Bret Easton Ellis’ wilted innocence

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“New York is so over,” says Bret Easton Ellis, sitting behind the glass-topped desk in his home office. “Who cares about New York? L.A. is where it’s at right now.” Outside the windows of his high-rise, hillside apartment, Los Angeles appears serene, nothing but green treetops, a few glittery skyscrapers and a hazy horizon. From here, there is little evidence of the dead-eyed rich kids and existential dread of a city “afraid to merge,” as Ellis wrote in “Less Than Zero.” Published in 1985, the book was heralded as a cultural touchstone by baby boomers looking to understand what was then called the MTV generation. “It’s a very grouchy book about my generation,” Ellis says today. “It’s not a love letter to them at all. It’s, like, ‘I don’t like you guys.'” Vintage Contemporaries is releasing a new edition for the book’s 25th anniversary, and Ellis has returned to the same characters in his new novel, “Imperial Bedrooms” (Alfred A. Knopf: 174 pp., $24.95), out this month.

more from Carolyn Kellogg at the LAT here.