The first 100 or so pages of this book really weren’t doing it for me, I found it self righteous and quite frankly, boring and lame. I expected more from an author as clever as Ellis. Well I continued to read and I am now eating my words, once this book got full steam at about the 150 mark, it really took of and became something brilliant.

It’s a horror novel really, a damn good one at that. Like all of his stuff, it’s completely self-aware and poking fun at itself, and when you consider that Mr Ellis himself is the main character, and that this is a faux memoir, well I think you really need to take your hat off to an author that is able to do that with a book and it not be an absolute mess.

I think it’s a certain kind of marvelous. A truly unique book unlike anything I’ve ever read or will ever read I suspect.

I’ve read all BEE’s novels! Saved the best for last (except Glamorama had a better aesthetic). The cadence is so polished, sharp like a blood diamond. This is autofiction where the author discusses his famous works like American Psycho and how his success helped him escape his realtor father who was “perpetually dementedly furious” despite a palm tree and poolside lifestyle. Dog-beating and ever-belittling in a smart suit, he was the inspiration for Patrick Bateman.

A fun factoid is how even Bret’s grandfather couldn’t stand his son’s curdled attitude so in spite funded Bret’s Camden tuition where he wrote his international bestseller Less Than Zero as an assignment he finished on a crystal meth binge. The success of such immediately launched him as a pop culture icon, getting to rub elbows with Madonna and Tom Cruise and turn a slew of his books into movies. He becomes part of the literary brat pack who writes in shards about druggies, Armani-clad and Cristal swigging outcasts.

I’m not sure how much of the arrogant tone is satire or to match his characters or to be read more matter-of-fact in how the press and famefuckers viewed him. Of course the vast majority of this is humorous, conversation is always clever but realistic banter, with less guarded coolness than his typical cast of trendy apathoids.

Into the details of his life, he receives a $500,000 advance for American Psycho, a fifth of which immediately went to drugs and lavish parties. His publisher treated him like a rock star, making claw over fist off him. He (and this is where we delve into fiction) gets involved with a model named Jayne who intentionally impregnates herself to lock him down despite his insistence to use contraception or break up. He fathers another kid six years later but he remains steadfast in staying estranged during about a decade of Hollywood degeneracy. During this stressful time for all involved, he gains 40 pounds and loses it in a few weeks, and keeps volleying such a difference.

While penning my fav book of his, Glamorama about model terrorists, he consumes so much crack, smack, and vodka that he dies a few times on tour. He gives sarcastic answers to the press about being gay vs bi and antagonizes bookstore employees in paranoid ramblings—thinking they’re lions, so he bars himself in presidential suites, gorging on cool ranch Doritos ‘til he throws up, crying that he’s old at 35. By the time the American Psycho movie hits screens, he’s blown his millions on medical bills from partying.

Once he gets clean, he rejoins Jayne to rebuild their family, though his dissociation and cravings remain—Not so tragically for the most part but his intoxicated tendencies do a good job of giving the story realism, suspense, and obvious metaphorical value once supernatural things seem to happen. Taking a step back in a post 9/11 world, Bret infiltrates suburbia with his new wife, in couples counseling within weeks and using co-eds and that powdered white in moderation since he’s now a professor of creative writing, which is really a groupie circle for him to pluck from. Yet some of these admirers seem to be following him and spoofing his characters. The tone and family setting is pretty bright yet ironic.

Though it’s to be taken literally at times, his father and characters haunt him, missing boys plague his periphery, and police say some local killings are close to those that appear in American Psycho. I’m not much of a horror or paranormal person, but the laughably creepy Furbies, irksome step kids, strong Stephen King influence, and all the satire are enough to keep me thoroughly engaged as a realist reader.

„Лунен парк“, Colibri 2007, закупена от мен миналия октомври без конкретни очаквания, просто като плънка, оправдаваща транспортните разходи на поредната „кошница“ в „Книжен пазар“, се превърна в една от книгите ми за 2023. Елис просто е шутирал здраво всички етикети и жанрови ограничения, за да избълва задъхан микс от автобиографична фикция, хорър, алтернативна история, социална сатира и изобщо – всичко каквото се сетите. ГОЛЯМ, ама наистина ГОЛЯМ РОМАН!

