Last year I spent a few months as an intern for a major national arts publication, which shall remain nameless because that makes me look cooler than if I just blurted it out. I had a few regular duties at this (unpaid) gig, the primary one being transcription of interviews. You might think that transcribing is drudgery, and in a sense it is. But if the interview subject was interesting—and, given this publication's bent and cachet, most of the subjects were interesting—it provided a rare glimpse into the messy vocal raw material of an interview, as opposed to the cleaned-up, translated-into-printed-words final product.One of the most fascinating interviews I transcribed was with none other than Bret Easton Ellis. The occasion of the interview was the release of the film version of Ellis' The Informers, which, according to Ellis and just about everyone else who saw it, was pretty much of a misbegotten failure. (Ellis co-wrote the script, but the film was apparently hacked to bits in the editing room; his tone toward the film was one of aggrievement, and he insisted that the longer, un-fucked-with cut of the film—it was supposed to be a sprawling, Altman-esque epic—was good. It's doubtful we'll ever see it. I'm actually not sure how much of this stuff made it into the printed interview, since some of it was supposed to be off the record.) Listening to the interview was an odd experience, because Ellis is an odd man. He was very personable and friendly toward the interviewer, moreso than any other subject I transcribed—he seemed to believe that he was just shooting the shit with this critic over the phone rather than giving an interview, and consequently he didn't seem to care much about staying on topic or saying things that made sense. As on his Twitter feed, he mostly talked about movies. Apparently a huge cinephile, Ellis kept prodding the interviewer with questions about which films he'd seen lately, what did he think of film X, how much he hated film Y, etc. My favorite moment went like this:Interviewer: {Thoughtful, penetrating question about Ellis' work}Ellis: {Loooooooooooooooong pause}Ellis: Did you see Monsters vs. Aliens?I shit you not, folks. I can't remember if Ellis eventually answered the question but I do know he went off on how much he loved Monsters vs. Aliens for a few minutes. And I loved him for that. But sometimes he was cogent and he said some smart, interesting shit—he went off an inspired riff about aesthetics vs. morality, and while he was ostensibly talking about the Irish-hunger-strike film Hunger his comments obviously applied to his own work. And he was really, really nice. Like, weirdly nice. He has this reputation for bad-boy nihilism or misogyny or whatever, but the guy I listened to seemed like way more of a mensch than, say, Jonathan "Fuck You" Franzen. Having never read a word by the man, I went home that day liking him.Just the other day, over a year after the events related above, I went back to the offices of the aforementioned major national arts publication to interview for a copy editor position. Afterwards, not feeling too great about how it went, I consoled myself by hanging out in the used bookstore around the corner, where I walked out with copies of American Psycho and Less Than Zero. In fact, the inspiration for this purchase was not so much a sense-memory recall of last year's Ellis transcript as it was the recent GR review of American Psycho by Brian. That review was totally badass, and made me want to give this controversial writer the old college try.So, Less Than Zero: 200 pages in the company of the overprivileged, morally vacuous sons and daughters of neglectful Hollywood royalty in the cocaine-addled 1980s. I loved it, man. It feels like an important book, and that Ellis was only 19 when he wrote it makes it at once more impressive (because the writing is so confident) and more authentically disturbing (because no matter how much Ellis protests that his shit isn't autobiographical, let's look at the facts: Ellis wrote this book as a teenager from L.A going to college on the east coast; the book is about a teenager from L.A. home from college on the east coast; and even if nothing that happens in the book specifically happened to him in real life, he was clearly doing what teachers tell you to do—he was writing what he knew. And what he knew wasn't pretty). So yeah, five stars; here's a few reasons why I'm all about this shit:It's viscerally effective. The vignette structure and clipped prose style propel the book along in a speedy, disorienting haze that mirrors protagonist Clay's fucked mental state. It moves, and if you wanted to just read this book in one quick burst of a sitting without really thinking about it at all you would probably still have a worthwhile experience. Like I said, visceral.It's majorly evocative of time and place. I'm sure you've heard that thing James Joyce said about how if Dublin burned down it could be rebuilt based on Ulysses. Well, if the dream architects from Inception wanted to recreate 1980s Los Angeles they would need a copy of Less Than Zero to use as a reference guide. I haven't felt so immersed in the '80s since I watched Earth Girls Are Easy, or so L.A.