- US, European markets rise as investors weigh rates, earnings
- In Colombia, children trade plastic waste for school supplies
- JPMorgan Chase profits top estimates, bank sees 'resilient' US economy
- Little progress at key meet ahead of COP29 climate summit
- 'Party atmosphere': Skygazers treated to another aurora show
- Kyrgyzstan opens rare probe into glacier destruction
- European Mediterranean states discuss Middle East, migration
- Thunberg leads pro-Palestinian, climate protest in Milan
- Stock markets diverge before China weekend briefing
- EU questions shopping app Temu over illegal products risk
- Han Kang's books sell out in South Korea after Nobel win
- Shanghai markets sink ahead of briefing on mixed day for Asia
- Investors, analysts eye bigger China stimulus at Saturday briefing
- Musk unveils robotaxi, pledges it 'before 2027'
- At least 11 dead in Florida but Hurricane Milton not as bad as feared
- Asian markets mixed after Wall St drop, Shanghai dips before briefing
- Automaker Stellantis says CEO will retire in 2026
- Musk's promised robotaxi unveil delayed
- On US coast, wind power foes embrace 'Save the Whales' argument
- At least 10 dead in Florida after Hurricane Milton spawns tornadoes
- Internet Archive reels from 'catastrophic' cyberattack, data breach
- Wall Street stocks retreat from records on US inflation data
- Israel strikes central Beirut, killing 22
- Solar storm could impact US hurricane recovery efforts: agency
- Delta eyes Election Day travel pullback as profits climb
- Florida battered by hurricane, floods but spared 'worst-case scenario'
- UK's William and Kate in first joint public engagement since cancer treatment
- Over 200 women in legal talks with Harrods over Fayed abuse claims
- A very stiff breeze: BBC says sorry for 20,000 kph wind forecast
- Musk finally unveiling his long-promised robotaxi
- London's Frieze art fair goes potty for ceramics
- US, Europe stocks fall on US inflation data
- US consumer inflation eases to 2.4% in September
- Hurricane Milton tornadoes kill four in Florida amid rescue efforts
- South Korea's Han Kang wins literature Nobel
- Ikea posts fall in annual sales after lowering prices
- Stock markets diverge, oil gains after China rebounds
- World can't 'waste time' trading climate change blame: COP29 hosts
- South Korean same-sex couples make push for marriage equality
- Mumbai declares day of mourning for Indian industrialist Ratan Tata
- 7-Eleven owner restructures to fight takeover
- Sri Lanka recovering faster than expected: World Bank
- Hong Kong, Shanghai rally as most markets track Wall St record
- Uniqlo owner reports record annual earnings
- Hong Kong, Shanghai rally as markets track Wall St record
- Indonesia biomass drive threatens key forests: report
- Mumbai mourns Indian industrialist Ratan Tata
- China opens $71 bn 'swap facility' to boost markets
- Asian markets track Wall St record as Hong Kong, Shanghai stabilise
- 'Denying my potential': women at Japan's top university call out gender imbalance
Bret Easton Ellis: 'I was always suspicious of wealth'
Bret Easton Ellis is characteristically blunt about the central theme of all his work -- in his words: "the rich, and how fucked up they are".
His latest novel, "The Shards", sees him revisit Buckley, the posh high school he attended in the early 1980s.
Despite a fictionalised serial killer plotline, much is drawn from his real life, as Ellis and his comrades lounge around their pools and drive to class in sports cars. Sex and drugs punctuate their free time.
"It is a privileged set of characters. I write about the rich and I always have," he told AFP during a visit to Paris.
"We were much more privileged than I ever thought when I was younger. The first time we began to get some acne, boom: expensive dermatologist. In Beverly Hills none of my friends had acne," he said.
Buckley's school alumni include famous names such as Matthew Perry from "Friends" and Kim Kardashian.
But Ellis's family life disabused him of any romantic notion of wealth.
"My father (property developer Robert Ellis) was a rich asshole. My pleasure in whatever status I might have had -- that was ruined by him. So I always looked at wealth in a suspicious way."
This has coloured all his work, from the drugged-out alienation of his debut "Less Than Zero", published when he was just 21, to the murderous fantasies of Wall Street maniac Patrick Bateman in "American Psycho".
- 'Open and vulnerable' -
Despite completing his first novel at 14, it took Ellis many decades to write directly about his school years as a closeted gay teen.
"I could not have written this book at 18 because I was too cool. I posed. I was not open and vulnerable in my fiction in the way that I am now."
The urge came as a surprise.
"Why were they coming back to me at 56, 57? Why was I thinking about my girlfriend -- my poor girlfriend -- the boys I was with, their beautiful bodies, teenage sex, adolescent passion -- why was it coming back to me now?"
Ellis became obsessed with these memories during the pandemic lockdowns. He searched for signs of his old friends and haunts online, only to find they had "vanished".
"And then it happened... It just kind of poured out of me.
"It was very fun. I love writing a novel. I wish I was writing novels all the time but I'm not, because they don't come to me easily. I don't feel them."
"The Shards" is his seventh novel, and has been treated as something of a return to form, with rave reviews since its release in January.
He has always had detractors, upsetting right-wingers with all the sex and drugs, and left-wingers with his anti-woke politics, as detailed in 2019's non-fiction book "White".
"I have my fans, people who like me, and I have a lot of people who don't like me," he said. "It's been that way ever since 'Less Than Zero'. I am a very divisive American writer."
X.Cheung--CPN