Handles, of course, are meant to be grabbed. But unlike in a novel or a film, Ellis has only his handle to shield him.

Stein continues: “Like most of the projects in which Ellis is involved, his Twitter is shimmering between fiction and reality. He has more than 400,000 Twitter followers and often takes to the feed to be outrageous and sensationalist (to such an extent that, as he admitted recently, ‘I’ve found out that many followers of the Official and Verified enjoy it mainly because they think it is a parody account’).” As writer Joshua David Stein points out in NUVO’s summer 2013 cover story, “Bret Easton Ellis trolls the Internet ruthlessly. The success of these endeavours is thanks in no small part to the fact that Ellis is a prolific, controversial tweeter. After campaigning for yet another $150,000 through Kickstarter, the public will finally have Patrick Bateman thrashing and slashing, and singing, in front of a live audience. More recently, it was announced that American Psycho the Musical , a stage adaptation of Ellis’s famed thriller, will actualize a debut at the Almeida Theatre in London in December. (In fact, the project raised over $150,000.) For example, The Canyons itself, which caught the public’s attention when it promised Lindsay Lohan and adult film star James Deen in its leading roles, successfully met its stated goal of raising $100,000 to produce the film, which will be released this August. Lately, Ellis and his peers have been tapping into the Internet-or rather, just tapping it-to finance their creative pursuits through the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. The author and screenwriter has been making headlines from his first novel, Less than Zero, through to his latest project, a screenplay, The Canyons. Bret Easton Ellis has been known to stir up trouble with just a tap of his keyboard.

Less than zero novel