-ified since I read Chandler. So many references to Tab, Betamax, MTV and (of course) cocaine—and that's just what's on the surface.It's deceptively complex. There are interesting questions of form here. The novel is in the first person, but Clay's narration subverts our expectations about first-person narration, in that his flashes of introspection are few and far between; we know very little of his inner life (and we learn jackshit about other characters' inner lives). Instead, Clay's narration provides a just-the-facts-ma'am account of events that in a healthy person would provoke some kind of emotional reaction. On top of that is a fascinatingly discordant effect: we can tell that Clay is desperately miserable because it's reflected in the actions he relates, but he doesn't give us access to the thoughts and emotions by which we would typically understand his misery. By leaving this question mark, Ellis heroically refuses to supply facile answers about What's Wrong With The Kids These Days, letting us draw our own conclusions. Perhaps only a writer as young as Ellis was at the time could have been smart enough to do it this way. If he'd tried to fill in the blanks, to offer even the most poetic of explanations, the book would've been sunk by smarmy self-importance.Underlying the horror is both a strain of dark humor and a stream of unexpectedly lovely grace notes. This is an effect I associate specifically with the films of Harmony Korine—finding beauty in even the ugliest human environments. (Korine would be a great choice to adapt Ellis for the screen, though I doubt Harm would be interested in fucking with other people's work. The masked, murderous redneck freaks of Trash Humpers aren't so very different from Ellis' fucked-up Angeleno nihilists.) In Less Than Zero some of those grace notes can be found in the italicized interstitials recalling Clay's antediluvian trip to visit his grandparents; some are found in Ellis' physical descriptions of the L.A. landscape; and some pop up amidst the soulless anti-hedonism that makes up the bulk of the novel's action. As for humor, you have to squint a little bit to see it, but check out those scenes of Clay talking to his awful therapist, who just wants Clay to help him with his screenplay. Or the back-and-forth, gossipy inanities that some characters sling at each other about who slept with who, or the frequent refrain stating or asking if somebody O.D.'d. Hell, most of the book is funny if you look at it from a certain angle. And from a different angle it's a despairing tragedy.In the years since this novel was published I think the moneyed youth of America has gotten even more horrible, or at least equally horrible in different ways. Gary Shteyngart sort of tried to write about this in Super Sad True Love Story, but he failed. My generation needs its Bret Easton Ellis. And I need to read the rest of this guy's stuff.
This book seems boring and shallow, and reading it gives me an anesthetized, hollow, detached feeling that I would not describe as entirely pleasant.And yet I cannot seem to stop, and whenever I have to, I become very anxious to return to it as quickly as I can. Its appeal is no less powerful for being difficult to pinpoint or explain.This experience reminds me of something, but I'm not sure what.... Oh yeah, I know: Bright Lights, Big City. Way better, though, so far. I love all the characters' clothes.--------Okay, so I really, really liked this a lot, though I totally get why a lot of people didn't. I must say I find many reactions to it perplexing. The Village Voice blurb on the back of my copy calls Less Than Zero "sexy and sassy," which has to be one of the most bizarre characterizations imaginable: to me, this is one of least sassy, least sexy books I can think of (might tie with Marilynne Robinson's Gilead for that prize?). However, maybe that's just because I got confused and missed the point, as often happens.... I mean, a lot of what I kept thinking while reading this was about how tragically I was born in the wrong time, and why didn't I ever get to see Fear and X in LA in their heyday, and I'm pretty sure this was not really what I was supposed to take away from this novel.My experience of this book was no doubt colored by an unexpected plate-of-shrimp coincidence of life and fiction that I cannot expand upon adequately on this family website. I will say that I think this is the perfect cocaine novel because it so perfectly epitomizes the soul-sucking hollowness and numb angst at the core of this kind of lifestyle and drug use (or so I've heard).The reason why I thought this was so good, though, and what I'm surprised no one else on here seems to have felt, was that while in one way this was such a total period piece specifically criticizing the materialistic hedonism of the eighties or whatever, to me it transcended that. I seem to be in the minority in feeling this way, and without that sense that there was a larger point, this novel would've been just the cheap trick many other readers accuse it of being. To me, though, this completely deadening, unappealing, unglamorous litany of friends' names and routes driven and restaurants visited and drugs taken was so skillfully done because it should have been so boring but was somehow strangely mesmerizing. With a few missteps towards the end -- I found the whole thing with the friend and the pimp maudlin, silly, and totally off pitch from the rest of the novel -- everything is presented in a flat, deadpan way that makes it both so horrific and yet comprehensible. I never wondered why this kid was doing