२० मार्च, २०२३

"'Many years ago I realized that a book, a novel, is a dream that asks itself to be written' is how his new novel, The Shards, his first in thirteen years, begins."

"It is narrated by Ellis’s alter ego, a fifty-six-year-old writer named Bret.... Bret listens to bands such as Icehouse and Ultravox (he especially likes the song 'Vienna,' with its soaring, mournful refrain, 'This means nothing to me') and spends weekends at parties or the movies, or in his room working on the book that will one day become Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero (1985).... Ellis published Less Than Zero when he was a twenty-one-year-old student at Bennington College. Its cultural impact is hard to overstate. The book is narrated by Clay.... Clay drives around, does drugs, goes to parties, and remembers his dead grandparents.... ... Ellis’s desire to see the worst is so all-consuming that it blinds him to anything else. He has a once-in-a-generation talent for conjuring dread and disgust and exposing them as the consequences of a sick, hollow, and narcissistic culture; he’s also funny. But the truth that lies beneath the surface of the world is not that we are depraved authors of Boschian nightmares; it’s that our Boschian nightmares exist alongside acts of love, compassion, faithfulness. Ellis’s stark and unsentimental moral vision is blind to half of human truth, and in this way has remained as childlike as the innocence it wants to dispel...."

Writes the novelist Christine Smallwood, in "The Exorcist/Bret Easton Ellis’s novels are filled with beautiful actors in nightmarish dreamscapes who seem innocent but are revealed to be guilty" (NYRB).

You can buy "The Shards" here. I've never read a Bret Easton Ellis book. Have you? I've never seen a movie based on one of his books either. I'm not recommending the new book, just observing its publication and trying to understand what Christine Smallwood is saying about it. Maybe read her novel: "The Life of the Mind."

२० टिप्पण्या:

Ficta म्हणाले...

I enjoyed American Psycho (the movie) a lot. Very funny if you have the right sense of humor for it. The comedy is very black and violent.

Ellis and Donna Tartt are on my list of authors to get around to reading "real soon now", mostly because I love Jonathan Lethem and he was at Bennington College at the same time they were, so it will be interesting to see how similar or different they are.

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

I read LESS THAN ZERO way back when it was current. I would not have bought it myself, but my then-roommate bought it and read it and he recommended it, so I read his copy.

I can't remember much about it, or how well I liked it. It was obviously readable enough that it held my attention to the end, but I don't recall thinking it extraordinary or due the sensation it had created. I didn't bother seeing the movie, and I never felt any impulse to read Ellis' subsequent books. So...in my opinion, a generational sensation, a hype unlikely to be remembered.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"our Boschian nightmares exist"

True. Death and invasion at the border. Rampant murder, robberies, and homeless addicts in major cities. Progs eager to green-transition us back to the Stone Age. Expert-approved child mutilation promoted as therapy.

At least Bosch also believed in heaven (he did, didn't he?).

mccullough म्हणाले...

I read half of one Ellis novel when I was younger.

It was crap. There were more brand names in the novel than a season of NASCAR.

I figured since his writing was shit he made more money off the product placements in his books than in book sales.

There are relatively few novels, songs, works of art that are any good.

robother म्हणाले...

Althouse: "I've never read a Bret Easton Ellis book. Have you?"

A question I've never considered. Thinking back, Ellis marks the point at which I stopped being interested in the Latest Literary Thing. I continued to buy and read whatever Barth or Updike came out in the 90s and oughts. Unfortunately I have seen the American Psycho movie, which confirmed my literary judgment of avoiding Ellis "like the plague". Ellis' nihilism is cheap, but it ain't free: corrodes everything it touches.

Fred Drinkwater म्हणाले...

Long ago I was exposed to a few of the nastier bits in "American Psycho". After that experience I wouldn't touch anything by Ellis. Images and thoughts are like an infection. Be wary.

wendybar म्हणाले...

American Psycho....many, many years ago.

wendybar म्हणाले...

