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Bret Easton Ellis Is Vernon Downs

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Bret Easton Ellis Is Vernon Downs 1 Bret Easton Ellis is Vernon Downs MAY 23, 2014 BY JAIME CLARKE – FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE GOOD MEN PROJECT Vernon Downs is the story of Charlie Martens, who is desperate for stability in an otherwise peripatetic life. An explosion that killed his parents when he was young robbed him of normalcy. Ever the outcast, Charlie recognizes in Olivia, an international student from London, the sense of otherness he feels and their relationship seems to promise salvation. But when Olivia abandons him, his desperate mind fixates on her favorite writer, Vernon Downs, who becomes an emblem for reunion with Olivia. ♦◊♦ By virtue of the fact that Vernon Downs is a roman a clef, which is French for “novel with a key,” there is a small measure of fact mixed in with the fictional world and characters of the novel. The titular character is obviously based on the writer Bret Easton Ellis, but there are other allusions as well. So herewith, a page by page key to Vernon Downs : Pg 3: “Summit Terrace” is an allusion to Summit Avenue, the birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald in St. Paul, MN Pg 4: “Shelleyan” is named for a band I loved in college, Shelleyan Orphan Pg 4: “Minus Numbers” was the title Bret Easton Ellis’s advisor at Bennington College, Joe McGinnis, wanted to give Less Than Zero Pg 5: The story about the Batman skit is borrowed from my past 2 Pg 6: “Southwest Peterbilt” was my father’s employer in Phoenix, AZ for many years Pg 6: The story about the boyfriend who killed the ex-husband is borrowed from my past. The boyfriend was our neighbor in Rapid City, S.D. Pg 8: The story about Jenny, the Mormon girl, is borrowed from my past, when I converted to Mormonism on a lark to impress said Mormon girl. Pg 8: Mrs. Rudrud was my high school English teacher. She was by far the youngest faculty member at Tolleson Union High School, a fact that did not escape the male population. Pg 9: “Scavengers” is the title of the novel I wrote after my first novel, We’re So Famous , about a scavenger hunt that takes place in New York City. I’m obsessed with scavenger hunts. Pg 9: “The Vegetable King” is a title I concocted for a Great American Novel after seeing the film The Fisher King . I’d also been ruminating about the colossal failure of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s play, “The Vegetable.” Pg 9: The description of the author photo is that of BEE’s from the back of his novel, American Psycho Pg 10: “Spago and Pastis and Bossa Nova” are names of restaurants taken from American Psycho , some real, some not Pg 10: The description of Vernon Downs in the Arizona Republic is a replication of the article about BEE in the Republic re the furor of the publication of American Psycho , which I recount Pg 11: “the Phoenician” is a high end resort in Phoenix, built by savings-and-loan kingpin Charles H. Keating, Jr. I worked for Charlie Keating as a runner in college, before he went to prison. Pg 13: “Daar Baumann” is an obvious anagram for Amanda Urban, BEE’s agent at ICM Pg 14: “Phoenix Gazette” is a reference to the afternoon paper in Phoenix, back when two newspapers were printed each day, the Republic and the Gazette Pg 15: The Letter to the Editor of Entertainment Weekly is one I wrote to the magazine in defense of a bad review of BEE’s The Informers Pg 15: The details of the profile of Vernon Downs in Vanity Fair mirror those in a profile of BEE in Vanity Fair entitled “Who’s Afraid of Bret Easton Ellis?” by Matthew Tyrnauer 3 Pg 16: The Letter to the Editor of Vanity Fair is one I wrote to the magazine as a result of the profile. They wanted to call me on the phone to verify that I was the author of the letter, I remember. And since I was too poor to afford a phone in college, I had to call them from a payphone on the University of Arizona campus, where I was studying creative writing. Pg 17: The story about the cab and the Triborough Bridge is borrowed from my past Pg 18: “Camden College” is a fictional version of Bennington College used in literature by some if its graduates: BEE, Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan Lethem among them. In The Secret History by Donna Tartt, the college is called Hampden. Pg 18-19: Charlie’s arrival at Camden mirrors my own arrival at Bennington College, where I studied in the low-residency MFA program Pg 21: “National Book Award