A young student called Clay returns to Los Angeles for Christmas break to see friends and family. His visit reads something like this: “We’re rich kids in LA! Let’s do drugs and have sex – we’re soooo hedonistic and transgressive! Ooo, let’s have sex again and do MORE drugs!” Repeat for 200 pages and you’ve got Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel Less Than Zero!

Ellis can write really well so it’s a shame he doesn’t really have anything to say besides: rich LA brats are aimless, lost youth, their parents are drugged-out zombies, and LA culture is surface-level garbage and miserable. Ok – and? He just goes round and round repeating the same blasé party scenes over and over to underline this unimpressive point.

All of the vapid one-dimensional “characters” sound the same which might either be a lack of skill on Ellis’ part (he was 21 when this was published) or deliberate to emphasise their lack of character and superficiality. Either way, it doesn’t add up to a very interesting read. At no point did I care about any of them or their depressing lives.

It also feels like Ellis is trying too hard to shock. One melodramatic scene focuses on a girl injecting heroin, there’s a male prostitute working off his debt to a scuzzy dealer/pimp, a young teen girl is gang-raped, and everyone’s doing blow all the time. The shock shtick is all this novel has: it’s morbidly interesting but completely without substance and pointless. The same critique could be made of American Psycho but Less Than Zero isn’t as boring. It might’ve worked on ‘80s/early ‘90s audiences but Ellis’ shock tactics read today as really lame and try-hard, like a sad old edgelord’s scribblings.

I like Ellis’ writing but mostly for his later books like The Informers, Imperial Bedrooms and, easily my favourite, Lunar Park. His early books like Less Than Zero and American Psycho feel like a writer with enormous talent distracted with being edgy and cool – a one-note author repeating himself ad infinitum rather than one who knows how to develop a theme more roundly and compellingly. But I suppose a lot of that has to do with him being in his twenties when he wrote these too. I highly recommend checking out Lunar Park instead of the dated and tedious Less Than Zero.

We wait for most of the novel before Godot actually shows up--but then we just want him to leave and take everyone else in the story with him.

Not so dreadfully afflicting as American Psycho--because what is?--but emptier ultimately than Generation X, with which it forms a bookend over the time period typically claimed for the generation.

This text contains the lumpenized antisocial nihilist credo, substituting solipsistic aesthetic imperatives for legal rule or ethical principle: "What's right? If you want something, then you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, then you have the right to do it" (189). The character who intones this bit of cynicism, like all the other principals, though fairly described by "But you don't need anything. You have everything" (id.), believes that the answer to "what don't you have?" is "I don't have anything to lose" (190). So, yeah, the hard life of those who have more money than sense.

Narrator is not so abject as everyone else, but he nevertheless easily walks away from crimes in progress, dead bodies, persons in need, whatever, as an aesthetic matter, without being interested in any generalized obligation to intervene, even if he does not commit the crimes himself. His ludicrous self-orientation is perhaps the point of the effort here.

Recommended for those situated where the land ends, readers with an urge to stop but who did not, and persons who drop out of real life.

Avevo cominciato a leggere Le schegge di Ellis, libro che, visto l'hype gigante, mi ha incuriosito molto, anche se mi ero ripromesso di leggerlo solo dopo altri dell'autore (di cui non ho mai letto nulla).
Dopo aver letto 70 pagine mi sono reso conto che non mi stava comunicando molto, che, per quanto si lasciasse leggere con piacere, mi aveva incuriosito solo la cornice pseudo-autobiografica. Il resto mi sembrava appartenere a un filone di letture che ora come ora non ho interesse a fare.
Ma
Ho deciso di cominciare Meno di zero. L'ho già finito e devo dire che mi è piaciuto moltissimo. Scrivere un romanzo del genere a vent'anni è veramente difficile. L'Ellis ventenne ha una gestione del ritmo pazzesca: i periodi lunghi sono perlopiù in paratassi (scelta azzeccatissima) e si alternano benissimo a quelli brevi, il discorso diretto è alternato a quello indiretto (per non farci mai dimenticare che esiste un narratore in prima persona), i momenti di tensione, disagio e caoticità sono bilanciati (e questa davvero non me l'aspettavo) da momenti di respiro in cui il protagonista si guarda attorno e si lascia andare a brevi descrizioni degli spazi aperti. Densità e rarefazione, così si fa. E poi, soprattutto, riesce a fare una cosa che a vent'anni è difficile: Ellis non dice, mostra. Il classico show don't tell (che classico un cavolo perché mica è scontato usarlo, e in particolare così bene).

