I like your work. No, I like YOUR work.
Bloc Party wrote a song about a book by Bret Easton Ellis, which was named after a song by Elvis Costello. Whew. TIM MOLLOY parses the finer points of creative inspiration.
Bloc Party's "A Weekend in the City" looks at different aspects of modern urban life, such as driving very, very fast. Are those merging cars another reference to the first line of Ellis' "Less Than Zero"? (AP Photo/HO/Courtesy of Vice Records)
Bret Easton Ellis is working on a novel that will revisit the characters from his debut, "Less Than Zero." He agreed to answer just one question about it, so we asked if it takes place in first-person, present tense. "Parts of it do," he said. (AP Photo/HO/Courtesy of Ian Gittler)
Bloc Party's Kele Okereke revisits "Less Than Zero," which helped inspire "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)," while backstage before a show in Nottingham, England. (AP Photo/Deirdre McCarrick)
Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc Party, has written a song partly inspired by Bret Easton Ellis' first novel, "Less Than Zero."
He's supposed to meet the author this month and doesn't know what to say to him.
"I'm a bit frightened about potentially meeting him because I'm a huge fan of his books and the dialogue is so kind of acerbic and sharp," said Okereke, 25, before a recent performance in support of his band's new album, "Weekend in the City."
"I don't know what to say other than I really like your work."
Okereke doesn't have to worry about the author of "American Psycho" and "Lunar Park" turning that acerbic wit in his direction. For one thing, Ellis, who is now working on a follow-up to "Less Than Zero," likes Bloc Party and "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)," named for the 1985 novel's protagonist.
For another, Ellis knows what it's like to be in Okereke's position -- nervous about what one of his influences will think of a work created partly in homage to them.
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MAY THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN
Musicians and novelists were influencing one another well before Ellis named "Less Than Zero" after a song by one of his musical heroes, Elvis Costello.
Joan Didion -- one of Ellis' literary models -- named "The White Album" after the Beatles' classic. The Police's "Tea in the Sahara" is drawn from Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky." David Bowie's "1984" took its name from the George Orwell novel. (As for Van Halen's album of the same name, who knows?)
Still, few novelists incorporate as much music into their novels as Ellis.
In "Less Than Zero," a poster of Costello looks down at Clay, (the character's an obvious Ellis stand-in) from a bedroom wall. In "American Psycho," readers learn the depth of yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman's evil when he turns out to be a huge fan of Whitney Houston and Genesis.
"I remember when I was, like, in my teens reading about bands who had been influenced by writers, thinking 'Whoa, that's really cool,'" Ellis said in a recent interview from his home in Los Angeles. "And I'd think, 'God, those writers are so old. God that's so wild. Does that really happen in the adult world?'
"And then, boom, it does. And you realize, Jesus, I'm 42. ... People half my age are writing songs because they've been influenced by books I've written."
Ellis played keyboards in three bands before a writing teacher at Bennington College helped get "Less Than Zero" published while Ellis was still a student. He rarely plays now, and still wishes at times that he was a full-time musician, he says.
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THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY
It's easy to see why novelists and musicians admire each other's art.
Three-hundred-page novels can get into characters' heads in ways three-minute songs can't. Novelists get to use the truest words, not just the ones that rhyme. And they don't have to leave room for guitar solos.
Music, on the other hand, expresses emotions that words can't. Most people don't get passages from novels stuck in their heads. You can't dance to a novel.
The differences between their respective art forms mean that novelists and musicians never have to compete. They can love one another's work as freely as they want, and take inspiration with no worries about appearing derivative.
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ALL ABOUT CLAY
"Song for Clay (Disappear Here)" draws parallels between the song's narrator and Clay, drawing on two recurring lines in the book: "Disappear Here" (which appears on a billboard), and the novel's opening sentence, "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."
Okereke says the song was inspired by people he meets in East London, where he lives. He imagined someone who "goes to all the right parties and takes all the right drugs and sleeps with all the right people... but has a real sense of unfulfillment."
Someone like Clay.
"Of all the heroes, antiheroes, in Bret Easton Ellis novels, he's the only one who has a sense of conscience," Okereke says. "He knows that what he's doing isn't right, but can't really break that kind of fascination with the decadence. I saw that as a really interesting dilemma."
The character fits perfectly with the theme of the album -- the cover of which happens to feature a sped-up image of cars merging. "Weekend in the City" looks at people who can't find meaning in modern urban life.
"It seems that so much of what is understood to be enjoyment involves mindless kinds of activities... shopping or getting wasted or just activity that actually promotes a distance from reality, and all these characters in these songs are trapped in these sort of activities. ... They don't know how to transcend these experiences."
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HERO TO A ZERO
Ellis and Okereke's shared interest in such characters suggests they'll have lots to talk about if they follow through on plans to meet when Bloc Party plays Los Angeles as part of its U.S. tour, which begins March 11 in Seattle.
But what happens when one artist takes inspiration from another and the first doesn't like the result? Ellis found out after the publication of "Less Than Zero."
He and a friend were waiting for a table at a Beverly Hills restaurant, Ellis said, when the friend spotted Costello at a table. Despite Ellis' protests, the friend went over to Costello, and the writer and musician soon found themselves in a brief, forgettable conversation.
But later, Ellis said, he read an interview in which Costello -- that most acerbic of acerbic wits -- "totally trashed me, and made fun of the book, and just said very snotty rock and roll type things about me. The first time in my life where -- and this has happened on a couple more occasions -- where a hero of mine trashes me."
In the interview, which appeared in Rolling Stone's June 1, 1989 issue, Costello recounted their fateful meeting by mocking Ellis' prose style in his telling of the story: "I met Bret once, yeah. I walked into a bar, Bret was standing there. He looked disinterested. I took some more cocaine. He didn't look any better. I had another vodka. The vodka didn't make me feel any happier, so I switched on MTV."
Ellis laughed as he recounted the Costello story. A few minutes later, asked what he really thinks about the artists Patrick Bateman praises in "American Psycho," he laughed again.
"Ohhhhhh no," he said. "Now I'm Elvis Costello being interviewed, and now it's my turn..."
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Want to take this one step further? Listen to this asap podcast where Tim Molloy talks about being freaked out by interviewing people who inspire him.
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asap contributor Tim Molloy is an editor on the AP's national desk. Additional research provided by Rhonda Shafner.
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