Bret Easton Ellis talks to Matthew Specktor

An interview for Salon.com

Bret Easton Ellis (left) and Matthew Specktor (right)

From Salon.com:

Matthew Specktor and Bret Easton Ellis have known one another for 20 years. Neither of them can remember how they met. “I think it was at the Bowery Bar in New York,” Specktor says. “But that could just be a mathematical probability.”

Approximate generational peers, Ellis grew up in Sherman Oaks, Specktor in Santa Monica. These were two different versions of the same city. On a recent Friday night they sat down at the Polo Lounge, a Beverly Hills landmark that seemed as good a place as any for the two writers to drink martinis (Hendricks gin, with cucumbers) and talk about Los Angeles, writing, Twitter and Specktor’s new book, “American Dream Machine.” [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Bret Easton Ellis talks to NUVO Magazine
• Schrader and Ellis to collaborate on The Canyons (2013)
• Bret Easton Ellis on Glamorama
• Bret Easton Ellis on American Psycho
• Bret Easton Ellis on Imperial Bedrooms and Less Than Zero

First Author Photographs of Famous Writers

Flavorwire compiles a list of their favourite dust jacket photographs

Emily Temple (Flavorwire): 'Authors have to be pretty careful about the photos they choose to have on their dust jackets. Not only is it remarkably easy to fall prey to one of those pesky author photo clichés, but those first baby-faced pictures that grace debut novels might just go down in history — if they’re lucky. To that end, we scoured the web to pull together a few surprising, intense, and charmingly youthful author photos from some of our very favorite authors’ first works' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Faber & Faber Writers' Gallery
• Portraits of Beckett as a Famous Writer
• Gordon Ball: Beat Generation Photographs
• Burroughs 23: Charles Gatewood's Photographs of William S. Burroughs
• Writers: Philip Roth