Tra l'altro quanto sono inquietanti i messaggi, così evocativi, in cui incappa il protagonista, come se stesse, attraverso le parole degli altri, chiedendo continuamente aiuto (per esempio l'iniziale "La gente ha paura di buttarsi"), quanto è resa bene la necessità di toccare il fondo e quanto riesce il sovvertimento dell'idea per cui chi è ricco ha solamente da perdere. Qui i personaggi hanno tutto, ma non rischiano di perdere nulla. Come si viene a patti con questo?

2.5⭐

Last year I spent a few months as an intern for a major national arts publication, which shall remain nameless because that makes me look cooler than if I just blurted it out. I had a few regular duties at this (unpaid) gig, the primary one being transcription of interviews. You might think that transcribing is drudgery, and in a sense it is. But if the interview subject was interesting—and, given this publication's bent and cachet, most of the subjects were interesting—it provided a rare glimpse into the messy vocal raw material of an interview, as opposed to the cleaned-up, translated-into-printed-words final product.

One of the most fascinating interviews I transcribed was with none other than Bret Easton Ellis. The occasion of the interview was the release of the film version of Ellis' The Informers, which, according to Ellis and just about everyone else who saw it, was pretty much of a misbegotten failure. (Ellis co-wrote the script, but the film was apparently hacked to bits in the editing room; his tone toward the film was one of aggrievement, and he insisted that the longer, un-fucked-with cut of the film—it was supposed to be a sprawling, Altman-esque epic—was good. It's doubtful we'll ever see it. I'm actually not sure how much of this stuff made it into the printed interview, since some of it was supposed to be off the record.) Listening to the interview was an odd experience, because Ellis is an odd man. He was very personable and friendly toward the interviewer, moreso than any other subject I transcribed—he seemed to believe that he was just shooting the shit with this critic over the phone rather than giving an interview, and consequently he didn't seem to care much about staying on topic or saying things that made sense. As on his Twitter feed, he mostly talked about movies. Apparently a huge cinephile, Ellis kept prodding the interviewer with questions about which films he'd seen lately, what did he think of film X, how much he hated film Y, etc. My favorite moment went like this:

Interviewer: {Thoughtful, penetrating question about Ellis' work}

Ellis: {Loooooooooooooooong pause}

Ellis: Did you see Monsters vs. Aliens?

I shit you not, folks. I can't remember if Ellis eventually answered the question but I do know he went off on how much he loved Monsters vs. Aliens for a few minutes. And I loved him for that. But sometimes he was cogent and he said some smart, interesting shit—he went off an inspired riff about aesthetics vs. morality, and while he was ostensibly talking about the Irish-hunger-strike film Hunger his comments obviously applied to his own work. And he was really, really nice. Like, weirdly nice. He has this reputation for bad-boy nihilism or misogyny or whatever, but the guy I listened to seemed like way more of a mensch than, say, Jonathan "Fuck You" Franzen. Having never read a word by the man, I went home that day liking him.

Just the other day, over a year after the events related above, I went back to the offices of the aforementioned major national arts publication to interview for a copy editor position. Afterwards, not feeling too great about how it went, I consoled myself by hanging out in the used bookstore around the corner, where I walked out with copies of American Psycho and Less Than Zero. In fact, the inspiration for this purchase was not so much a sense-memory recall of last year's Ellis transcript as it was the recent GR review of American Psycho by Brian. That review was totally badass, and made me want to give this controversial writer the old college try.