Както сподели Нинко Кирилов в дискусията под мой пост в група „Какво четеш“, когато преди година се похвалих с новите си книжни придобивки и нямах никаква идея за що иде на реч:

… започва привидно лековато, но после мачка здраво. Изключителна книга… Има лек поклон пред Кинг, но като цяло има и лек ироничен автобиографичен мотив плюс убийствен финал.

И, факт, авторът си причини неща, подобни на ония, които Стивън Кинг стори със себе си в поредицата "Тъмната кула" - постави се в центъра на зловещи събития, оплитайки майсторски хитроумно и сладкодумно фактите от реалния живот и писателската си кариера с откровени измишльотини; имаше моменти, в които пиенето и друсането бяха съпоставими с творбите на Ървин Уелш; разказът, воден от първо лице от самия Брет Ийстън Елис (както винаги) ми се понрави – много любим похват; имаше и доста препратки към "Американски психар", а началото беше поставено на парти за Хелоуин, та една ли можеше да се случи по-подходящ месец от октомври за четенето на тая прелест.

В заключение, ще оставя самия писател да каже няколко думи, според мен улавящи цялостния дух на романа:

Какво да се прави, такава е работата на писателя; животът му представлява водовъртеж от лъжи. Неговата цел е да разкраси фактите. Правим го, за да доставим удоволствие на останалите. Правим го, за да освободим душите си. Физическият живот на писателя е в основата си живот на застоя и той трябва да си построи противоположен свят, всеки божи ден да създава едно друго аз, за да се спаси от рамките на ограничеността.

I saw a guy on the tube in London reading this and noticed he was near the end. I wanted to stand up and say, "Hey, it's creeping you out, isn't it. Isn't it?! ISN'T IT!!!?" But you just can't live your life that way. It's inappropriate.

Bret Easton Ellis, on the other hand, can do whatever the hell he wants. And he does. Putting yourself in a novel is either the ballsiest thing you can do, or the assy-est. In this case, both. But let's put aside the fact that Ellis is writing a tale about semi-pseudo Ellis. It's also a damn disturbing ride, and the fact that he had the nerve to treat himself the way he treats all his other characters, facing off with self-disemboweling dogs and "the world is more horrible than we pretend" madness, is just cold, man. Cold.

That was...odd...very odd

Bret Easton Ellis is an amazing writer. This is a haunted house story in the classical tradition dragged into the Twenty-First Century. It's superb, right up there with House of Leaves, maybe even surpassing because of the inclusion of the deeper themes of family and regret. Some parts are incredibly creepy as well. It's hard to believe it's over 10 years old - it's completely relevant and urgent.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything

This is amazing and weird

Makes me want to forgive my father and end cycles

Dare I say I see the skeleton of The Shards in this.

Este Easton Ellis se parece más al de American Psycho que al de Los Confidentes o Menos que cero y eso me gusta porque cuando el tío de pone a narrar lo hace más que bien. De momento, sin perder sus señas de identidad, esta historia de terror promete.

This novel could have been really something but it turned into a real dog’s breakfast. Crap all over the place. What a mess.

Reading Lunar Park was like watching one of those jovial interviews with major serial killers you can find on youtube. The reporter is alarmed/mortified/astonished to find himself quite liking this monster who slaughtered 17 human beings. You get this kind of dialogue -

-tHey Jeff, can you explain a little what would be going through your mind when you were drilling holes in those guys’ heads to make them into sex zombies?
-tOh, you know, pretty much the same that would be going through your mind when you’re trying to finish a tricky bit of DIY, John.
-tAw, that so, Jeff?
-tYeah, pretty much, John!
(they laugh ruefully.)

For the first 40 pages, Lunar Park sideswipes you with what appears to be a bizarrely truthful autobiographical account of BEE’s own life and career. Then it veers off into pure fiction when this version of Bret marries a famous movie star and winds up playing father to her two children. This first part is lots of fun. BEE portrays himself as a charming disarming kinda coke-guzzling drug-snorting alcoholic stumbling foggily through his revoltingly affluent day with attendant wife, kids, servants and girlfriend.

