Hear ye, hear ye: I am SUCH a liar, you guys! I've always admitted to having read the whole B.E.E. collection, but have lied. This one makes it... done. Complete! I am very VERY much done with Ellis at this point in my life. & it couldn't have come sooner.

The one striking thing about this one is its description of the fall of the once-mythical, once-impressive B.E.E.: once famous and rich & relevant, he grabs at past glories in a very saddening fashion, grabbing at straws really, trying to relive/transplant various episodes of his once victorious and literary career. Esp. borrows heavily from American Psycho.

This is very lame. I've been curious of where to place this book on the bookshelf... Top Shelf? (Rules of Attraction (#1), American Psycho (#2), Glamorama (#3))... Mid-Level? (Less Than Zero [#4])...

OR(!!!) the trash, alongside other dried turds such as The Informers (#5) & the most horrible of all, Imperial Bedrooms.

That's right. You may probably guess.

i was a little attracted to him

Il libro è semiautobiografico.
Parla di uno scrittore, Bret Easton Ellis, giunto al successo con un libro decadente e perverso (Meno di zero... nei primi anni del liceo un amico lo aveva comprato e ce lo eravamo letto tutti quanti, ovviamente all'epoca mi aveva colpito enormemente) per poi bissare il successo con l'ancora più sconvolgente American Psycho (che mi ha fatto letteralmente schifo, privo di senso).
Uno scrittore che, giunto all'apice della fama, vive di droghe e alcool, incapace di mantenere una relazione o di trovare un senso nella propria vita.
Una situazione familiare disastrosa alle spalle, una relazione critica con il padre.

Sembra la sua autobiografia, completa di tour promozionali, idee, icnontri per i film tratti dai romanzi.

Poi la parte reale scompare, e si passa all'horror.

Perché Bret, che nel frattempo per tentare di salvarsi si è sposato con la vecchia fidanzata Jayne dalla quale aveva avuto un figlio mai riconosciuto, si ritrova al centro di fenomeni paranormali e di una situazione familiare anche più critica di quella che aveva abbandonato da tempo.
Un figlio che non lo riconsoce e che non vuole avere niente a che fare con lui.
Entrambi i bambini sotto psicofarmaci, come secondo la moda del momento per i figli di genitori ricchi. Problematici e drogati fin da piccoli, costretti a strafare per entrare già dalle elementari in ottica Ivy League.
Una moglie attrice che spesso è fuori casa, affidando i figli a tate e personale di servizio.
Il terrore strisciante che cattura tutti gli abitanti della zona, mentre sempre più ragazzini scompaiono nel nulla per non essere più ritrovati. Fughe? Rapimenti? Il terrore di ogni genitore. Bret compreso.

Poi ci sono gli omicidi.
Qualcuno sta compiendo nella zona omicidi efferati, seguendo pari pari quanto compiuto da Patrick nel libro di Ellis, American Psycho.
E lo stesso Patrick sembra quasi materializzarsi, mostrarsi allo scrittore.

E assieme a Patrick, il soprannaturale.

Luci che vanno e vengono nella casa, pupazzi che diventano vivi e voraci, strane creature, strane ombre, mail misteriose legate alla morte del padre, addirittura un video della morte del padre.
Macchine fantasma, strani fenomeni atmosferici, la casa stessa che si trasforma poco a poco nella vecchia casa dove Bret aveva vissuto da piccolo.

Il mondo creato dalla penna di Ellis prende vita poco a poco, mentre le sue creazioni si scontrano con lo spettro paterno.
Qualcuno gli vuole dare un avvertimento, qualcun altro non vuole farglielo avere.
Lo scrittore in lui prende appunti, mentre lui vorrebbe solo scappare, fuggire, nascondersi e drogarsi.



E alla fine, quando si fa un minimo di chiarezza su quanto successo... non si chiarisce un bel niente.
La scomparsa di Robbie, l'identità di Clayton, la presenza delle creature nate dai suoi racconti, la presenza del padre.
Niente di niente.
Spiegazioni fumose e solamente abbozzate, accenni e nient'altro.


Il libro si lascia leggere con piacere, ma alla fine è frustrante il non arrivare a nessuna conclusione definitiva.
E dato che l'unico pregio era la scorrevolezza e il fatto che non si facesse odiare, non ho certo un buon parere del libro stesso.
No, decisamente Ellis non fa per me.

I can understand why this wouldn't necessarily be favorably reviewed. Aside from the events referred to as having happened that are clearly fictional, this novel could be read as an actual memoir (for much of it, not all of it). As our narrator Ellis continues to suffer from the effects of many issues, including addiction and withdrawal, his established unreliability takes us off the deep end with a bizarre twist that flips the whole work on its bloated spine. However, I loved it, despite being fiction I was more absorbed in this than any of his other works. I was likely easily sold because I have two sons, and I would never echo the circumstances of Ellis' nor his fictional son's. 5 out of 5 Klonopins.

