Trolling: Bret Easton Ellis’s White, Millennial Writing and Taking the Bait // Dana Ewachow

 A month ago, while doing press for his latest non-fiction book White, Bret Easton Ellis said to The Sunday Times: “What is millennial culture? There’s no writing. They don’t care about literature. None of them read books.” There are lots of negative statements about the millennial generation out there. Millennials ruined the diamond industry, the napkin industry and chain restaurants. They won’t go golfing, buy houses or save for retirement. These statements are presented negatively, putting the onus on a single generation for massive (often inevitable) societal shifts, but they come with grains of truth. Millennials don’t make as much money as previous generations. With rising prices in real estate and stagnant wages, they’re not going to jump into home ownership at the same rates. When you’re struggling to pay rent, you’re not going to think about retirement—and you’re definitely not going to fret over how many diamonds you can afford. Beyond the mean-spirited nature of the criticism, the main issue with Ellis’s statement is that it’s completely untrue. Let’s start with “There’s no writing.” The millennial generation is composed of people born between 1981 and 1996, although it’s often misused as a synonym for “youths.” Is he saying that no one born between these dates has participated in literature? None of them have published novels, crafted poetry, written reviews, or contributed to the industry whatsoever? That’s clearly not true. If you were feeling generous, you could say that he meant millennials haven’t made writing that he finds valuable. But he doesn’t really believe that, either. Or at least, he doesn’t seem to. During a Guardian interview with Rachel Cooke, she asks him about what novels he reads:

I liked The Girls [Emma Cline’s 2016 novel about the Manson cult]. It had a consciousness, and I’m looking for that. But … The Woman at the Window [a bestselling thriller by AJ Finn]. Something like that is a style-free zone, and I can’t read it. The Girl on the Train [Paula Hawkins’s thriller]. That was a terrible book.

Emma Cline was born in 1989. A.J. Finn (aka. Dan Mallory) was born in 1979. Paula Hawkins was born in 1972. When summarizing his own taste in novels, he managed to praise the millennial and dismiss two members of Generation X. What about “millennials don’t read”? The research says otherwise. Statistics show that American millennials read more books and use library services more than any other age group. BookNet Canada statistics show that Canadian millennials follow the same pattern, reading more than other age groups. A little bit of research is all it takes to poke holes in Ellis’s argument. I don’t think that the problem with Ellis is that he’s disrespectful—it’s that he’s dishonest. He doesn’t care whether millennials are picking up books or sending manuscripts to publishing houses or not. He’s trying to provoke a reaction. He wants to create backlash, so he can point at it and say: “See what I was talking about?” In an interview with Corey Seymore in Vogue, he admits that it’s “delicious” when he “triggers millennials into hysteria.” In that same interview with Cooke, he claims: “My ability to trigger millennials is insane.” He’s a troll. If you’ve spent any time reading online comments or Twitter replies, you’ll find similar tactics. A troll posts upsetting statements to bait other users into an argument. When that works, the troll gets to brag about how calm and collected they are, while everyone else is triggered/hysterical/overly sensitive. In essence, this person sat down at the dinner table, lit the tablecloth on fire and smirked as everyone else panicked. They’re the fools for being shocked and angry. If only they could be as sensible as the person holding the matches. White seems to be a grand act of trolling. The book delves into contemporary politics, but when he’s asked to justify his controversial political statements, he backtracks. In the Q&A Bret Easton Ellis Thinks You’re Overreacting To Donald Trump for The New Yorker, journalist Isaac Chotiner grills him about his criticism of public hysteria over Donald Trump. After a lot of back and forth, Ellis claims he doesn’t care about politics:

Chotiner: You are a novelist. You write about the human condition. Do you worry about the self-harm of people who see things like child separation and have no emotional response?

Ellis: I think I am an absurdist. I think politics are ridiculous.

Chotiner: Maybe don’t write a book about it. Would that be the solution?

