Bret Easton Ellis says American Psycho wouldn't have been published today
Author has made a number of recent controversial comments while promoting his new book, ‘White’
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Your support makes all the difference.Author Bret Easton Ellis has claimed that one of his most famous works, the novel American Psycho, would not be published in 2019 because it is too controversial.
Speaking to The Observer, the US writer spoke about his negative views on “cancel culture” and suggested that young people, and society in general, were too sensitive about causing offence.
American Psycho was Ellis’s third novel, which introduced the world to investment banker turned serial killer Patrick Bateman.
It was rejected by Ellis’s publisher after some found what was interpreted as misogynistic violence to be distasteful, and was eventually published by Random House in 1991.
“That book wouldn’t be published now,” Ellis said in the interview. “I mean, no one wanted to publish it then. Very few people came forward. I was just lucky. But what’s interesting is that I didn’t know until I was putting White together just how haunted I’d been by American Psycho.
“I can’t get away from Patrick Bateman. I mean, it was prescient, and not only because of Trump.” (Donald Trump is mentioned 40 times in the novel due to Bateman’s obsession with him.)
Ellis admitted that the book caused just as much controversy at the time as it may have done today, with some conflating Bateman’s attitude to that of his creator, or believing that he supported Trump himself. Earlier in the interview he described Trump as an idiot and grotesque, and said that he did not vote for him.
In another recent interview, Ellis came under fire for claiming there was a hysterical reaction to Trump’s presidency. Later, on Channel 4, he claimed he received as much, if not more abuse than black women on Twitter.
His new book, White, a collection of eight essays, was released this month.
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