Bret Easton Ellis - (Bloomsbury Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction) by Naomi Mandel (Paperback)

About the Book

Collection of new critical essays on Bret Easton Ellis, focusing on his later novels: American Psycho (1991), Glamorama (1999), and Lunar Park (2005).

Book Synopsis

This collection of critical essays on the American novelist Bret Easton Ellis examines the novels of his mature period: American Psycho (1991), Glamorama (1999), and Lunar Park (2005). Taking as its starting-point American Psycho's seismic impact on contemporary literature and culture, the volume establishes Ellis' centrality to the scholarship and teaching of contemporary American literature in the U.S. and in Europe. Contributors examine the alchemy of acclaim and disdain that accrues to this controversial writer, provide an overview of growing critical material on Ellis and review the literary and artistic significance of his recent work. Exploring key issues including violence, literature, reality, reading, identity, genre, and gender, the contributors together provide a critical re-evaluation of Ellis, exploring how he has impacted, challenged, and transformed contemporary literature in the U.S. and abroad.

Review Quotes

"If Ellis's fiction is notoriously said to be about "surface, surface, surface", this collection of essays duly traces the terrestrial details and faultlines of his prose, to interpret how he diagnoses, reveals and often anticipates the most acute contemporary anxieties, from psychological consequences of materialism through the injunction between politics and media to current questions of literary authorship. What is more, the volume offers, probably for the first time, an overview of Ellis's later career as a novelist from American Psycho to Lunar Park. A must for any scholar and, indeed, with the editor's introduction, for any student or reader of contemporary American literature."

"Naomi Mandel's exceedingly well edited collection of essays on Bret Easton Ellis's three major novels-American Psycho, Glamorama, and Lunar Park-provides us with the first, long overdue, book-length account of one of the most controversial and reviled of all American authors. A brave undertaking that goes against the received wisdom of much academic and middle-brow literary criticism, this volume offers many surprising insights through close, lucid, frequently ingenious, and always astute encounters with Ellis's work. Despite-or perhaps better because of-the broad scope of approaches featured, this volume presents readers with a remarkably coherent critical conversation; no doubt to the chagrin of the author's many detractors, this collection of essays ultimately puts forth a convincing counter-canonical argument by positioning Bret Easton Ellis as one of the major American writers of the last thirty years. As such, Bret Easton Ellis proves to be not only an indispensable, and immensely teachable, resource for anyone interested in Ellis's work but also provocative for the study of contemporary literary culture in general."

This collection of essays on Bret Easton Ellis's "mature work" (American Psycho, 1991; Glamorama, 1999, LunarPark, 2005) is long overdue. Part of the literary "brat pack" of the 1980s (together with Janowitz and McInerney), Ellis has long stepped outside the genre fiction of his early works, becoming one of the most acknowledged critics of U.S. American lifestyle. The main targets of Ellis's biting critiques - postmodern consumer culture, the "celebrity discourse," and the omnipresence of violence are examined in this anthology in ten persuasive essays. With good reason, the book concentrates on three central novels, which are representative of both thewide range of topicsnegotiated in Ellis's works and the "brand Ellis" (that is, the writer's self-construction in his writings). The anthology is equipped with an excellent introduction on the "value and values of Bret Easton Ellis" as well as introductory articles to each of the three discussed texts. This anthology is not only a wonderful overview of Ellis's oeuvre. It also offers a number of witty and theoretically challenging accounts of the author's most provocative texts. All in all, this book represents an important look at the work of this still active author, covering a basic void in previous criticismof Ellis. This anthology is an indispensable study book for academic discussions of postmodern American literature.

About the Author

Naomi Mandel is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Rhode Island, USA.