Saturday, November 4, 2017

Six Degrees of Separation - Following Bret Easton Ellis

Would you pick this up in a bookstore?
Oh dear! I've never read any of Bret Easton Ellis' novels. He was the enfant terrible of young writers in the 1980s. I have a memory of American Psycho appearing on bookshelves sealed in plastic. His first novel, Less than Zero, is the subject of Six Degrees of Separation this month.

While I agonise about where Less than Zero will lead me, regular readers will know that Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman began the 6 Degrees of Separation meme in 2014 and now it is managed (is that the right word?) by Kate at Books are my favourite and best. The idea is that Kate nominates a book and, on the first Saturday of the month, participants reveal chains of six books that all connect in some way. If you are curious to see where other people's reading leads them, Kate's blog is a good place to begin. But I owe my introduction to Whispering Gums, another very good place to start - I also owe her for some mentoring on how to set up comments. Hopefully that's under control now.

But back to Less than Zero. The online blurbs suggest its reminiscent of Luke Davies' Candy - but I haven't read it either. The book I remember reading when Easton Ellis what at the height of his fame was Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The Paris Review, via Google, tells me that Tartt and Easton Ellis attended the same college and shared early drafts. Saved by Google.

The Secret History is set in a college and starts with a murder. I'm going to take the easy route and follow the crime. This time to Tana French, the Irish crime writer, I read In the Woods earlier in the year, looking for a new crime series to follow. She was getting a lot of press at the time, although her novels were quite hard to find in local bookstores. It was an enjoyable read but I didn't get the bug and haven't read any others yet.

I'm now in Ireland, though, and thinking about Irish fiction. Probably the first Irish novel I read was The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien. I read it a very long time ago. It was one of a number of books I read that helped me explore what being a feminist might mean.

Simone de Beauvoir is another writer I read around about the same time (surprise!). I discovered her via the marvellous biography by Deirdre Bair. I ended up reading all de Beauvoir's novels but the one that remains foremost in my mind is The Mandarins. Set in France in the aftermath of the Second World War, it is believed to be based on the group of intellectuals who surrounded de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Satre. The truth disguised as fiction, perhaps?

Now reading
Another novel based on life is Alex Miller's new book, The Passage of Love. I'm reading it at the moment (up to chapter 5) and, while it might be based on his early years in Australia, I've quickly stopped second-guessing and am becoming immersed in the story of Robert Crofts, who travelled from England at 17 to become a stockman in the far north before becoming a writer.

Another book about a writer is Stephen King's Misery. (I love the cover text I've linked too: 'Paul Sheldon used to write for a living. Now he's writing to stay alive'.) Funnily enough, Misery has some connections to Less than Zero. The first is that I haven't read either - although the film starring Kathy Bates and James Caan is forever etched in my memory. The second is that Stephen King is apparently one of Bret Easton Ellis' influences.

Now how's this for a coincidence: I've just looked at Books are my favourite and best to find out what December's book is ... Stephen King's It! I don't think I'm going to read it (I'm not good with horror and scary clowns) but I look forward to seeing where it leads me.