It’s the birthday of Bret Easton Ellis (b. 1964), best known as the author of American Psycho (1991) and sometimes called “the brattiest of the Brat Pack,” a group of writers that also includes Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, and Jill Eisenstadt.

Ellis was born in L.A. and grew up in Sherman Oaks. He attended Bennington College in Vermont, and while still a student published his first novel, Less Than Zero (1985), a controversial story about rich bored college students indulging in huge amounts of drugs, sex, and violence while on break in L.A.; the main character, also the first-person narrator, becomes increasingly disenchanted with the emptiness and apathy he witnesses. So that’s fun. Ellis’ second novel, The Rules of Attraction (1987), explores rich bored college students indulging in huge amounts of drugs, sex, and violence, but this time in the setting of a fictional college modeled on Bennington, so: personal growth.

Correction: the two novels described above do not contain a *huge* amount of violence per se, but American Psycho does. It tells the story of Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street businessman who also happens to be a serial killer, the point being that his doings on Wall Street are no different from the rapes and murders he commits. The violence described in the novel is so over-the-top that in Australia the book is only sold shrink-wrapped and to people over 18. (I guess they don’t want any of the violence to leak out until people get it home.) Actually the point the book makes about the excesses of capitalism, and the resultant “longing for ethical certainty” that it provokes, sounds like a good one, and if I thought I could handle it, I would read it myself. But I can’t so I won’t. (In fact, I think I’m going to shower after this.)

When American Psycho was published, Ellis was unapologetic about its graphic nature. However, while writing Lunar Park (2005), Ellis reread American Psycho and sort of recanted, saying, “When I got to the violence sequences I was incredibly upset and shocked… I can’t believe that I wrote that. Looking back, I realize, God, you really sort of stepped over a line there” (“Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror,” Edward Wyatt, New York Times, August 7, 2005). Ellis’ most recent novel is Imperial Bedrooms (2010), which is a sequel to Less Than Zero—so if you didn’t get enough of those characters, there you go.

Fun but creepy fact: I went to Ellis’ website. It was scary and I left without looking around.

Seriously, let’s all have a shower this fine Thursday morning, maybe clear the palate with some Jane Austen or Miss Read, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.