Elle Nash

Elle Nash is an editor at the Creative Independent and the author of four books, most recently Deliver Me. She also teaches creative writing and is the host of Goth Book Club.

Orwells, a place to get away from it all

On the edge of Glasgow’s West End, the posh bar scene melts away for just a moment at Elderslie Street, where Orwells has sat since the 1980s — though the location has hosted a pub since 1877. To give you an idea of the bars I usually frequent: until moving to Scotland last year, I did not. Bars were not a place I passed time. Bars are expensive. The company is unpredictable, the menus too often full of candy-colored cocktails with “funny” names like “Screaming Orgasm” that taste like anything but. Yes, I know I sound like a killjoy. My drink of choice: a $15 handle of Burnett’s lovingly tipped into a slow-sipped White Claw in the comfort of a friend’s home. You will not find trendy concoctions at Orwells. On my first visit, Eighties hair metal blared from the jukebox.

Orwells

Blake Butler: ‘I don’t want this story to end as “Molly killed herself”’

A recent controversy rocked the literary world when coverage of author Blake Butler’s memoir, Molly, about his late wife, notable poet Molly Brodak, hit tabloids and spun for the worst. The coverage sparked debate over the ethics of writing about relationships, as online attackers made accusations that the widower weaponized Brodak’s private life and exploited her death for fame or revenge.   Claims gained ground that it was a “shameless cash grab,” “literary revenge porn,” or that it shouldn’t have been published due to privacy concerns, since the memoir reveals Butler’s discovery of his late wife’s affairs after her passing.

blake butler

The return of Bret Easton Ellis

The Shards is about 600 pages long. “Should anyone even publish a 600-page novel?” asks its author Bret Easton Ellis. “I happen to believe, yes, if it’s justified.” Such books are rarely justifiable, and often, novelists become buzzed-about simply for executing them, but not many can boast that every word, scene and sentence is necessary. This is how it feels to read The Shards: not a detail is to be missed. It contains the thematic elements that run through Ellis’ oeuvre: the social lives of the wealthy, or nearly wealthy, drugs, sexuality and desperation painted over with bursts of violence. The through line that connects his work isn’t that sex and violence are taboo.

ellis