So, Less Than Zero: 200 pages in the company of the overprivileged, morally vacuous sons and daughters of neglectful Hollywood royalty in the cocaine-addled 1980s. I loved it, man. It feels like an important book, and that Ellis was only 19 when he wrote it makes it at once more impressive (because the writing is so confident) and more authentically disturbing (because no matter how much Ellis protests that his shit isn't autobiographical, let's look at the facts: Ellis wrote this book as a teenager from L.A going to college on the east coast; the book is about a teenager from L.A. home from college on the east coast; and even if nothing that happens in the book specifically happened to him in real life, he was clearly doing what teachers tell you to do—he was writing what he knew. And what he knew wasn't pretty). So yeah, five stars; here's a few reasons why I'm all about this shit:

It's viscerally effective. The vignette structure and clipped prose style propel the book along in a speedy, disorienting haze that mirrors protagonist Clay's fucked mental state. It moves, and if you wanted to just read this book in one quick burst of a sitting without really thinking about it at all you would probably still have a worthwhile experience. Like I said, visceral.

It's majorly evocative of time and place. I'm sure you've heard that thing James Joyce said about how if Dublin burned down it could be rebuilt based on Ulysses. Well, if the dream architects from Inception wanted to recreate 1980s Los Angeles they would need a copy of Less Than Zero to use as a reference guide. I haven't felt so immersed in the '80s since I watched Earth Girls Are Easy, or so L.A.-ified since I read Chandler. So many references to Tab, Betamax, MTV and (of course) cocaine—and that's just what's on the surface.

It's deceptively complex. There are interesting questions of form here. The novel is in the first person, but Clay's narration subverts our expectations about first-person narration, in that his flashes of introspection are few and far between; we know very little of his inner life (and we learn jackshit about other characters' inner lives). Instead, Clay's narration provides a just-the-facts-ma'am account of events that in a healthy person would provoke some kind of emotional reaction. On top of that is a fascinatingly discordant effect: we can tell that Clay is desperately miserable because it's reflected in the actions he relates, but he doesn't give us access to the thoughts and emotions by which we would typically understand his misery. By leaving this question mark, Ellis heroically refuses to supply facile answers about What's Wrong With The Kids These Days, letting us draw our own conclusions. Perhaps only a writer as young as Ellis was at the time could have been smart enough to do it this way. If he'd tried to fill in the blanks, to offer even the most poetic of explanations, the book would've been sunk by smarmy self-importance.

Underlying the horror is both a strain of dark humor and a stream of unexpectedly lovely grace notes. This is an effect I associate specifically with the films of Harmony Korine—finding beauty in even the ugliest human environments. (Korine would be a great choice to adapt Ellis for the screen, though I doubt Harm would be interested in fucking with other people's work. The masked, murderous redneck freaks of Trash Humpers aren't so very different from Ellis' fucked-up Angeleno nihilists.) In Less Than Zero some of those grace notes can be found in the italicized interstitials recalling Clay's antediluvian trip to visit his grandparents; some are found in Ellis' physical descriptions of the L.A. landscape; and some pop up amidst the soulless anti-hedonism that makes up the bulk of the novel's action. As for humor, you have to squint a little bit to see it, but check out those scenes of Clay talking to his awful therapist, who just wants Clay to help him with his screenplay. Or the back-and-forth, gossipy inanities that some characters sling at each other about who slept with who, or the frequent refrain stating or asking if somebody O.D.'d. Hell, most of the book is funny if you look at it from a certain angle. And from a different angle it's a despairing tragedy.

In the years since this novel was published I think the moneyed youth of America has gotten even more horrible, or at least equally horrible in different ways. Gary Shteyngart sort of tried to write about this in Super Sad True Love Story, but he failed. My generation needs its Bret Easton Ellis. And I need to read the rest of this guy's stuff.

3.5 Stars
I have become a fan of this author's work after reading American Psycho and Lunar Park. Fellow readers recommended that I read this one before reading his newest release, The Shards. I liked aspects of this one but the slice of life but I wished it had more plot or a horror twist. As always, Bret Easton Ellis writes very unlikeable characters so be warned.

