Bret Easton Ellis’ once named his favourite novels set in New York City
At his core, Bret Easton Ellis is a Los Angeles writer. After all, the acclaimed yet controversial author was born in the Californian city and based his debut novel, 1985’s Less than Zero on his teenage years spent smoking weed, doing coke and lounging about in the sun. However, beyond the realms of LA, Ellis has also established himself as a literary artist with a significant relation to New York City.
Shortly after the success of Less than Zero, Ellis set out for New York, where he wrote his second effort, The Rules of Attraction, which was admittedly set in a fictional college in New Hampshire. However, by the time Ellis turned his attention to his notorious third novel, American Psycho, his time in New York, living what he had once referred to as the “GQ lifestyle” had invariably informed his writing.
American Psycho tells of a deranged Wall Street banker by the name of Patrick Bateman who commits a series of brutal murders and sexual assaults across the Big Apple, delivered in Ellis’ usual affectless style. The novel naturally drew controversy considering its graphic content, although those who could stomach Bateman’s awful deeds were presented with Ellis’ vision of New York City for the very first time, the place that he had begun to call home in the late 1980s and would do so for many years to come.
In fact, Ellis is no stranger to fiction that explores the inner workings of New York and in a feature with The New York Times, he once stated his favourite novels to be set within the sprawling boundaries of the city. The first was released the very same year that Ellis departed LA for New York: Tom Wolfe’s 1987 effort The Bonfire of the Vanities.
A novel about class, politics and greed, The Bonfire of the Vanities focuses on a bond trader by the name of Sherman McCoy, a Jewish lawyer called Larry Kramer and a British journalist, Peter Fallow. Ellis, like many others, believes that Wolfe’s 1987 effort is “the central New York novel of the 1980s,” arguing that it captured “the zeitgeist of that moment unlike anything else: glamorous, brash, over-the-top.”
Going back some four decades, we find Ellis’ second favourite New York City novel, The Fountainhead by the Russian-American author and philosopher Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead was Rand’s first literary success and tells of a young architect embodying Rand’s ideal of the perfect man, who battles against an architecture establishment who fail to accept his innovative ideas.
Rand was a staunch believer in capitalism, which naturally brought criticism from those on the left side of politics and her 1943 novel showcases her view that individualism is superior to collectivism. “This remains one of the 20th century’s most compelling page-turners, regardless of where you stand on its author,” Ellis noted. “It’s not particularly well written, but it’s a monumental piece of fiction.”
Finally, Ellis’ favourite New York City novels list is rounded off by Jennifer Egan’s 2001 work Look at Me, which focuses on a fashion model who suffers a car accident and is left with a completely shattered face. Although much of the novel takes place in Illinois, Ellis explained how “chapters unravel in a pre-9/11 Manhattan obsessed with celebrity, internet entrepreneurs and the fashion world are the key fictional record of that moment.”
Bret Easton Ellis’ favourite novels set in New York City:
- The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe, 1987)
- The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand, 1943)
- Look at Me (Jennifer Egan, 2001)
