For someone of a certain generation — say, that of Bret Easton Ellis — it’s a little hard to understand: The rise in influence of Bret Easton Ellis. Take Ellis’ American Psycho — “So long is its shadow, in fact,” says Stuart Evers, “that it’s often hard to weigh up Ellis’s literary importance.”

Evers is prompted by the fact that it’s the 25th anniversary of the publication of American Psycho — which, says Evers

… give or take a few references to Betamax and the occasional tendency for gnomic stupidity, has worn its years incredibly well. It’s no wonder, I think, that it’s influencing a new generation of writers. The simplicity of the prose, the precision of his imagery, and the atmosphere of menace and cultural oblivion are invigorating even at this remove. The scene where Clay leaves a party at which they’re showing a snuff movie is a masterful evocation of true horror; the erection visible in the pants of his friend as they walk to the car an image it is hard ever to shake.

I’ll say! Anyway, Evers makes his remarks in a Guardian review of Gavin James Bower‘s Dazed and Aroused — which, says Evers, “wears Ellis’s influence as proudly as an Armani suit.”

Furthermore, he’s far from alone in being influenced by and compared to Ellis. More polished, but almost astonishing in its deliberate vapidity, is Shoplifting in American Apparel by Tao Lin. Aatish Taseer, whose debut novel The Temple-goers is published next month, has already been dubbed the Indian Bret Easton Ellis. Ryan David Jahn‘s recent Acts of Violence also employs the same blank, strung-out prose. Suddenly, like the 80s, Bret Easton Ellis is back in fashion.

“Nuff said.