Oh....and WHITE....More recently.

Narr म्हणाले...

No and no.

The wrong kind of people seemed to be his biggest fans, and his critics not much better.

How's that for prejudgment?

SteveWe म्हणाले...

I've never read a Bret Easton Ellis book, either. And I intend to keep myself that way. Thanks for the heads-up.

Kit Carson म्हणाले...

well he's right about Vienna, especially the piano and in the second half where the brief piano sprites portray hopes and memories thrilling then vanishing.

Art in LA म्हणाले...

I read "Less Than Zero" in college and it spoke to me. I grew up in the flatlands of LA, but "Less Than Zero" was all about the richie rich kids who grew up in the nearby hillsides, giving me the insider view of glamorous LA and all of its trappings. It's still one of my all-time favorite reads. Ellis' other books are super dark though, however I did get a copy of "The Shards". We'll see how far I make it.

Another favorite from that era, "Generation X" by Douglas Coupland. And, if you want a different angle of growing up in Los Angeles around the "Less Than Zero" era, try "The White Boy Shuffle" by Paul Beatty ... this book is hilarious!

J2 म्हणाले...

He could marry the woman whose husband wouldn't read "Middlemarch". It is (as of 2015) one of Bretts ten favorite books.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/t-magazine/entertainment/my-10-favorite-books-bret-easton-ellis.html

He does currently have a partner.

Ficta म्हणाले...

@J2 That's a fun list! And a nice job of explaining why he liked the books. I like every book on it except for The Corrections which I could sort of see the point of but didn't really care for. So I really do need to get around to reading him.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne म्हणाले...

Maybe read her novel: "The Life of the Mind."

Sorry, no. The Coen brothers ruined that phrase for me a long time ago.

actual items म्हणाले...

I’ve read 4-5 of his novels. American Psycho was my favorite. I love his writing style, probably my favorite modern writer, stylistically speaking, save for Haruki Marukami.

It’d been years since I read one of his novels when I picked up The Shards earlier this year. I was transported back, I loved reading the first 40-50 pages. I was so excited to be reading a new Bret Easton Ellis novel again.

But maybe I’m older, maybe my tastes have changed, but it got too graphic on subjects I don’t care to read that level of gory detail on. So I returned it to the library mostly unread and moved on with my life.

Mikey NTH म्हणाले...

Never read any Ellis (nor much post WWII fiction) because it always seemed so dark - no chacters to actually like, none with any admirable traits, just a parade of crappy people being crappy and getting crapped on. Such joy.

Of course my idea of bedside reading neing "US Battleships: An Illustrated Design History" may have something to do with it. As an aside I am loads of fun at parties if you want to discuss 16 inch guns.

Narr म्हणाले...

"if you want to discuss 16 inch guns."

Who doesn't?

Ampersand म्हणाले...

The BEE stuff I've read is a sort of fatigued hedonistic nihilism, self-pitying yet with glimmers of self awareness. Basically, a US version of Michel Houllebecq.

Phaedrus म्हणाले...

I’ve read “Less Than Zero” (and watched the Movie- pretty sure I have the DVD tucked in a box somewhere) and started “American Psycho” but never finished it. His style is a bit dark and in your face but he does speak to uncomfortable truths that can make the reader either love or hate his stories. “LTZ” really resonated as I grew up (about the same time as BEE) in a town in Dallas, Highland Park, that was very similar to the young adults in “LTZ’s” LA/Beverly Hills with wealth, drugs and pretty wild life styles. I couldn’t connect with “AP” the same way and never got it finished.

I like Ellis as a person and enjoy his commentary on current events. He’s not anti-establishment per se but sort of a gay, liberal Scott Adams. So I’ll likely at least buy a copy of “The Shards” just because I enjoy him as a thoughtful human making his own contributions to society although the book will probably collect digital dust on my iPad’s bookshelf (if they ever give us that visual setting back…)