This monstrosity is about to make me take Less Than Zero off of my favorite books list. Could this book have been worse? I don't know. I really am not sure how. If we refer back to my list of things Douglas Coupland did to screw up JPod, BEE here does them all and then some, by adding in less pornography than Glamorama (remember the like 20+ page threesome in the middle? That was like, one of the least arousing things one could ever read, where with every page turn it was like, PLEASE let them be done having sex already? Can't you describe the people dying in the plane crash again?) but bringing in nearly as much violence as in American Psycho, mostly by making us relive the kills from the aforementioned tome plus adding in some new ones.

With a more-famous, possibly more-drugged-up version of himself as the main character, BEE sinks to new lows with:

a) impossibly dated pop culture references (look at the date this piece of crap got released, yet in the book his kids dress as Posh Spice and Eminem for Halloween. Um, not exactly timely!);

b) violence to the extent that I actually almost threw up. Like I actually clamped my hand over my mouth at one point, and I am not exaggerating this at all;

c) life history of his own famousness and drug use that I mentally narrated by thinking to myself "don't care, don't care";

d) the death of his (admittedly horrible sounding) father perpetrated by possibly
I) the author himself
II) Clayton from Less Than Zero
III) Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.

I've read all his other books so god knew I'd read this one, but I finished it wishing I really, really hadn't. If I can keep you from reading it, I've done my job.

Solo un genio come Bret Easton Ellis poteva scrivere un libro come questo. Il protagonista è Bret Easton Ellis, uno scrittore che ha scritto tutti i libri di Bret Easton Ellis, ma non è il vero Bret Easton Ellis. Si tratta di un grandioso esempio di autofiction, giocato sul fil rouge del rapporto padre-figlio, in una spirale di orrore e incubi. Entra in top 3 di quest'anno di diritto.

"Al di là di quanto possano apparire orribili gli eventi qui descritti, c'è una cosa che dovete ricordare mentre tenete questo libro tra le mani: tutto ciò che leggerete è realmente accaduto, ogni parola è vera.
La cosa che mi ha tormentato di più? Dato che nessuno sapeva cosa stesse accadendo in quella casa, nessuno aveva paura per noi."

I first began reading this book at a Borders outside Philadelphia in August 2005, not too long, perhaps even within the very same week, of its publication. The first chapter "the beginnings" is a marvelous parade of literary gossip, all neon and candy - Ellis guides the reader through the downward spiral of his Glamorama book tour. As stated in other reviews at this website, this chapter is the chief highlight of the novel and can stand alone, feeding and fueling the desire of lit-fanatics who desire to know how it all started and where it all went wrong. The remainder of the book is a psychological study in mental dissolution and a decent pastiche and parody of horror-story haunted-house paperbacks that line the shelves, that have become the shelves.

I was especially grateful for chapter 13, "parent/teacher night" wherein Ellis describes the writer's almost pathological need to paper over the shredded wallpaper of his or her psyche in order to deal with common trivialities and uncommon terrors of day-to-day reality. A writer's physical life is basically one of stasis, and to combat this constraint, an opposite world and another self have to be constructed daily (pgs. 146-147) Daily. That's horrible. Daily. Imagine the work, if it had been done, of daily tearing down and rebuilding the Emerald City set during the filming of Wizard of Oz and shrink-ray that pressure into a human vessel. Yet getting the work done, getting the film in the can. Incredible - but it can be done, is done, because this is what a writer does: his life is a maelstorm of lying (pg. 146).

Back to that Borders in Philadelphia. I was not able to purchase the book for a few reasons, chief among them that all my books were packed for a move. Years went by. More moves. And then I started reading Lunar Park several years ago. I failed to make it beyond the first chapter once again, but for reasons I cannot recall. Probably laziness. I seem to recall flipping through the other pages of the book and getting the general gist of the novel and figuring that that was enough. After that, I still enjoyed Ellis' work, his Imperial Bedrooms, the movie adaptation of The Informers and the original movie The Canyons, and a reread of Less Than Zero. But, recently, during a trip to the library I picked up Lunar Park and figured to give it another shot. I have no idea why, other than pickings are slim at present - the season of Must Reads by Big Authors is over, what with it being December, the New Arrivals at the library all celebrity cookbooks and Christmas Decor for the Family of Four type stuff.

I admit that as I neared the end of this novel, I became a little freaked out, what with it being night and all. Not only night, but after midnight. It was preposterous: the haunted house subplot, the evil doll subplot, are tired tropes straight out of Twilight Zone...but Ellis provided the prose in describing These Events a sort of hypnotic quality - the staccato of realtime reportage (a phrase I immediately despise typing, but there it is. There it stands).

Of special note were pages 305-308, where Ellis hits the poetic height of the novel and, perhaps, his oeuvre, as he describes the release of his father's ashes from a fishing boat not only into the air but into time and time's country cousin, time's dopey doppelganger, literature, into the very pages of Lunar Park itself.

If you are still here, reading this, well then you're alone.

Después de leer Los Destrozos no esperaba otro tan bueno.

