American Cipher: Bret Easton Ellis at 60
For all the smoke and mirrors about serial killers and the nods — some sly, some not — to the horror films Ellis so clearly adores, The Shards is essentially a desperately sad story about a kid growing up queer and trying to deal with it on his own. In revising Less Than Zero’s portrait of the artist as a young man, it’s also an implicit admission that he became trapped by the false image he created and so became “a man who stayed a child.” This is the trauma Ellis has spent his career since Lunar Park trying to process; the rest is just noise.
Bret Easton Ellis at 60 – come celebrate with Stu Hennigan!