IF I WAS SMART I WOULD EITHER KILL MYSELF OR IMMEDIATELY BECOME A RECLUSE: An Interview with Elizabeth Ellen
Interview by Brian Alan Ellis
Soon after conducting this interview with author Elizabeth Ellen, I finished PERSON/A, her debut novel, and not only is it a great book but it’s also like a great French film. It’s Paris, Texas. It’s A Woman under the Influence. Its HBO’s True Detective meets Anna Karenina—I think; I’ve never really read Anna Karenina LOL—meets that one music video where Britney Spears overdoses in a bathtub. It’s about love, obsession, narcissism, marriage, delusion, pain, pleasure, art, life, addiction—it’s about you, me, things that transform, that come apart. Basically, Elizabeth Ellen should win the Pulitzer Prize and then immediately be beaten to death with it because she’s so good, so human, so completely fucked.
Brian Alan Ellis: I’m about a hundred pages away from finishing your novel, PERSON/A. I wanted to do this interview after I finished it but my deadline is approaching so I’ll just assume the main character murders Ian and then leaves Lee for Sadie and the two go on a cross-country Molly bender à la Thelma & Louise—accurate, or no?
Elizabeth Ellen: OMG that would be such a better ending! I bet you’ll be pretty disappointed with my ending after that, huh? Damn. I’m sorry. Even I want that ending now…
BAE: So disappointed…
EE: I started your novel last night and the Duckie scene in Pretty in Pink has always been one of my fav in movie history. Like the first time I saw that movie, in the theater, alone, at age 16, I rushed to the mall music store and bought a cassette tape of Otis Redding’s greatest hits and that led to me getting into Ella Fitzgerald, too, somehow. I was so enamored with Duckie, though. Gay, straight or bi, didn’t matter. (Me, I mean; gay, straight or bi.) Of course the James Spader character was a 16 year-old’s fantasy bad boyfriend, too. Only Andrew McCarthy didn’t do much for me, that I recall. Wait. Why are we talking about Pretty in Pink? Oh yeah. YOUR NOVEL reference. Wow. Way to make this all about you, BAE. Hope you’re happy.
BAE: “Hey baby, when I write, I’m the hero of my shit.” LOL Bukowski.
EE: I know, right? Bow down.
BAE: There are a lot of great passages in PERSON/A, like:
“It’s hard to say sometimes which is more shame-inducing, a man who never searches for you or one who never stops.”
“I find the shadows in a room, move into them. I can’t tell if I am a true narcissist or my own best company and what does it matter.”
“I stop masturbating if I think there is a chance I won’t stop crying. I won’t let myself come if I can’t stop crying.”
I dog-eared a bunch of pages on one of the copies I have. I read 85% of it while on the toilet, FYI.
EE: NOW you tell me… Well now I have to read 90% of yours SAME to one up you.
BAE: In addition to PERSON/A, you have two other books coming out this year, which I find both exciting and disconcerting, like, are you planning to kill yourself? Are these your last artistic statements? You pulling a Salinger? What’s going on?
EE: HAHA God, if I was smart I would either kill myself or immediately become a recluse, right? Obviously I’m a dingbat who for some reason insists both on living and living publicly. Someone asked me if the books are a trilogy and they actually kind of are, all interwoven, even though they’re a novel/stories/poems. I just had never referred to them as such, either aloud or in my mind. But now I’m going to start calling them that. So this is the trilogy and then maybe I’ll write whatever it is called when you have four books that all relate.
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Book sounds interesting, will check it out.