I was intrigued. I was thinking : Bret, where are you going with all this? It kept me turning the pages, and they were very easy to read, and even quite funny.
At this point the book appeared to be three things at the same time

-tA psychodrama about fathers and sons, laced with sadness
-tA light amusing satire of very rich parents, with every damn kid in the neighbourhood medicated up to the maximum legally permitted
-tAn increasingly vicious hateful self-portrait, circling brilliantly and fascinatingly around the psychological black hole that is American Psycho

But then it shimmies into a fourth thing which takes the rest of the story over and this is where the book drives over the cliff and smashes to bits on the rocks below, as it becomes a lame Stephen King story, or, since I’ve never read one of SK’s supernatural books, I should say, what I imagine rather contemptuously to be something SK might come up with : fiction written by the main character “Bret Easton Ellis” starts to come to life! Yes – it seems that Patrick Bateman himself has been freed from American Psycho and is stalking the pages of Lunar Park, and up to his old tricks too.

Yawn.

Yawny-yawn yawn yawnioh ho hmmmm.

Oh , also, we get the device of a child’s toy which (also) comes to life and turns homicidal. This takes up the last half of this novel.

How many times have these two devices been used before in horror fiction?

6,214. No, wait - 6,793. I was using slightly out of date figures.

Anyway, A LOT.

Bret, was that the best you could come up with?

By page 390 Bret is channeling Ghostbusters! And a little later, An American Werewolf in London!

HOW THIS NOVEL COULD HAVE BEEN GREAT

Throughout this long tale, the fictional BEE is haunted by the even more fictional Patrick Bateman. Just as, I guess, the real BEE is haunted by his own misogynistic horror of a novel. Here he is on page 181, not wanting to think about American Psycho :

I closed my eyes again. I did not want to go back to that book. It had been about my father (his rage, his obsession with status, his loneliness), whom I had transformed into a fictional serial killer… I had moved past the casual carnage that was so prevalent in the books I’d conceived in my twenties, past the severed heads and the soup made of blood and the woman [er, let’s skip that sentence]… Exploring that kind of violence had been “interesting” and “exciting” and it was all “metaphorical” anyway – at least to me at that moment of my life, when I was young and pissed off… I was “transgressive” and the book was really about “style”

When (in Lunar Park) it seems that some crazy guy is pretending to be Patrick Bateman and copying each murder from American Psycho, BEE comments:

This was the moment that detractors of the book had warned me about : if anything happens to anyone as a result of the publication of this novel, Bret Easton Ellis was to blame… and that’s why the National Organisation of Women had boycotted the book… I thought the idea was laughable – that there was no one as insane or vicious as this fictional character out there in the real world. Besides, Patrick Bateman was a notoriously unreliable narrator, and if you actually read the book you could come away doubting that these crimes ever occurred. There were large hints that they existed only in Bateman’s mind. The murders and torture were in fact fantasies fueled by his rage and fury about how life in America was structured and how this had trapped him. The fantasies were an escape. This was the book’s thesis. It was about manners and mores, not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?

I appreciated that this all sounds like a desperate attempt by BEE to convince himself that he had not written a horrible misogynistic novel. (And is the explanation adopted by AP's many fans). Now – if Lunar Park had continued to probe this clearly-still-open wound within BEE, and maybe ask why, in describing BEE’s father’s rage, or Patrick Bateman’s fury at how life in America was structured, it had to be demonstrated through the torture and dismemberment of women, and not by some other means (say, planting bombs in subways – there are many ways to express a general rage), then we would have got something fascinating. But it was not to BEE. Instead, a lot of supernatural malarkey which – once again – is all about BEE’s relationship with his father and (fictional) son. In other words, it’s all about him. What a narcissist.

TWO AND A HALF STARS

I liked the satire, I liked the sudden-left-turn weirdness (until it became ridiculous), it wasn’t boring at all. It was stupid (for all its preening intelligence) but it wasn’t dull.

YELLOW LEGAL PADS

a yellow legal pad that she would mark up and casually refer back to (p288)

What is it with Americans and their yellow legal pads? If I had £1 (=$1.23) for each time somebody uses a yellow legal pad in an American novel I could afford that world cruise. Don’t they ever come in any other colour? No blue legal pads? Always yellow? Always legal?