I wanted to like Bret Easton Ellis’ latest book of essays, titled, for better or for worse, “White.” It has been in my Amazon cart for over a year, despite not being published until a week or so ago. Having reread “American Psycho” recently, I was excited to get my hands on more Bret Easton Ellis social criticism, especially as applied to an age seemingly so ripe for a Patrick Bateman-esque takedown.
Unfortunately, on this matter Bret Easton Ellis decides to punt. I think that is the only way to interpret “White” (or at least the only charitable way; feel free to call him a racist or a misogynist or a troll, the latter being a moniker he would surely take fondly to). Depending on your viewpoint, Easton Ellis went on a wildly successful or legendarily disastrous press tour for “White,” but either way, the literati (or perhaps just the Twitterati, to the extent that those groups remain distinct) was talking about his book, and a quick Google search reveals that it led to more reviews than the late-career reflections of a long-past-relevant author would normally merit. (Imagine if Neil Stephenson, whose “Snow Crash” was arguably more prescient than even “American Psycho,” came out with a memoir. Who would care?)
And yet given this opportunity, Bret Easton Ellis declined to say anything even remotely of interest. Sure, he has a lot of complaints, mostly with the progressive gatekeepers of modern day art and culture, but they are so tired that they could have just as easily come from your grandfather, or from Charlie Kirk’s Twitter feed.
Despite all its discontent with modern day victimhood and grievance culture, “White” features pretty much nothing else, taking only a slight and mildly interesting diversion when he decides to add long-dead David Foster Wallace to his metaphorical funeral pyre. (Easton Ellis’ problem with DFW is sort of all over the place, veering into sensibility only to be derailed when the “White” author admits that he has never read “Infinite Jest.” His gripes with “The End of The Tour,” however, are certainly of merit.)
But the real point of “White” is that Bret Easton Ellis is Mad Online. (So are you, of course, but you didn’t write “American Psycho,” so no one will pay you to type it up.) He is mad that people are mad about Donald Trump. He is mad that Moonlight won the Oscar over La La Land. He is mad that the SJW social media mob went after the author of a Skye Ferreira (who?) magazine profile. He is mad that Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for Hurt Locker, but he is even madder about the fact that people are mad at him about it. Make sense? Who cares?
Bret Easton Ellis tries to write himself an escape route, by saying that no matter what your criticisms with his politics (which are virulently anti-anti-Trump), you have to concede that he is an “aesthete.” And if you disagree, well then you are too preoccupied with your “agenda” to care about the true nature of art. This would have perhaps worked if he provided actual proof for his “aesthetic” sensibility besides simply jotting down some sacred cows of the Hollywood Left and saying he disliked them. If you want to read a 250-page example of the straw man fallacy, “White” is currently on sale for just $15 on Amazon.
All of this is a big shame. You never know, but it is unlikely that Bret Easton Ellis will ever be given this much of a cultural platform ever again. In the same month that Robert Downey, Jr. – forever tied in our collective consciousness with Easton Ellis for his Brat Pack work in Less Than Zero – gracefully ended his second act in Avengers: Endgame, the creator of Downey’s Julian character decided not to pursue his own Part Two. Imagine if Downey had said, “Sorry, Kevin Feige, I don’t want to be a part of the MCU, I’m perfectly happy making Shaggy Dog 2 with Tim Allen.” We would forever have Less Than Zero and Chaplin, but no Iron Man, no Avengers, no 22-film Marvel saga. That’s what “White” feels like: Now we are left with Bret Easton Ellis, with “Less Than Zero” and with “American Psycho,” but with nothing remotely interesting on the horizon.