winner” is a reference to Bob Shacochis, who was teaching in the MFA program Pg 21: The story about Camden abolishing tenure mirrors Bennington’s abolition of tenure, which was fresh on everyone’s minds when the fledgling MFA program began. There was some concern among the students that the college would cease to exist, or that it would lose its accreditation Pg 21-22: The story about Charlie getting Vernon’s personal information from the Alumni office is exactly how I first learned BEE’s home address and phone number Pg 22: “the bearded Irishman” is a reference to the founder of the MFA program, Liam Rector Pg 26: The story about Paula Jean Weldon is substantively true Pg 30: The story about the Jennings family is substantively true Pg 31: It was a fact that the writers on the faculty of the MFA program, as well as other students, were too embarrassed of BEE as a writer and never mentioned/discussed him, even though he was, by far, the most famous writer (possibly along with Donna Tartt) to graduate from Bennington Pg 31-35: The furor over Charlie’s reading of Vernon’s work mirrors my own experience at Bennington after a lecture I gave on BEE, including a graphic sample passage from American Psycho . The anonymous letters in the book are reproduced from the letters posted on campus after the lecture. By chance, the artist Karen Finley came to campus to give a lecture in the program. Finley was a member of the NEA Four, a group of artists whose NEA funding had been famously stripped away over issues of taste, which resulted in lawsuits and the eventual demolition of the National Endowment for the Arts. In the wake of the furor over my lecture on 4 BEE, lunch was arranged with me and Karen. I went out of obligation—the controversy was overwhelming everyone on campus—and what I remember most was Karen’s eliciting that I was from Montana and suggesting I return there to suss out the root of whatever it was that made me cause such a furor. Pg 36: As research for my Bennington lecture, I wrote a letter to BEE asking if I could interview him via the mail. He responded by inviting me to New York to interview him in person. The scene in the lobby with the doorman is borrowed from that episode, though I did use the bathroom in the basement. Pg 38: “Black Rabbit” is the original name of Minetta’s Tavern, where I spent a good deal of time when I lived in New York Pg 42: “Obelisk Press” is an homage to Harold Ober Associates, the literary agency where I worked in New York. Ober is the oldest literary agency in the country and their clients included Chinua Achebe, Sherwood Anderson, Judy Blume, Pearl S. Buck, James M. Cain, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Hawkes, Langston Hughes, Dean Koontz, Ira Levin, James Lord, Joseph Mitchell, J.D. Salinger, Dylan Thomas, and Glenway Wescott, among others. Pg 42: “Turkey’s Nest” is a real bar, as described. Highly recommended. Pg 44: I was once denied entrance to the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park in the same manner Charlie is. Pg 45: “Oneironaut” was the name of the chapbook for our class at Bennington Pg 49-50: The description of Vernon’s loft matches that of BEE’s loft in the East Village Pg 51-52: The description of Vernon’s Christmas in July party mirrors BEE’s famous Christmas parties Pg 52: “He found himself next to an actress he recognized” is a reference to Parker Posey, whom I met at one of BEE’s parties. The following line about her is fiction. In reality, she was there with her then-boyfriend, the author Thomas Beller. Pg 52: “the lead singer of a band” is a reference to the fact that the drummer for The Strokes lives in the same building in the East Village Pg 52: “Silver and gold confetti” is a reference to Glamorama by BEE Pg 52: Charlie’s awkward presentation of his story to Vernon at the party mirrors my own awkwardness in bringing a present to BEE’s Christmas party, a Xerox of Fitzgerald’s contract 5 for The Great Gatsby . I thought it polite to bring something, not understanding that the party was a free-for-all and that, in fact, it was crashed over and over again by groups of people who hadn’t been invited, which was, apparently, par for the course. Pg 53: Jeremy Cyanin is an obvious anagram for Jay McInerney, though the biography is a fictionalized hybrid of McInerney and Hemingway’s life Pg 58: BEE had to reschedule drinks once because he was going uptown to see the writer Joan Didion, an early influence on BEE Pg 59: BEE contributed a piece to John F.
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