This is a hard book to read, not because it's difficult to follow, but because it's intentionally obtuse. A 550-page novel about a male model turned international spy/terrorist-recruit is going to involve some level of obfuscation, and it's likely many people will not make it to the end (in a similar way that I could not finish AMERICAN PSYCHO, which this novel surpasses in quality).

It's difficult to care very much about the characters when we know so little about them--or rather, when we don't know what's really true about them. The first 200 pages of the novel are all about preparations for the opening night of a new club. The next 200 pages take place on a cruise ship, then London, then Paris, and twist and turn their way into the actual plot, which is then followed for the next 125 pages, and ultimately upended in the final 25.

Thus, about 125 pages of this book went quickly for me, and the rest did not, in contrast to the first time I read it, back in 2004 or 2005. Back then, I thought it was clearly Ellis's best novel. Now, I am apt to consider that LESS THAN ZERO.

Ultimately, while I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this novel to the average reader, it is a success because it is a beautiful statement by Ellis on the nature of celebrity, no doubt catalyzed by his own personal experiences as one of the last "famous authors." It is a somewhat experimental novel, and while there's no question that Ellis is a very good writer, the story could use firming up. It could have been edited down into something much shorter and more straightforward. The plot itself isn't bad, it just takes forever to get there, and it feels artificial, like so many other things in the book. All of these choices seem intentional, and arguments can be made that the book is either a masterpiece or a complete disaster, but Ellis has always been more provocateur than sentimentalist, and there is much to admire in this effort. This is not a touchy-feely novel, but then again neither is Hollywood: it's kill or be killed. Dark, perhaps, but accurate in its own way. https://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/202...

This book is so tiresome. It drones on and on.

Where do I even begin with this book. It's really not worth me spending too much time on, however, I want revenge on this book. It's not fair that I wasted so much time on it. Life is too short. It's really long (about 540 pages) and the first 337 pages are so terrible. I wanted to put it down after page 60, but I was reading this with a book club, so I decided to attempt to stick with it. It only got worse and worse and more boring and more pointless and my hatred for it just kept growing and growing and growing and growing....until about page 337 or so.

Then all of a sudden, there is a drastic twist in the story. It was not until that plot twist that I cared even slightly to continue reading. However, I will admit that this did make me a tad interested to see what would turn up. Then it bored me for another 40 pages or so - oh to pick back up! Once it FINALLY picked up (around the last 150 pgs or so) I couldn't put it down, because, I did want to find out what would happen.

But those last pages do not override the effort it took me to read the first 400 pages. This book lacks consistency. Sure 40 pages are good, then 100 pages are TERRIBLE. Unfortunately, I just do not like books where you know NOTHING about ANYTHING that goes on until FINALLY a character just tells you all that has happened. It's stupid and anti-climactic. I found it predictable as well. It's VERY graphic and I don't really need to read a 7 page long sex scene. Cut that crap out. 2 pages are sufficient.

If B.E.E. would've taken 2 names out of every name dropping sequence, he could've shortened the book by about 50 pages. It's too much. It's cumbersome. It's terrible. Don't waste your time.

Also, if you have a fear of flying - I don't recommend reading this book.

This book has given me a headache. I wanted to read it as I love American Psycho and Lunar Park but this one was just endless and confusing. I kept waiting for some spark of genius to happen but instead got to a point where I couldn’t go on any more.

Cover Story: Fashion Models and B-class celebrities turned International Terrorists!

Or………… Wait! Do these plastic explosives match my Armani? Call the camera crew. We have to go back to wardrobe! Reset the timer. And….where’s my Zanex?
---
OMG. ummmm……..*yawn?

This isn’t World Weekly News, but a novel that didn’t know where or how exactly to end. And I’m shocked really, because I adore Bret Easton Ellis. I also secretly enjoy World Weekly News, which could arguably, at times, be a better read than this novel. Maybe he could have used Batboy or those giant army ants that eat giant housewives in rural Texas. Something I could connect to, something I could try to care about. Still, I think if Bret Easton Ellis were in need of a kidney and we matched – I’d be down.

I kept hoping the main character, Victor Ward/Victor Johnson (potentially two separate people) would just die already. But this hope occurred for the first time for me on, like, page…… 50? or so. I trudged on in hopes that he/they’d become less vacuous or maybe get impaled or strangled or blown up or attacked with a chain-saw á la Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”) style. It would have been nice to read about Victor’s entrails being spun onto a wheel, the way they did in the middle ages when they’d burn trapped rats to dig into people’s stomachs. Rats and wheels, it’s torture genius. It proves that human ingenuity is linear, I think. Later on, we made light bulbs and 100 calorie packs. Rats and wheels, this is how much I disliked Victor Whatever.

