1
Bret Easton Ellis is Vernon Downs
MAY 23, 2014 BY JAIME CLARKE – FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE GOOD MEN PROJECT
Vernon Downs is the story of Charlie Martens, who is desperate for stability in an otherwise
peripatetic life. An explosion that killed his parents when he was young robbed him of normalcy.
Ever the outcast, Charlie recognizes in Olivia, an international student from London, the sense
of otherness he feels and their relationship seems to promise salvation. But when Olivia
abandons him, his desperate mind fixates on her favorite writer, Vernon Downs, who becomes
an emblem for reunion with Olivia.
♦◊♦
By virtue of the fact that Vernon Downs is a roman a clef, which is French for “novel with a
key,” there is a small measure of fact mixed in with the fictional world and characters of the
novel. The titular character is obviously based on the writer Bret Easton Ellis, but there are other
allusions as well. So herewith, a page by page key to Vernon Downs:
Pg 3: “Summit Terrace” is an allusion to Summit Avenue, the birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald in
St. Paul, MN
Pg 4: “Shelleyan” is named for a band I loved in college, Shelleyan Orphan
Pg 4: “Minus Numbers” was the title Bret Easton Ellis’s advisor at Bennington College, Joe
McGinnis, wanted to give Less Than Zero
Pg 5: The story about the Batman skit is borrowed from my past
2
Pg 6: “Southwest Peterbilt” was my father’s employer in Phoenix, AZ for many years
Pg 6: The story about the boyfriend who killed the ex-husband is borrowed from my past. The
boyfriend was our neighbor in Rapid City, S.D.
Pg 8: The story about Jenny, the Mormon girl, is borrowed from my past, when I converted to
Mormonism on a lark to impress said Mormon girl.
Pg 8: Mrs. Rudrud was my high school English teacher. She was by far the youngest faculty
member at Tolleson Union High School, a fact that did not escape the male population.
Pg 9: “Scavengers” is the title of the novel I wrote after my first novel, We’re So Famous, about
a scavenger hunt that takes place in New York City. I’m obsessed with scavenger hunts.
Pg 9: “The Vegetable King” is a title I concocted for a Great American Novel after seeing the
film The Fisher King. I’d also been ruminating about the colossal failure of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
play, “The Vegetable.”
Pg 9: The description of the author photo is that of BEE’s from the back of his novel, American
Psycho
Pg 10: “Spago and Pastis and Bossa Nova” are names of restaurants taken from American
Psycho, some real, some not
Pg 10: The description of Vernon Downs in the Arizona Republic is a replication of the article
about BEE in the Republic re the furor of the publication of American Psycho, which I recount
Pg 11: “the Phoenician” is a high end resort in Phoenix, built by savings-and-loan kingpin
Charles H. Keating, Jr. I worked for Charlie Keating as a runner in college, before he went to
prison.
Pg 13: “Daar Baumann” is an obvious anagram for Amanda Urban, BEE’s agent at ICM
Pg 14: “Phoenix Gazette” is a reference to the afternoon paper in Phoenix, back when two
newspapers were printed each day, the Republic and the Gazette
Pg 15: The Letter to the Editor of Entertainment Weekly is one I wrote to the magazine in
defense of a bad review of BEE’s The Informers
Pg 15: The details of the profile of Vernon Downs in Vanity Fair mirror those in a profile of
BEE in Vanity Fair entitled “Who’s Afraid of Bret Easton Ellis?” by Matthew Tyrnauer
3
Pg 16: The Letter to the Editor of Vanity Fair is one I wrote to the magazine as a result of the
profile. They wanted to call me on the phone to verify that I was the author of the letter, I
remember. And since I was too poor to afford a phone in college, I had to call them from a
payphone on the University of Arizona campus, where I was studying creative writing.
