Disappear Here: Bret Easton Ellis, 25 years on…
Bret Easton Ellis has been called the enfant terrible of 80s literature, an antichrist, a misogynist, a spoilt brat, a genius. Any of these could be true, as here is a writer who plays with the public perception of himself – his last novel Lunar Park told a tale of a fictional Bret Easton Ellis, another man, another life.
What we do know is that in 1985, at the infuriatingly youthful age of 21, Ellis burst onto the literary scene with his debut novel, Less Than Zero. He captured the imagination of a generation and the attention of a media hungry for Brat Pack stories of drugs, debauchery and glamorous destruction. Along with fellow novelist Jay McInerney, Ellis partied hard and was followed by the paparazzi flashes usually reserved for Hollywood starlets. Here were writers that made literature young, edgy and headline-grabbing.
The success of Less Than Zero wasn’t just down to good timing and piggy-backing on to an existing scene, it captured the zeitgeist. In his debut, Ellis achieved something remarkable; his minimalist style and biting humour communicate a feeling of moneyed ennui, of detachment, of youthful nihilism. And somehow, he made it compelling and accessible. As a 16 year old I read this book and read it and read it… It wasn’t that I could identify with the lifestyles depicted, it wasn’t that I longed for vacuous days of drug-addled angst…I don’t know what it was, but something had me hooked. Ellis can fill the pages with scenes of prostitution, drug addiction, snuff films and blind greed; he can expose his characters’ weaknesses and fears; he can do all this and still connect with his readers. It is stark, it is bleak and it is mesmerising.
Less Than Zero was turned into a film in 1987 and brought together a cooler-than-thou swathe of 80s Brat Packers – Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey Jr., James Spader. The film is a loose adaptation, but Ellis has admitted that its depiction of beautiful fuck-ups snorting, shagging and speeding their way along the empty LA freeways is a good snapshot of the time.
Twenty-five years on from his debut, Ellis is catching up with the characters of Less Than Zero in Imperial Bedrooms. Whilst characters have often crossed over from one book to another (see the Bateman family ties in Rules of Attraction), this is the first time Ellis has set out to write a bona fide sequel. It’s as if he’s coming full circle. Lunar Park is dark and it is funny, but most surprisingly to his critics, it’s moving and has a depth not normally associated with Ellis’s work; the writer has begun to unravel his past – the relationship with his father who died in 1992, the loss of his long term partner in 2004 and a move away from the New York social scene. Imperial Bedrooms will find Clay, Julian and Blair now facing a desperate middle age, demons old and new; how will they unravel?
You can find Less Than Zero on Amazon for £4.79.
Imperial Bedrooms is published by Picador on July 2. Pre-order your copy here.
In July, Bret Easton Ellis will be talking about Imperial Bedrooms in, London , Nottingham and at Latitude Festival.
Post by Alex Herod
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