Bret Easton Ellis: Water From The Sun And Discovering Japan

From: Blackwells… or Borders? In Oxford.
When: Hilary 08, when I was writing about psychos
Verdict: More than worth its price (one pound) and time (short)
Fate: Will hang on to it while considering whether to develop obsession with Bret Easton Ellis. Or until somebody else wants it real bad.

Procrastinating from what I was really meant to be doing, that is, reading American Psycho, I went out to buy everything else Brett Easton Ellis had ever written. Most of wasn't available in the Oxford stores, which I actually found quite surprising. But this little booklet sat on the shelf, looking very uncomfortable and alone wedged between all its full-sized neighbours. It had a pleasant red cover featuring an adorable drawing of Godzilla, and cost only a pound. There was no way I wasn't going to buy it.

The book contains two short stories, the first of which feels a little long. Both follow the alienated meanderings of a semi-famous protagonist, a divorced female news reader in the first and a washed-out rock star in the second. Both characters seek human contact, fail attempts at normal conversation and aim for some kind of solace in ultimately destructive sex. I much prefer the first character's doomed love affair with a basically clueless twink over the second's brutality towards his Asian groupies (prostitutes? It never becomes quite clear). I guess by the time I got around to reading this, I'd forgotten how shocking Ellis can be. Also, I'm not sure why so many short story writers choose to write about solitude and despair.

Still, it was pleasant to read skilled fiction about older characters. The hotel room antics in "Discovering Japan" can't help but bring Lost in Translation to mind, but of course the decay here is much, much worse, and for some reason I kept envisioning the main character as Bill Nighy channelling Iggy Pop. I think he's meant to be quite a lot younger, although to be fair a certain kind of drug use kind of seems to preserve the body in an unaltered state of harrowing mummification, which starts at 30, looks like 130, and stays exactly the same for whichever number of years the user has left in him. (This digression, in case you're wondering, serves no other purpose than to defend the rights of Mr Nighy to portray the character, should a movie of the short story ever be produced). There are some brilliantly painful scenes though, with the protagonist on the phone to old band mates, etc.

Come to think of it, "Water From the Sun" also contains some very fine moments, and I can see at least four separate milieus from it quite distinctly in my mind (the news studio, a diner, the bedroom, the ex husband's living room, all with quite specific atmospheres) – which again reminds me of the under-appreciated technical skill of Mr. Ellis.

Ellis has a style of writing that makes it seem very easy to write like him, much to the detriment of creative writing teachers everywhere. Although he sounds nothing like her, to me the voice is seductive like Virginia Woolf's, making me want to replace my own with his. I'm writing this a few months after finishing the book, so it's probably not evident in my language now, but I bet it were if I'd have just set it down.

Buy Water From The Sun on Amazon.
Buy American Psycho on Amazon.
Visit Lost in Translation on Amazon.