Pg 17: The story about the cab and the Triborough Bridge is borrowed from my past
Pg 18: “Camden College” is a fictional version of Bennington College used in literature by some
if its graduates: BEE, Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan Lethem among them. In The Secret History
by Donna Tartt, the college is called Hampden.
Pg 18-19: Charlie’s arrival at Camden mirrors my own arrival at Bennington College, where I
studied in the low-residency MFA program
Pg 21: “National Book Award winner” is a reference to Bob Shacochis, who was teaching in the
MFA program
Pg 21: The story about Camden abolishing tenure mirrors Bennington’s abolition of tenure,
which was fresh on everyone’s minds when the fledgling MFA program began. There was some
concern among the students that the college would cease to exist, or that it would lose its
accreditation
Pg 21-22: The story about Charlie getting Vernon’s personal information from the Alumni
office is exactly how I first learned BEE’s home address and phone number
Pg 22: “the bearded Irishman” is a reference to the founder of the MFA program, Liam Rector
Pg 26: The story about Paula Jean Weldon is substantively true
Pg 30: The story about the Jennings family is substantively true
Pg 31: It was a fact that the writers on the faculty of the MFA program, as well as other students,
were too embarrassed of BEE as a writer and never mentioned/discussed him, even though he
was, by far, the most famous writer (possibly along with Donna Tartt) to graduate from
Bennington
Pg 31-35: The furor over Charlie’s reading of Vernon’s work mirrors my own experience at
Bennington after a lecture I gave on BEE, including a graphic sample passage from American
Psycho. The anonymous letters in the book are reproduced from the letters posted on campus
after the lecture. By chance, the artist Karen Finley came to campus to give a lecture in the
program. Finley was a member of the NEA Four, a group of artists whose NEA funding had
been famously stripped away over issues of taste, which resulted in lawsuits and the eventual
demolition of the National Endowment for the Arts. In the wake of the furor over my lecture on
4
BEE, lunch was arranged with me and Karen. I went out of obligation—the controversy was
overwhelming everyone on campus—and what I remember most was Karen’s eliciting that I was
from Montana and suggesting I return there to suss out the root of whatever it was that made me
cause such a furor.
Pg 36: As research for my Bennington lecture, I wrote a letter to BEE asking if I could interview
him via the mail. He responded by inviting me to New York to interview him in person. The
scene in the lobby with the doorman is borrowed from that episode, though I did use the
bathroom in the basement.
Pg 38: “Black Rabbit” is the original name of Minetta’s Tavern, where I spent a good deal of
time when I lived in New York
Pg 42: “Obelisk Press” is an homage to Harold Ober Associates, the literary agency where I
worked in New York. Ober is the oldest literary agency in the country and their clients included
Chinua Achebe, Sherwood Anderson, Judy Blume, Pearl S. Buck, James M. Cain, Agatha
Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Hawkes, Langston Hughes, Dean Koontz,
Ira Levin, James Lord, Joseph Mitchell, J.D. Salinger, Dylan Thomas, and Glenway Wescott,
among others.
Pg 42: “Turkey’s Nest” is a real bar, as described. Highly recommended.
Pg 44: I was once denied entrance to the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park in the same
manner Charlie is.
Pg 45: “Oneironaut” was the name of the chapbook for our class at Bennington
Pg 49-50: The description of Vernon’s loft matches that of BEE’s loft in the East Village
Pg 51-52: The description of Vernon’s Christmas in July party mirrors BEE’s famous Christmas
parties
Pg 52: “He found himself next to an actress he recognized” is a reference to Parker Posey,
whom I met at one of BEE’s parties. The following line about her is fiction. In reality, she was
there with her then-boyfriend, the author Thomas Beller.