the things that he did, and that was where the book worked for me, because it's what created a kind of bridge to other lives, including my own.If Less Than Zero's just a criticism of spoiled, zonked-out rich kids, there's not much of a point to this book, but if you start thinking about your own life, and life in general, then for me that's where it transcends its subject matter. You look at these extreme, exaggerated characters' ridiculous activities and the bizarre, soulless ways they live and relate to each other and it seems so sickening and meaningless, but then in a certain way it forces you to look at activities and life and relationships generally with a wider scope, and you start to wonder how meaningful any of it is, even if you aren't some gross millionaire LA cokehead, even if you're some mild-mannered social worker whose biggest addiction is Bookface. Like, this character's life is obviously pointless, but really, let's be honest, how much of a point is there to anything?Does that any make sense? It did to me. I know the point I'm saying he makes isn't particularly brilliant or earth-shaking, plus maybe I'm giving BEE too much credit, but I thought this book worked. If you look at it just as a satire of this kind of lifestyle then yeah, it seems like a waste of paper, because how tough a target are these subjects? But then if you start thinking about glass houses and stones, for me that's where it gets good. It's a certain nihilistic way of looking at the world that I usually try to shy away from myself, but it was good to be reminded of it, because this stuff is there. People are really like this. I mean, they are and they aren't, you know?Reading this book also reminded me of that time I went out on a date with my (formerly) Angeleno Bookster Marshall. When he finally came to New York, I was dismayed to learn that in fact he'd been joking about his willingness to breed with me, but after I got over that initial disappointment, we scored a gram and spent a very pleasant evening going up and down in the elevator of the Flatiron building, arguing over Elvis Costello and American Psycho, and gossiping about our mutual Booksters. It was a fun evening, and it's too bad Marshall wouldn't reproduce with me because I bet those Bookster genes would've created an awesome reviewer, albeit one with a frighteningly low birth weight.
What do You think about Less Than Zero (2010)?
A large part of this book is boring and the characters are all just horrible people but the overall effect is amazing. It races along full of boring details and you feel like sticking pins in your eyes and shouting at the characters but then it drops in anvil heavy, horrific statements so subtly it just merges into the text. It's so subtle it makes it all the more shocking.Bret Easton Ellis is amzing at writing dialogue. This was a point that kept me going. All his "and then I did this, and then I did this, blah blah blah" is punctuated by perfect and real dialogue. Also I like the reminiscing parts.The last paragraph makes you think "wow!" and it all comes together in string of horrible, boring and growing ideas. A little book that makes lots of big points about lots of everyday things.-----------------------------------------------------------Updated - Full Review as on Citizen's Eye WebsiteI read Less Than Zero in one night, about four and a half hours and for most of it I was bored senseless. Every twenty pages or so I’d dramatically let the book fall to my knee; finger still holding my place, and roll my eyes thinking “When will something happen?!”But then things start to happen and you quieten down. And then you reach the end and you think “Wow.” And all the boring stuff doesn’t seem quite so boring, it all had a place and wrote its place so well.Anyhow, Less Than Zero is the story of Clay and his friends being bored in Los Angeles with too much money and no real direction. They are generally all hateful people which makes the boringness even harder to bear. You do start to feel like sticking pins in your eyes as Clay describes his days lying about, his nights pushing drugs in his face and cruising around in expensive cars and going to dull sounding parties. These people aren’t real friends, they’re bored scene people who have rich and famous parents and can’t be bothered to pick up their own lives in a constructive way. But this is how it feels, to be a character in the book I mean and that’s why it is so effective. You become desperate for something to happen and then when it does, dropping anvil like statements subtly into the story, you are a little relieved but mainly repelled and you just want to turn away from this whole world. The dialogue keeps you going really. Bret Easton Ellis is just so good at writing dialogue, it crackles into life like an old record player, the more you read their voices the clearer they become and more real. The text is interspersed with passages of reminiscence from Clay. These are filled with some truly terrific writing; contrasted with the dull but effective narration and the sparkling dialogue we get a full picture of the extent of this writer’s talent. Now we have a built up portrait of what this book achieves and really it is great. You think it is boring but it’s not, it’s great and when you can see the whole thing you see what I mean and the last sentence really hammers home the true visionary nature of this book.
