Bret Easton Ellis’ first foray into nonfiction, White, is disappointingly unimpressive. Part diatribe on the current state of the political landscape, part memoir, there really isn’t much here that’s especially brilliant or worth reading.
A lot of Ellis’ commentary on politics of the last few years is, if you’re as familiar with similar polemics as I am, simply regurgitated talking points from elsewhere. People these days are overly sensitive, social media witch hunts are reprehensible, the left has gone from seemingly being progressive to being actively regressive in its near-fatalistic censorship of free thinking, and so on.
Let’s see: Joe Rogan, Jon Ronson, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Bill Burr, Milo Yiannopoulos, Andrew Sullivan, Chris Hedges, Michael Wolff, Michael Lewis, Matt Taibbi, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and a host of YouTubers I can’t even begin to list off have all said as much, and more, in pretty much the same way. If this were the first time I was hearing all of this, it might leave more of a mark, but it’s not and it didn’t. Ellis’ gleeful recounting of triggering Millennials (or, as he labels them, “Generation Wuss” - har har...) on Twitter - one of whom is his much younger boyfriend - comes off as just sad and pathetic.
When he’s not stating the bleeding obvious, the memoir side of things is mundane and prone to pointless digressions of the movie biz. Recounting the writing of his first novel, Less Than Zero, Ellis goes off on a tangent about Richard Gere’s early movies and late 80s/early 90s Tom Cruise, who lived in Ellis’ apartment complex around that time (if you’re wondering, they met twice in the elevator and only said “Hi” both times).
It’s more accurate to say that there’s less on memoirs and literary matters and much more on Ellis’ rambling views on movies and actors. Which is probably not surprising given that he’s not written a novel in nearly a decade having lost interest in the form and has spent his time immersed in Hollywood, producing an indie flick called The Canyons, instead.
Which isn’t to say that he ignores the literary - I thought his account of the background to his masterpiece, Lunar Park, was compelling, and his views on David Foster Wallace were intriguing. He’s also able to provide a thoughtful explanation for his most famous novel, American Psycho, though it doesn’t make it any less unreadable!
Nor will I say that what he has to say on random movies and creators wasn’t interesting either. I agree that Moonlight is a vastly overrated film as is the director Kathryn Bigelow’s work. But pointing out Hollywood’s hypocrisies or that there’s an enforced likeability/conformity standard of behaviour to succeed in the business is hardly going to be news to anyone. The rest of the book is made up of inconsequential, name-dropping anecdotes (he did blow with Basquiat once AND he’s worked with Kanye West!) - it ain’t much.
I agree with a lot of what Ellis says: we shouldn’t coddle our kids and should prepare them for the harsh realities of the world; we shouldn’t block and/or censor anyone with opposing political beliefs; Trump’s election WASN’T the end of the world but nor was it something to be celebrated; there shouldn’t be uniform approved behaviour in the creative arts and artists should be encouraged to be provocative.
But it’s stuff I’m already familiar with and which has been floating around the cultural ether for a while now and been expressed many times before. There’s nothing original, thought-provoking or exciting about anything Ellis is saying. The only new material on offer is the memoir/film rambling aspects, most of which is unremarkable and forgettable. It’s well-written and occasionally interesting but White is basically for undiscerning and patient Bret Easton Ellis fans only.
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