Then, I’m wondering, am I supposed to hate Victor Ward/Johnson? He’s a man so obviously disconnected from reality – like in the way that Michael Jackson is disconnected from reality. Except Victor Ward/Johnson isn’t so far gone that he sleeps in Tupperware just yet. And his nose doesn’t fall off – just yet. He just thinks a camera crew is following him everywhere sprinkling confetti all about. This is maybe his way to cope with being involved in gory terrorist activities. (I think.) I can’t, however, figure out the confetti metaphor. Can someone fill me in? Lost! But I don’t care enough to be found, really. It’s all [insert random celebrity names here], Cerruiti, Huey Lewis and the News, Brooks Brothers, Cristal, blah, blah, blah. Did I floss today? I’m tired and bored. I’m down for the count. And so – the book gets put on the nightstand for another night or another week until primetime TV is bad and I’ve had a glass of wine.

The plot begins half-way through the novel, just at about the time you’re finally ready to put it down and give up. Thank God, a point to this empty madness. But is it? Really? I’m thinking……….not so much, no. The over-materialist banality was eating at my soul for the first 250 pages. I didn’t recover when things became more interesting. Victor’s father wanted him sent away because he was running for Senate (or was it a Presidential nomination?). His quasi-gay unsuccessful college drop-out son was not good for campaigning or something like that. Victor Ward/Johnson is lured by a person potentially hired by his father, a man named Palakon. Palakon is somehow associated with the French embassy, and then not. It’s not so clear as the lines between reality and “World Victor” become blurred. Palakon, et al. decide to take advantage of the situation they have with Victor in order to transport some uber-modern super-secret plastic explosives en route to Europe.

After this: lots of drugs and death disguised as movies sets- disguised as real death- disguised as film-making. Interrogations. Love triangles. A graphic ménage á trios that spans a full chapter. Confusion about the motive behind the violence because the narrator is unreliable. More death. *yawn

Not your best work Mr. Ellis, but still call me if you need a kidney.

I’m not qualified to make a judgment on the worst book ever written because there are just too many of them. I am, however, ready to say that Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis is the worst book I’ve ever read or, at least, one of them. You may wonder why, if it’s so bad, I continued to read it. I had decided early on that it was a terrible book and also that if I was going to write a terrible reaction to it, I should at least read the whole thing.

In the opening sections the reader is introduced to Victor Ward, megalomaniac model. He has all the right publicity, the right looks, the trendiest friends and is seen at all the right places. He is a totally vacuous and self-centered person with no redeeming graces that I could detect. He and his friends seem be involved in a game of competitive hedonism. Victor, like the entire novel, is as shallow as a dusty hole.

For a long while the plot seems to be going nowhere. Then suddenly around page 135 a plot of sorts seems to appear only to vanish a few pages later back into an empty wilderness. All the reader has are catalogs of labels, celebrities, movies, songs and all the other glittery flash of pop culture.

The plot, when it finally comes back to stay, revolves around a labyrinthine and confusing terrorist conspiracy. When the setting shifts to London and Paris, Ellis introduces the conceit that life is a movie. The plot and setting is loaded with not one, but two film crews. The reader is perpetually wondering what is real and what is pulled off through special effects. And the confetti. There is confetti everywhere. Perhaps it is gratuitous like the over-blown, and graphic sex, violence, drug use and suffering. The blurb on the back cover calls Glamorama a satire. It’s not even close; it’s more of a farce without the comic element.

I don’t know why I found it to be so irksome, but for no apparent reason the chapter numbers count down rather than up. Perhaps it’s to mirror the count-down to a giant bomb, a blast that turns out to be a dud.

Glamorama is entertaining, funny in a dark way, suspenseful, and violent. Most importantly, it keeps you guessing. Detractors of Glamorama seem to be made up mostly of people who can’t handle, or are tired of the copious drug use, explicit sex scenes, and graphic violence that Ellis is well known for. If you have read “The Rules of Attraction” and “American Psycho” and enjoyed them, then do not hesitate to read Glamorama. One of my favorite BEE novels.

Read this book in formerly communist countries and felt overpowered; as though I’d had a million Starbucks coffees whilst sweating in Lycra. Obviously brilliant though and I’m referring to everyone as baby from now on. Soy cap one sugar, baby.