Pg 52: “the lead singer of a band” is a reference to the fact that the drummer for The Strokes
lives in the same building in the East Village
Pg 52: “Silver and gold confetti” is a reference to Glamorama by BEE
Pg 52: Charlie’s awkward presentation of his story to Vernon at the party mirrors my own
awkwardness in bringing a present to BEE’s Christmas party, a Xerox of Fitzgerald’s contract
5
for The Great Gatsby. I thought it polite to bring something, not understanding that the party
was a free-for-all and that, in fact, it was crashed over and over again by groups of people who
hadn’t been invited, which was, apparently, par for the course.
Pg 53: Jeremy Cyanin is an obvious anagram for Jay McInerney, though the biography is a
fictionalized hybrid of McInerney and Hemingway’s life
Pg 58: BEE had to reschedule drinks once because he was going uptown to see the writer Joan
Didion, an early influence on BEE
Pg 59: BEE contributed a piece to John F. Kennedy, Jr’s magazine George magazine and made
the same admission Vernon does as the motivation for contributing
Pg 61: the opening paragraph of the George piece is taken from BEE’s piece for the magazine
Pg 62: BEE invited me to a book party for an actor turned novelist at KGB and some of the
details are borrowed from that experience. I said to BEE about the feted book: “Looks like a rip
off of Less Than Zero” and BEE said, “You could say that,” and laughed.
Pg 63: “The Case for Vernon David Downs” is a reference to an Esquire piece titled “The Case
for Bret Easton Ellis” written by Will Blythe
Pg 65: The episode with the New York University dental school is borrowed from experience
Pg 69: “You’re not going to sell it at the Strand, right?” I used to sell books that accumulated at
the literary agency where I worked at the Strand on my lunch hour when I ran out of money for
food. Once, I needed the money for return subway fare, too.
Pg 69: “Vernon Downs Evades History” replicates an article from New York Magazine entitled
“Bret Easton Ellis Evades History” about my proposed oral biography of BEE. BEE had
encouraged the project, so the article was a surprise. I worked for the literary agency that had
sent the proposal and when New York Magazine called after hours looking for a comment from
me, I pretended I wasn’t me and nervously took the message before throwing it in the trash.
Pg 69: “David Gomez and Jeff Lawrence” are a confusion of David Lawrence and Jeff Gomez,
writers BEE invited me to dinner with at the Bowery Bar and Grill when I first moved to New
York
Pg 71: Iona is, in fact, a bar in Williamsburg, where I lived. Also highly recommended.
Pg 74: The skinny-dipping episode at the Peninsula Hotel mirrors my experience with a now
celebrated novelist (not saying who)
6
Pg 75: My wife has a Powerpuff Girls tattoo (Bubbles)
Pg 87: Shout Magazine published an excerpt of my first novel, We’re So Famous and I wrote a
freelance article for them about the return from the dead of Tupac Shakur, an idea given me by
my youngest brother, Jared, who was a fan
Pg 92: “I’m at New Haven now.” I went to a wedding in Costa Rica and someone at our table
said this and I almost puked. Later, I wished I’d said, “New Haven Polytechnic?”
Pg 92: “The stuff about Huey Lewis and Phil Collins and Whitney Houston” is a reference to
American Psycho
Pg 94: “Ronkonkoma” is a reference to a woman I met at one of BEE’s Christmas parties. She
was the sister of a famous writer and said she lived in Ronkonkoma. I had no idea where that
was, but pretended to.
Pg 96: “Julian really needs you right now” is a reference to one of the main characters in Less
Than Zero
Pg 97: “whose new book was being adapted for film by Tom Cruise.” Tom Cruise famously
owns the penthouse of the building where BEE lived in the East Village. There’s a funny scene
involving Cruise in American Psycho, too.
Pg 99: “Mrs. Ormiston” was the name of my 2nd grade teacher in Montana, and she gave
Sunshine-grams as indicated
Pg 99: “The Mystery of Dead Man’s Grave” is the first manuscript I wrote, with the help of
Miss Kephart, my fifth grade teacher. She helped me send it to Grosset & Dunlap, publishers of
the Hardy Boys series, but they declined. So, too, did Pocket Books.
