I’m listening to The Shards, written and narrated by Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho. He only published it last year, a long time after his most famous novel, the only book I’ve ever had to close my eyes for.

The Shards is a fake autobiographical coming-of-age-in-LA story. I found the introduction so convincing that I had to research the author’s upbringing. Yes, he grew up in LA and went to very privileged schools. No, he did not meet a serial killer. Possibly, he met Fleetwood Mac.

It’s something I haven’t come across before: a book featuring the author with all the verisimilitude of their known environment, but a totally bullshit story. It’s fascinating.

In my side quest, I found out that Ellis went to Bennington College – a notorious New England liberal arts school – with Donna Tartt, my favourite author. Both feature a fictionalised Bennington College in their novels; Tartt’s is Hampden College, where The Secret History takes place. This was her first book (of only three) and is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever read.

Now I know the connection, I can absolutely see the friendship of their styles. Tartt builds dark, stark beauty around tortured characters; Ellis does the same, but in more spare prose. I think that’s why he’s been a published author since he was 21 and still at Bennington: it’s so natural, it doesn’t even feel like prose. Reminds me of The Catcher in the Rye, but more cocaine.

Reading both authors is an East Coast/West Coast experience, both dealing with death and talent and yearning, but one in the snow and one in the heat. The climate is its own character: it preserves or decays, it keeps people indoors, it smothers, it blinds, it kills.

In another side alley, I found an article about a podcast that discusses Bennington College (Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College) and its influence on its infamous young literary Brat Pack. I can’t describe the joy of all these things intersecting for me in a perfect storm of blinding interest. Tomorrow, I can listen to the podcast as a companion piece to The Shards, after which I will relisten to The Secret History, beautifully narrated by Tartt herself, with a new context to enrichen the experience.

So obvious, that both these authors would voice their own books, because only they would tell the story in just the right way.

And I have been rendered verbose by two writers who would hate it.