to the novel.
First posted: Friday, April 4th, 2008.
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