Pg 99: “Fowler Elementary” was the name of my grade school in Phoenix
Pg 99: “The Last Lemonade Stand on the Block” was the title of a novel I wrote in high school
Pg 99: “Beverly Hills High” is a fictional stand-in for The Buckley School, attended by
BEE. Notable alum include the Hilton sisters, Kim Kardashian, Matthew Perry, Alyssa Milano,
Natalie Cole, Michael Jackson’s children, Sara Gilbert, Laura Dern, the members of the band
Nelson, Christian Brando and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Pg 99: “a sheaf of email from the Bank of America in Sherman Oaks” is a reference to Lunar
Park
Pg 100: “Harrison McInnis” is a play on Joe McGinnis, BEE’s mentor at Bennington
7
Pg 100: “Phantasm” was the name of my 8th grade air band, which won the talent show
lipsyncing Journey songs. Also a reference to a horror film of the time alleged to have been
written and directed by a teenager.
Pg 101: The lyrics to “Touch Me” were a (failed) attempt to transform Phantasm from an air
band into a real band
Pg 102: “The Angel’s Trip” is a reference to an early short story by BEE, revealed to me in my
interview with him published in The Mississippi Review. The details of the story are true to
BEE’s description.
Pg 103: The dashes in Vernon’s signature replicate the dashes BEE would insert in his first
name when signing a letter
Pg 104: “Aviator” is a fictional stand-in for Pop, a long shuttered bar that was around the corner
from BEE’s loft
Pg 105: The story Christianna tells is borrowed from a story in BEE’s collection The Informers
Pg 106: The anecdote Christianna relates is borrowed from BEE’s second novel, The Rules of
Attraction
Pg 111: From this point on in the novel, Charlie’s correspondence with Shannon is taken
verbatim from my interview with BEE published in The Mississippi Review
Pg 114: Charlie’s answers to Kline are taken verbatim from my interview with BEE published in
The Mississippi Review
Pg 117: “If the waiter comes, order me a coffee” is a reference to the story Meyer Wolfsheim
tells in The Great Gatsby
Pg 118: The film neither Charlie nor Jessica can recall is After Hours
Pg 121: “An old copy of Details magazine featuring a profile Vernon had written about the actor
Val Kilmer” is a reference to the piece BEE wrote about Kilmer for Details
Pg 125: “You are such a total beasty” is a line from Less Than Zero
Pg 125: “You’re such a Grinch” is a line from American Psycho
Pg 126: The dialogue about the car stereo is from American Psycho
8
Pg 130: The blurb Charlie-as-Vernon gives Shannon Hamilton mimics the blurb BEE wrote for
my first novel, We’re So Famous
Pg 133: re Mickey Mantle: he’s my father-in-law’s favorite player
Pg 136: Charlie’s memories of his past are borrowed from my own past
Pg 138: The letter to Charlie from Ms. Slater, his teacher, is verbatim the letter written to me by
my first grade teacher
Pg 143: “Harold E. Turnbull” is an amalgam of Harold Ober, the founder of the literary
magazine where I worked, and Andrew Turnbull, one of Fitzgerald’s biographers
Pg 151: The story Vernon tells about Nell’s is verbatim from my interview with BEE published
in The Mississippi Review
Pg 153: Charlie’s story about Miss Wade is borrowed from my past
Pg 154: Vernon’s backstory with Jayne is a reference to Lunar Park
Pg 156: The details of Vernon’s new novel are a reference to Glamorama
Pg 161: The anecdote Vernon tells about his parents finding pot in his room in high school is
verbatim from my interview with BEE published in The Mississippi Review
Pg 162: “Everyone out here calls me Dave” is a reference to something that BEE told me when I
first met him, about how his name in day-to-day life was just Bret Ellis
Pg 162: Vernon’s story about his childhood in L.A. is a mix of details from Less Than Zero and
Lunar Park