Less Than a Hero

By Lev Grossman

Bret Easton Ellis keeps getting up to go to the bathroom. He gets up three times during the course of a two-hour lunch. And he's kind of sniffly too--keeps blowing his nose. So, naturally, I ask him if he's doing coke in there. Ellis thinks this is funny.

For the record, Ellis pleads allergies, but you can see why one would ask. He became famous in 1985, at the tender age of 21, for his novel Less Than Zero, a not-very-tender account of the empty-eyed, drug-drenched L.A. teen-party scene, and along the way he acquired a reputation as a pretty hard-partying hombre himself. In 1991 he became notorious all over again for American Psycho, a semipornographic, ultraviolent best seller about an investment banker turned serial killer, which he successfully--and with some validity--passed off as an indictment of 1980s Manhattan greedhead culture.

But no matter how much Ellis you read, you never know how seriously to take it. How much is real, and how much is just gonzo shock tactics? How much is autobiography, and how much is just autoerotic make-believe? His new novel, Lunar Park (Knopf; 308 pages), is about as close as we're going to get to finding out. Which isn't all that close.

Ellis wears all black--black polo shirt, black slacks, black shades--and is surprisingly physically imposing, tall and broad. He's handsome in a nerdy way--he's like a larger, fleshier Greg Kinnear. He's also surprisingly smiley and sunny of outlook: the brooding wunderkind has become a mellow wundergrownup. "I'm 41!" he says. "I just want to get my Zyrtec [his allergy medication] and my nice cheese [this is during the cheese course] and take my nap."

He's nonstop witty, a real charmer, but his charm has a teasing, Cheshire-cat quality, as if his whole personality were just a game he plays with other people. "O.K., this is the first interview of the day," he muses out loud. "What kind of mood am I in? Am I going to, like, tell some stories?" After he offers me his assessment of the menu, he fixes me with a quizzical stare. "Do you believe me? Really? Even after reading my book?"

Lunar Park is about a novelist named, not coincidentally, Bret Easton Ellis. The fictional Bret has written the same novels the real one has. The fictional Bret cavorts with celebrities ("Jean-Michel Basquiat, Molly Ringwald, John McEnroe, Ronald Reagan Jr. ..."), has numerous affairs with both sexes and is perpetually strung out on coke, tequila, heroin, cosmopolitans and crystal meth. He even has a novelist pal named Jay McInerney. (According to Ellis, McInerney was not thrilled with his cameo appearance. "Really, out of all the s_____ things that have been written about him, this is the lowest? I guess he's very sensitive." McInerney could not be reached for comment.)

It wouldn't be hard to read all this as breast-baring confession, or at least rueful self-parody, except that it quickly veers into fiction. Bret (this is the fictional Bret) has managed to sire a son with an actress named Jayne Dennis, and when he flunks out of his umpteenth rehab he decides to save himself by marrying her, moving to Connecticut and becoming a regular suburban dad. But Bret brings his demons with him, both figuratively--he can't kick the sauce and he's haunted by his late alcoholic, rageoholic father--and literally: the Connecticut McMansion is assailed by supernatural bogeys, including a real-world incarnation of Patrick Bateman, the titular American Psycho. If the pace flags in places, there are the bones of a great book here: Stephen King--style horror imbued with Ellis' trademark narcotized despair.

So is that guy--the repentant, demon-chased Oedipal wretch Bret--the real Ellis? There's certainly a strong family resemblance. Ellis had a difficult, angry, alcoholic father. He dates both men and women. He has lost some of his lust for fame (although the real Ellis still lives in Manhattan, not Connecticut). "There's a heavy dose of self-loathing about celebrity," he sighs. So what does he not loathe? "Um." Long silence. "Ah, I like to write. I love to read. I like to go to movies. I like to go to museums." He's trying for a straight answer, but he starts cracking up halfway through. "Long walks on the beach ... rainbows ..."

The truth is, even if Ellis decided to drop all the layers and the games, you get the feeling he wouldn't know how. He's just as confused as we are. "I'm a weird person," he insists. "I'm not normal. Do you think the guy you're sitting across from, who wrote these books and who's put himself out there, do you think that that's, like, conducive to normal behavior? I'm beginning to think it's not. I'm beginning to think it's all one big mistake." He gives me the quizzical stare again. "If I said I was going to the rest room now, would you believe that I was coming back?"