A Squandered Inheritance?

I was all set to see Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things long before A.O. Scott's review came out, but I'm still glad to note that Scott finds this adapation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies full of "dash and vigor." I'm a bit taken aback, though, by this critical aside:

But like Bret Easton Ellis (who is, like it or not, Waugh's legitimate American heir), Waugh was not only fascinated by the excess he chronicled, but also solicitous of the reckless souls who wallowed in it.

Now, those two somewhat extraliterary qualities are the only points of similarlity that come to mind when I ruminate on Waugh and Ellis, and though I suppose you could make some argument for the kinship of Vile Bodies and Less Than Zero or The Rules of Attraction, my memories of reading both are that the relation is distant at best. To see where this is going, and perhaps I'm being a bit unfair, try comparing later works like The Loved One to Glamorama and see if you think the analogy holds.

So who would I dub Waugh's legitimate American heir? I've made arguments for Bruce Sterling in the past, on the strength of his social satire and his comedy, the two elements I think we'd almost all agree are the most important aspects of the Waugh legacy. But some might disapprove of the choice of a science-fiction/technothriller author, so let's see...how about James Wilcox? Or Richard Dooling? Or, if you still want to work the Bret Easton Ellis vein of outlandish excess, perhaps the fiction of Gary Indiana? Maybe you have some ideas. If so, you should share them!

And those of us in New York should all go see the movie, natch. Because Stephen Fry is to the good, and deserves our support.