—Clare
I've never read Ellis before, and since he published this when he was just 21, I'm not sure if or how to really come to grips with it. The style is obviously super flat, though whether this is because Ellis simply wasn't able to write otherwise at such a young age or if he was just smart enough to realize he's probably too young to try, I can't say. But I found Clay's cool, detached narration to be, if nothing else, fairly engaging. Not revelatory, not brilliant, but interesting enough to keep me reading.This book is, knowingly or not, basically like throwing acid in the face of Reagan's America. Trust fund brats in the San Fernando Valley with too much money, too much cocaine, too much apathetic sex. They go to cool parties and eat at 3 star restaurants the way other people have to wake up to work the early shift and cut coupons. The self-rightous midwesterner in me thinks they just need some "structure." The bitter nihilist in me wants to either cheer them on or shoot them in the face. The slacker millenial in me shrugs and suspects that this is probably how it's always been for louche rich kids. Kind of like Public Enemy or early Prince, the transgressive punch this once had is kind of diluted with time, I can imagine a modern middle aged housewife reading this in 2013 and being disgusted, but I can't imagine her being totally caught off guard and utterly horrified like she might have been in the mid 80's. The simple fact is that the rarified world of nihilistic anxiety that Clay occupies is much more widespread in our day and age (come on, who doesn't have HBO, a DVD player and ample access to booze and drugs in 2013?) than it was in 1985, even if the wealth that powers it remains as exclusive as it ever did.Maybe that means that Bret Easton Ellis, at only 21 years old, basically got it right the first time around and has only become more right about the way we live in the decades since. Maybe this book where people move zombie like from one empty pleasure on to another to another just can't be shocking because what's really shocking, or unrelatable in this book aside from a few moments of casual sexual slavery (and even those, sadly, aren't a huge imaginative stretch)? Whether you "like" Less than Zero or not, it's kind of impossible to deny that it's view of our reality is more widespread and more comprehensible now than it was almost 30 years ago. Highly recommended.
—Jeremy
This book probably deserved more than three stars. But I just can't give it any more than that. I HATE this book. I hate it with my whole soul. It's so true and I am massively depressed after reading it. It perfectly illustrates the life of a completely useless waste of a human being and all his useless friends and their useless lives. It's awful. They should all be put out of their (and our) misery. The best thing I can say is that this book serves as a glorious example of how not to be. The scary thing is that's it's probably a pretty accurate portrayal of a certain type of people.If I had the choice, I would have put it down after I finished the first twenty pages and wanted to shoot myself, but I had to finish it for a class. I would not recommend this to anyone who is already depressed. There is a slight risk of becoming suicidal. I would also not recommend this to anyone who is currently blissfully happy. You should enjoy that while you can.I can say that this is very well written. I typically cannot stand first-person present tense. It's like running when you could walk along leisurely, but it's not so bad when it's a quick read like this. Ellis makes an incredibly good point about the shallow lives that some people live through. Also, it did help me appreciate my own life a lot. I feel like a really good person now, because I'm nothing like these creeps, which is all you can hope for in life.
—Ailsa Lillywhite