Ellis: I think the problem is that I don’t necessarily see this as interesting as fiction.

Chotiner: Yeah, I could tell.

Ellis: It was much more interesting to me to write this as a nonfiction book, in terms of pulling this stuff from my podcast.

Chotiner: Thanks so much for talking.

Ellis isn’t interested in politics. In other interviews, he admits that he doesn’t vote. Yet, he wrote an entire book that discusses politics. He talks about politics in his interviews. He talks about politics on his podcast. Some of his recent podcast topics include Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, left-conservatism, and new McCarthyism. Why invest so much effort into something you don’t care about at all? Ellis likes to present himself as a “bad boy” and a provocateur. He also likes to present himself as cold, callous, and uncaring. His desire to “trigger” people and say he doesn’t give a fuck are at odds. How can you be an uncaring provocateur? As Andrea Long Chu writes in the review “Psycho Analysis,” “People who do not care what other people think do not waste their time telling other people this, and they certainly don’t write books about it.” Anna Leszkiewicz touches on a similar sentiment in the “White by Bret Easton Ellis review—sound, fury and insignificance”: “He appears to think these nasty caricatures of his supposed friends make him appear like the glacial saviour of logic in an age of hysteria, rather than a resentful, bitter man still caught up in the heat of arguments, years after everyone else has left the restaurant.” He obviously cares a lot. As someone who first found success and acclaim writing controversial books, the current cultural landscape must be strange to navigate. The same qualities that made you famous aren’t as welcome. It could be that Ellis is not seen as counterculture because of his status. He’s a well-off, older white cis man who has his name behind some hugely popular books. It could be that his edginess dulled over time. Other beloved controversial writers like Chuck Palahniuk have had similar difficulties captivating audiences and gaining critical praise with their newer releases. You can only catch lightning in a bottle so many times.

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Writing a piece about a provocateur desperately searching for reactions could be interpreted as a rookie move on my part. Don’t feed the trolls. That’s the number one rule. If you respond, you’ve taken the bait. They will dub your response as hysteria, no matter how measured it is, and pronounce themselves the winner. But, if you don’t respond, they’ll say you’re too scared, smug or biased to prove them wrong, and therefore have confirmed their own negative assumptions. You failed by not rising to the occasion. They are just asking questions. Whatever happened to respecting different opinions? Why can’t we have healthy debates anymore? In an interview, Ellis says “All my book argues is: let’s have a conversation” right before admitting he “triggers” millennials. He’s pronouncing himself as open-minded, while the content of White repeatedly insults millennials (among other demographics) and tells them to be quiet: “Shit happens, deal with it, stop whining, take your medicine, grow the fuck up.”If you respond, they win. If you ignore them, they win. I’d argue that there is no actual way to “beat” a troll at their game. They will always move the goalposts so that they feel like they’re the victor. The only thing I think you can do is take their bad faith arguments and use them as jumping off points for important discussions. They’ll still call themselves winners, but at least our time won’t be wasted.The only positive spin on this is that we can take the opportunity to shine a light on the impressive reading habits and literary contributions of an often-dismissed generation. If you’re looking for something to read, maybe you’ll enjoy Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the recent winner of the British Book Awards. Some have called Rooney the great millennial writer. You could try Helen Oyeyemi, Vivek Shraya, Kim Fu, Terese Marie Mailhot, Alicia Elliott, Carmen Maria Machado, Canisia Lubrin, Sennah Yee, Jordan Tannahill, Hana Shafi, Ben Ladouceur … There are plenty of amazing novels, poems, memoirs, comics and well-researched essays made by millennials in bookstores and online (including in The Ex-Puritan). You can ask yourself whether these voices speak to an entire generation, whether their birth dates matter in the grand scheme of things, whether finding a “great millennial novel” is a worthy endeavor, whether the label of “millennial” helps garner support in the community or if it’s a hindrance to artists looking for recognition. In a way, Ellis does open up a conversation; it's just one that doesn’t require him to be in it.