a difficult book. It is now a few weeks ago, I read it, and I still find it difficult to assess or evaluate it.
"Less Than Zero" (1985) is Ellis' first novel, but he might be known primarily as the author of "American Psycho", which filmed in 2000 with Christian Bale in the lead role. I have not read the book template, because me about a friend who had read the book for the university and to me about the main character, discussed by some very tough Scenes told that - fortunately! - Did not find their way into the film.
With an understanding of the "American Psycho" novel struck me while reading "Less Than Zero" on very quickly that Ellis happy again used the same themes: alienation, loss of traditional values, brutalized Fun, drugs / violence / sexual excesses, reduction to superficialities, numbness, emptiness. While Ellis writes in a very simple and direct style - it will not beat around talking or glossed over. I used to lay this style more than today. It fits because of his cold, of course, ideal for action, but he gave me absolutely no access to novel easier.
short the story: Clay is back in the semester break from college in his hometown of Los Angeles, where he meets his old friend again. He moves in the upper class, drugs are now common, as many parties as possible. Clay will not really have access to his former friends, the treatment is superficial, entertainment, turn to the next party or who has slept with whom. When he perceives that the violence is increasing around him more and that the others obviously do not mind it and they still have fun, he realizes that something is enormously wrong. However, he also tries hard to not even do anything about it.
The narrator Clay is in some ways a frustrating protagonist. He really has nothing to interest, is always dull and somehow fits into its surroundings. Even when the excesses of violence and increasingly exacerbated in the end to a truly disturbing scene comes (which was expected to ...), but basically it is indeed shocking, but does nothing to help except to express doubts and tentative to go.
Presumably, the novel does so by fairly strong. Ellis takes' issues such as coarsening of society, lack of interpersonal relations, etc. again and again in his novels, and here he is actually a much in mind. At the very beginning Clay gets to hear of a friend, "People are becoming more ruthless." and he is constantly in a promotional poster with the words "Get out of here" is over. Ellis works a lot with this repetition, to reinforce the theme.
It can be seen grossly as Clay's friends (for friends, they can not really be called) does not care that people die from their environment to drugs that a prostitute because of the clique debt and heroin addiction, that bodies in backyards are (which is at most one look cool sensation). And that this behavior seems to be normal for all. Only Clay and maybe his girlfriend Blair are not comfortable with it, but nobody tried to change something.
would probably be a good book for a school analysis, but it certainly hard and explicit. I am still in a dilemma. I found the book not good in the sense that it is entertaining reading, or that I would like to read again. But the issues raised and the relentless work for me long after the presentation - although there may Ellis use a fictional world in the 80s, but the fact that I imagine they can readily be realistic is frightening.
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