Everything Means Less than Zero

"Part of what makes his work interesting--but at times morally disorienting--is his unwillingness to intrude on his narrative with an authorial voice. It also led to him being seen as a nihilist, which hurt more than it probably should have. 'I hate anybody who reviews based on morality and not aesthetics,' Ellis said over dinner. 'That is a major crime.'
"'There's an almost passive-aggressive quality to it,' Scott said of Ellis' style. 'Like "I'm not going to tell you"; it keeps the reader off-balance. You have to decide how much irony there is.'
"Ellis has called himself a moralist but pointed out to Rose that he's not going to walk into his novels and say, 'OK, guys, reader: These people are shallow, immoral and aimless--just wanted you to know that.'
"'What bothered a lot of folks about "Psycho,"' said Albert Mobilio, fiction editor of Bookforum, 'wasn't the ultra-violence, but the killer's devotion to brand-name products. The devotion was satirized with such energetic precision that it was impossible not to conclude that Ellis himself was pretty besotted. That may have proved his real literary crime.'"

Scott Timberg in the Los Angeles Times checks in with author Bret Easton Ellis.