Autobiography in the Works of Bret Easton Ellis

Table of Contents

Page

I.

II.

III.

1. Range and Dimension of Autobiography 10

1.1. Definition, History, and Development of

Autobiography 10

1.2. Between Fact and Fiction: Solving the

Problem of ‘Truth’ in Autobiographies 19

1.3. Autobiography and the Question of Genre 22

1.4. Distinction of Different (Auto)biographical

Styles of Narration 24

a) Memoirs

b) Diary

c) Autofiction

d) Semi-Autobiography /

“Wunschautobiographie”

e) Autobiographical Novel

f) Biography

1.5. Intermediate Result: The Essence of Autobiography 30

Page

2. The Form of Autobiography and How It Is

Reflected in the Works of Bret Easton Ellis 32

2.1. About the (Auto)biographical Influence on Ellis’s

Works between 1985 and 2000 33

2.2. The Aspect of Authenticity and Verifiability

2.3. The Selection of Facts and the Form of Depiction 43

2.4. Orientation towards the Reader and the

Reader’s Expectation 49

2.5. The Aspect of Autobiographical Intention

and Authorship 53

a) Narrative Situation

b) Intention of the Author

2.6. Metanarrative Aspects 60

2.7. Attempting a Categorization of

Bret Easton Ellis’s Works 63

IV. Conclusion 66

Works Cited i–vii

“ A u t o b i o g r a p h y i n t h e W o r k s o f B r e t E a s t o n E l l i s “

I. Introduction

Autobiographies are able to record growing popularity; their dominating position on the book market cannot only be concluded from growing sales figures, but it is also the scope of scientific occupation with the subject and a continuously expanding dimension of theoretical approaches, which prove the well- established position of the phenomenon of autobiography within the field of literature.

What are the reasons for the outstanding position of autobiography? What is the appeal of reading such a sort of text for the reader and which aspects demarcate autobiographies from other sorts of texts? Are autobiographies especially read for the reason that they satisfy human curiosity about the lives of famous personalities? Is it the ostensible citation virtually 'from the mouth' of the author him/herself, which pretend an insight into the author's personality – a revelation only he/she is able to make? Or does the reading motivation result from an expected insight into a person, which enables orientation for the reader's own life and resulting problems and crises?

and supports the view that autobiographies enable to cope with someone's psychological conflicts and satisfying more or less conscious wishes. Furthermore, it seems intelligibly that autobiographical texts suggest a greater amount of 'truth', authentically pretending to disclose life as it has been lived.

A fundamental problem of autobiographical texts arises from the inherent dichotomy of fact and fiction, which complicates – unless it does not even render out – an explicit demarcation from

See ibid.: 3

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“ A u t o b i o g r a p h y i n t h e W o r k s o f B r e t E a s t o n E l l i s “

. Thus, solely the sum of manifold aspects based on the multitude of theories, can reasonably determine the autobiographical character of a work. Especially, postmodern writers have recently enforced advancements of existing theoretical models by trifling with the traditional understanding of different genres and their constitutive conditions. Thereby, these authors actively include their readers into the process of reading and force them not only to reflect on the narrated content, but also on their own reading and reception behaviour.

, the text has to be read as novel, not as autobiography. Still, it imposes itself to take the possibility of reading the text as an autobiography into account, since several essential characteristics of the protagonist correspond to those of the author: especially lucid is the identity of the names and a metatextual consideration of word-by-word citations from earlier works by the author.

opens with a statement on public reactions as uttered in the context of earlier – real-existing – works. Hereby, the

1. Auflage. Cologne: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2006: front cover.

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, has to be accentuated.

demands likewise a consideration of earlier works by Bret Easton Ellis, the more so as Ellis's latest work metatextually refers back to these. This paper aims at such an analysis, solidifying respective characteristics and collecting them in the form of a catalogue of traditional autobiographical criteria. Furthermore, this work tries to present a distinct overview of autobiography as a genre. This requires a disassociation from neighbouring genres or (auto)biographical forms of narration, such as memoirs, diaries, autofiction, semi- autobiographies, autobiographical novels, and biographies. Along with an overview of the life and works of the author Bret Easton Ellis, this first theoretical part forms the basis of the literary analysis.

represents Ellis's attempt to reconsider and revise his reputation and his picture in public, which is done by seizing the public opinion and exaggerating referring events. Furthermore, it will be claimed that Ellis criticizes the audience's reading behaviour by holding up a mirror to the reader and illustrating the reader's misbehaviour by means of practical reading experience, rather than by an explicit justification.

and earlier of Bret Easton Ellis's works, will round off the analysis.

London: Picador, 2005: 7.

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II. Life and Works of Bret Easton Ellis

In so far as a written text is the creative product of an author, it is not only the content of a text which plays a role in the reading, reception and understanding of this text, but also the author him/herself. For that reason, I shall begin with an introduction of the author whose works are at the center of this paper.

The American author Bret Easton Ellis was born on March

in 1987.

tells the story of a rich college student named Clay who spends his winter break from college in his hometown. The novel describes a mixture of parties, drug consumption with friends, and – often violent – sex. The protagonist is uncertain of his feelings towards Blair and whether or not he should restart his relationship with her. Despite his relationship with Blair, he has several one-night stands with several guys, when it turns out that his friend Julian has become a prostitute and is addicted to drugs. The novel ends with Clay leaving Los Angeles. In the way of their presentation, the protagonists and their relation among each other represent listlessness, emotional coolness and the disability to develop profound feelings for others. The protagonists are representative of an excessive way of life, which gives the impression of

Unless otherwise noted, all biographical facts are taken from Munzinger Online (2006), Randomhouse Inc. (2006), and – to include latest updates and developments – Wikipedia (2006).

