A Great Novel Becomes a Bad Show

For many readers, the career of the novelist Bret Easton Ellis is the standard for mainstream literary stardom. The biopic writes itself: While still a college undergraduate, Ellis strikes it big with his debut novel, 1985’s Less Than Zero, an unsentimental stenography of disaffected, privileged young adults in swanky Los Angeles. It’s soon adapted into a movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and James Spader, which itself bears little resemblance to the book. Nevertheless, Ellis’s renown skyrockets. By the time he turns 30, he’s seemingly done it all: published multiple best sellers (American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction) filled with materialistic ennui, cheap sex, and lurid death; been mythologized as part of a literary “Brat Pack” alongside writers including Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz; rubbed elbows with celebrities of the music and film worlds; made lots of money (for a writer, at least); and become addicted to drugs.