Das Buch hat es leider sehr schwer: Es liegt eingequetscht zwischen zwei Romanen des gleichen Autors, die leider zwei der besten sind, die je geschrieben wurden („American Psycho“ und „The Shards“). Das legt die Messlatte für Glamorama so unfassbar hoch, und ich glaube, dass der Autor das auch wusste: Das Buch ist in vielen Facetten einfach nur eine Weiterführung von American Psycho und seinen Themen: das dauernde Verwechseln von Personen, die Auflistung von Besitztümern, die Obsession mit Promis. Das liest sich vielleicht wie eine negative Kritik, aber das Schöne ist ja, dass American Psycho nicht nur so unfassbar gut, sondern immer noch so relevant ist; und genau deshalb kann man Glamorama als eine Fortführung dieses Kommentars auf unsere heutige Gesellschaft lesen, nur dass der Kommentar eben schon knapp 30 Jahre alt ist. Es gibt Passagen in dem Buch, insbesondere die zu Bildbearbeitung und dem Verhältnis von Fake News zur Realität, die wirklich erst seit GPT und Midjourney ihren vollen Inhalt entfalten. American Psycho ist schmutzig und animalisch, Glamorama ist chromfarben und Hochglanz, The Shards ist sonnenbeschienen und melancholisch, aber alle drei eint diese unfassbare Irrelevanz der maßlosen Gewalt. Glamorama ist sicherlich das am wenigsten beeindruckende Buch der drei, auch wenn Ellis das für sein bestes Buch hält, aber das ist ja egal. The Shards perfektioniert manche Aspekte aus Glamorama, während Glamorama manche Aspekte aus American Psycho genauso gut weiterführt. Dennoch: Die letzten Seiten aus dem Schiffskapitel sind einige der besten, die ich je gelesen habe.

Okay, sure, this is the best novel ever written. Okay, sure. Okay, this is better than every other book I’ve read in my entire life, not just The Shards, which was my main question with this re-read. This was my favorite book of 2022, The Shards was my favorite book of 2023, which one do I like more? It’s this one. I like this book more than Lord of the Flies, and Beartown, and The Long Walk. It’s ALL Glamorama.

The first time I read this book I loved it. This time I understood it. To a point, I think. I took it slow, man, because I wanted to understand it. And I think I got it, for the most part. Ellis is saying so much in this book, though, and when I say ‘understood’ it, I’m not just talking about the plot, which is already a trip and a half. I’m talking about everything.

Victor Ward as a character is one that I care so deeply about. So desperately about. Beyond the fact that he cracks me up before everything goes sideways for him, in the beginning when he was asking for definitions of every word over three syllables and, as a not-quite-straight male model in the 90s, had to be explained what AIDs was, and all that, I love him. And I do think that empathy we see in Victor is why his story ends the way it does.

I’m going to get a little into it, a little into the overarching message and theme of the book. Not much, but a little. Victor’s empathy, which we see ramp up when the Sam Ho stuff gets underway, is so alien to everyone else in this novel. There’s a lot that can be said about the “film crew” stuff, but I do think that’s more of a metaphor than anything; a metaphor of celebrity culture being acting, to put it simply. In very simple terms. We do also sometimes see hints of intelligence within Victor; clearly, there is the expectation from people who have known him his whole life that he could handle law school, and it is implied that much of his idiocy (which I love desperately) is an act that became reality. He sure has so much music knowledge in his head.

I dunno, man, I just love it. I could write a thesis on this book. Paragraph four kind of dipped its toes in, but—yeah. Yeah, this is better than The Shards. This is better than everything. God. I can’t wait to wait two years and read it again and understand it even more.


|original review 7.22|
Victor is the dumbest motherfucker alive, and goddamn was he fun to read about. Honestly, first fifty pages, could take them or leave them, and then I got into Victor's perspective, and then all the crazy shit really started, and man, this might be my favorite book of the year.

Obviously Ellis's whole schtick on twitter and in interviews is at best collosally tiresome and at worst actually increasing the sum of human suffering, but Glamorama remains an astonishing achievement, both technically and — as unlikely as it might sound — in terms of emotional heft.

My personal favorite of Ellis's works.

I had a good time with the symbolism in the book (though some of it is still somewhat confusing), the shallowness of the characters, etcetera.

My only beef with the book is that it should have ended at a point before the actual ending. It wrapped up nicely, Bret, why did you have to go and add more?

Like pretty much everything written by Bret Easton Ellis, it's not for everyone.

3.5 stars. An overly long, eventful novel about the unlikeable Victor Ward. Victor is a model, singer in a band and movie actor who is focused on knowing the in people, being photographed at every opportunity, and having sex with beautiful people. There are lots of clever descriptions about fashion and pop song lines are cleverly and wittily included in the dialogue. The novel changes direction half way through when Victor inadvertently is mixed up with a terrorist organisation within the successful modelling, movie world. Victor becomes less sure of himself. There are lots of plot twists.

Readers new to Bret Easton Ellis should firstly begin with ‘Less Than Zero’.

This book was first published in 1998.