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presenting the disorientation exemplary of the modern young generation.

turned into a bestseller, despite all criticism and despite the relatively young age of the author.

The interwoven relation between the three main characters of the novel is particularly noteworthy: they know each other, they are – at least – sexually attracted to each other, and they end up in a love triangle. Their conversation frequently appears to be sober, unloving, even rude and indifferent to the reader. Sean has a vast number of sexual experiences with many girls as well as a few boys on campus and he is in love with Lauren, at the same time having a relationship with Paul. Denton is a bisexual who used to date Lauren. At the beginning of the novel, it is Lauren who to her own disgust loses her virginity to somebody she does not even really know. Throughout the narration, an unnamed female student has several appearances, when she drops secret notes into Sean's mailbox. Whenever she appears, these passages are printed in italics. When she realizes that Sean – who believes that the secret notes come from Lauren – will not fall in love with her, she commits suicide.

are further accentuated and driven further. The multiperspectival presentation of oftentimes the

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Less Than Zero.

begins and ends right in the middle of a sentence. This narrative peculiarity carries the atmosphere presented in the text forward to the reader as it suggests that the narration starts immediately in medias res. This conveys that also the narrator shows that particular indifference towards the reader as he is unconcerned whether or not the reader is able to follow.

to the extremes.

New York: Picador, 1991: 11.

See ibid.: 20

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.

continues with a description of horror events which happen to the protagonist, who together with his wife and famous actress Jayne Dennis, his stepdaughter Sarah Dennis and his son Robby Dennis resides in a villa in an unnamed suburbia. The events described by the protagonist mainly revolve around partying, family life, marital problems, drugs, success, as well as

July 11, 2005.

Sept. 7, 2000.

Cf. Abbott/Holt 2005

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is the first book written by Bret Easton Ellis to use past tense narrative.

.

.

about his friend and lover Michael Wade Kaplan, with whom he shared six years and who died in January 2004 at the age of only thirty. Kaplan's unexpected death caused Ellis to suffer “a midlife crisis” with the effect that “his death was a

Less Than Zero. Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1995: 8.

See SuicideGirls.com. Interview with Bret Easton Ellis. Los Angeles. April 18, 2006.

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.

III. The Autobiography – Overview and Convergence

To review the works of Bret Easton Ellis in the light of autobiographical aspects, a clarification of the term 'autobiography' and its implications is necessary. As a first step, a general overview of the history and development of autobiography will be outlined to filter out a selection of constitutive conditions of autobiography. These will then in the following passage be taken up and applied to the respective works of Bret Easton Ellis.

See SuicideGirls 2006

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1. Range and Dimension of Autobiography

1.1. Definition, History, and Development of Autobiography

as a basis of the definition. In contrast to autobiography, the same dictionary describes biography as “an account of someone's life written by someone else”.

. The difficulty with defining autobiography is reflected in the multitude of theories and opinions expressed and developed since the subject of autobiography became relevant to scientific research: As will be shown, the determining of autobiography as a genre in its own right, its separation from other neighbouring genres, and the question of formal constitutive conditions of an autobiography have been discussed with changing accentuation over the decades.

, the fundamental problem of autobiography stems from the fact that the author is simultaneously subject and object of the depictions at the same

2. aktualisierte und erweiterte Ausgabe. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2005: 1–2.

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. Wagner-Egelhaaf furthermore concludes that the reader's expectation of authenticity in autobiographies is closely related to the aspect of truth:

Auch werden autobiographische Zeugnisse von vielen Interpreten und Interpretinnen explizit oder implizit am Kriterium der Wahrhaftigkeit gemessen. Mit ihm verbindet sich die bereits erwähnte Authentizitätserwartung: Gegenüber mittelbarem, aus den Archiven der Gelehrsamkeit bzw. der literarischen Tradition geschöpften Wissen verspricht die Autobiographie als individuelle Lebensäußerung eines konkreten Menschen authentisch gelebte und darum ‚wahre’

Erfahrung.

, such verification requires extratextual material.

quoted in Wagner-Egelhaaf 2005: 2–3.

Cf. ibid.

See ibid.

Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991: 37.

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.

who distinguished between autobiography, diary, and letter, as well as between res gestae, memoirs, and subjective autobiography based on formal aspects. He regarded autobiographies to be

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989: 33–54: 36.

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989: 75–120.

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.

In the following years, Georges Gusdorf characterized autobiography as an attempt to restore the entity of life and to belatedly allocate a different sense to the choice of depictions:

So nimmt sich denn auch die Autobiographie im eigentlichen Sinn vor, die Einheit des Lebens durch die Zeitläufe hindurch wiederherzustellen. Diese Einheit, die sich in erlebten Verhaltensweisen und Haltungen ausdrückt, bekommt man nicht von außen her: natürlich üben die Ereignisse ihren Einfluss auf uns aus, sie bestimmen bisweilen unsere Richtung und setzen uns stets

Grenzen.

– a term coined by A. R. Burr denoting

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989: 121–147: 133.

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989: 148–157: 156.

See Anderson 2001: 2–3

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