That's all six of his novels now read. He hasn't written a novel for quite a few years now, and I do hope, after reading Lunar Park, we get more. This might not have had the same impact that Glamorama and Less than Zero had on me, but I think it's on a par with what I thought about American Psycho. There were parts that seriously creeped me out. Like, for example, when a demonic Terby doll crawled inside the anus of a pet dog and took it over - couldn't help but think of Chucky from Child's Play. It's written as a sort of postmodern narcissistic ghost story with Bret Easton Ellis the narrator in his own book. There are nods towards the suburban horrors of Wes Craven and John Carpenter, and the writer Stephen King. But you know you're in a Bret Easton Ellis novel all right due to the Xanax, Klonopin, alcohol, Prada sweatshirts and tan loafers, to name but a few things. It is also, like American Psycho, a hall of mirrors. Even detective Donald Kimball makes an appearance. Or does he? Underneath though, the novel reverberates strongly with Bret's past of the abused child of a hateful father, which he failed to confront, and thus comes back to haunt him - literally.

There is a killer re-enacting the murders of Patrick Bateman, who apparently was based on Robery Ellis, who died in 1992. Here, there are two phantoms plaguing BEE - one from beyond the grave, and the other from the pages of American Psycho. It wouldn't be the same without the satire, and that comes in the form of a sort of family sitcom. Along with Bret, the writer, who is; or at least was, in the process of writing his next novel called Teenage Pussy, and who is very much falling off the wagon, there is the fragile marriage to his wife, Jayne, her six-year-old daughter, Sarah, fathered by another man, and the 11-year-old resentful son, Robby. He isn't doing to well when it comes to the business of fatherhood, due to his constant drug abuse and the fact he is trying to woo a student at the college where he teaches because she happens to be writing her thesis on his work.

And then, if there wasn't enough to chew on already, a lot of spooky supernatural shit starts to kick in . . .

My girlfriend is reading this book right now, so at night I always see the front cover as it hides her pretty face.

I've always been a fan of Bret. I loved Less than Zero, American Psycho, and Imperial Bedrooms. I didn't like Rules of Attraction ( good movie but the novel was too faggy love drunk for me.) And I hated Glammora and the Informers.

All in all, he's had an impressive career and I have read a few of his novels multiple times. American Psycho sticks out as his real masterpiece in contemporary transgressive literature.

That book was genius and I find it interesting that people label it misogynistic. To me it was a clear indictment on materialism, he objectified woman as a way to expound on that indictment but it had NOTHING to do with women, the same as it had nothing to do with designer clothing. I think Norman Mailer said it best, that Bret was taking on deep Dostoyevskian themes.

Most people that hated American Psycho hated it for legitimate reasons. The people that hate Lunar Park don't seem to understand it at all.


SPOILER ALERT

Lunar park is a deep, visceral, and brilliant novel. It is in fact much deeper than American Psycho, yet its darkness is washed out by sentimentality.

It starts out with a quasi-memoir of his past novels and early success. He skillfully included enough facts to make this seem like a legitimate recap of his life so far, although the tone becomes satirical by the end of the section.

His whole career dating back to his debut novel and including American Psycho have been about two central themes: apathy and narcissism. So it's only natural that he would move on to make the ultimate statement and turn the lens on himself, painting an apathetic and narcissistic caricature of what people believe Bret Easton Ellis would look like.

The tumultuous relationship with his father is brought up within the first few pages, drawn from sincerity you can feel, and if you're paying attention, making all the other career and lifestyle narration seem disingenuous.

Now the hyperbole fades back into supposed realism, but what it really is, is this crazy metaphorical and multifaceted look inside his brain.

Nothing past the first chapter should be taken literal and the supernatural stuff supports this.

Bret's character becomes his father, the alcoholism and disconnect are simply statements about their failed connection.

His marriage with jane is just a facade created by his dads disapproval of Bret's sexual ambiguity, and how unhinged his view on the nuclear family is because his own was so badly broken.

Robbie is emblematic of Bret's youth, of being misunderstood and having to deal with a father he felt lived on a different planet than him.

Clayton is Brett in the purgatory stage, when he found his own independence and wealth, and became an elusive and ghoulish figure to his disdainful father.

Brett Easton Ellis is such a talented writer that he throws in sophisticated social commentary, masquerading as lame and campy gimmickry. The turby doll, the video tapes, the general paranoiac tone, are all statements about post 9/11 hysteria and how far removed we had become in a very spooky time.

An engaging, original, satirical novel that reads initially like a memoir, morphs into a novel about a marriage breakdown, then becomes a horror novel with a haunted house and ghost. There is good plot momentum throughout this book.

The book starts with an overview of the author’s life and works. Yes, Bret Easton Ellis is the main character and narrator. In this book he is a narcissistic, self loathing drug addict who drinks lots. Jayne Dennis, a movie star and old girlfriend of Bret, who is the mother of his son, Robby, proposes marriage to Bret. Robby has been ignored by Bret for eleven years. Three months into the marriage Bret has started taking drugs again and is having an affair with a student. Things then become a little weird as boys disappear in the neighbourhood and there is a wave of grisly murders modeled on those of the author’s book, ‘American Psycho’. His father’s ghost appears making Bret freak out.

Ellis fans should find this book a very satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 2005.

Bret Easton Ellis, Meister der Autofiktion, stellt sich den Dämonen seiner Vergangenheit… mitreißend spannend, witzig, intelligent, großartig!