This is one of the most disturbing novels about youth that I'll ever read. It is also one of my fave debut novels of all time and, as well as being vastly misunderstood, probably the book that had me devoting more of my time to reading. Bret Easton Ellis totally nails it in his depiction of rich and jaded adolescence consumed by a cocktail of hard drugs, wild sex, and trendy designer clothing. A few of the scenes really were shocking; one in particular I'll never forget, but even more frightening than that, is the level of cynicism these youngsters have embedded in them, making some of the great rebellious youths of film and literature look like they would be perfect for roles in a kids feel-good Broadway musical. The thing is though, these kids aren't really rebels; at least when it comes to rebelling against their parents. if anything, they happily mirror them - narcissistic, vacant souls, blank stares, endless shopping sprees where you don't have to worry about over spending, popping pills like they are sweets, sleeping around. Despite a degree of sensationalism, Less Than Zero is more like an MTV reality documentary, but one which would air long after the sun has gone down due to its content - and even then some of it would have to be edited out. I think its such a cool novel, with a great slick deadpan prose, in the same way I thought that Pulp Fiction was such a fucking cool movie, with one hell of a script. And in the narrator, Clay, here is somebody that well and trully sucked me into his world. I really can't understand all the low ratings for this. Sure, it's not going to dazzle everybody, but there is much to this novel, in my opinion, that makes it a seminal work of the 80s. Not bad for a 21 years old.

Bret Easton Ellis’s 1985 novel “Less Than Zero” is one of those literary time capsules that is useful when one wants a glimpse at a certain mentality of a certain type of person in a certain place and time. In this case, it is a glimpse at rich white kids of Los Angeles, CA, circa mid-1980s. It is fascinating, illuminating, disturbing, depressing, ugly, funny, horrifying, and beautiful. It is also the primary source for nearly every cliche about the 1980s ever utilized since.

I have never seen the 1987 film adaptation starring Robert Downey Jr. and Andrew McCarthy, although I wouldn’t mind seeing it, despite my knowing that Ellis found it to be very disappointing. According to Ellis, nearly everything about his novel that he thought was important was gutted and replaced with sentimental gimcrack. What remained was a soulless shell of a film (with a killer ‘80s soundtrack, of course), which is pretty typical of Hollywood and, not ironically, perfectly illustrative of everything Ellis was trying to say about that city of angels.

Ellis has gotten a bad rap for being vapid, purposely controversial, amoral, and offensive: and those were criticisms from the critics who liked him.

To be fair, and from someone who is coming to Ellis for the very first time (I recently read “White”, his most recent book, which was different from his other work in that it was his first piece of nonfiction and a memoir), it seems to me that Ellis’s writing in “Less Than Zero” is more journalistic and observational than prurient and voyeuristic.

If he was going for prurient, he failed miserably, as there is nothing very erotic or sexually exciting in the book. Indeed, the few sex scenes in the book are (in order of appearance) an awkward sympathy fuck, a pedophiliac snuff film, and a homosexual rape scene. If you happen to get off on any of that, there is something seriously wrong with you. Sorry to be judgy, just sayin’...

And, well, if there is an opposite to “voyeuristic”, then this book defines it, because one cannot unsee or unknow any of the horrible things one comes across in its pages, as hard as one tries.

Still, the book is important, and riveting, in its unflinching look at the spiritual emptiness of an entire generation of children. It’s perhaps more apropos today, looking back at the “lost youth” of the ‘80s, and seeing how those children have become adults and parents and pillars of their community. (This may explain why Ellis wrote a sequel, “Imperial Bedrooms”, in 2010, that answered the question of what the kids from “Less Than Zero” ended up becoming thirty years later.)

The Clays and Blairs and Julians and Rips of the world are all now at that age where they will soon be receiving the AARP magazine. They are all at that age where suffering from arthritis and gout and sciatica are the norm. They are all probably dealing with vapid and amoral teenagers themselves, hearing in the back of their head the phrase what goes around, comes around. They are several years past failed marriages and stock market crashes that left their 401ks in the garbage and deaths of parents and any other mid-life crises, and---assuming they haven’t committed suicide, died of cancer, or been thrown into federal prisons for tax evasions or corporate illegalities---they are entering the back nine of their twilight years, awash in the existential fear that their empty lives are truly meaningless and forgettable in the cosmic scope of things.

Books of this nature age well with me. I keep thinking about what happened, what Ellis might have meant. I find it fascinating what people walk away with from this and American Psycho. It seems rather obvious to me that this book is not just about spoiled rich drug addicts wasting away while taking some of their world with them. The characters' actions, more specifically their lack of action, says so much for the state of the times in this book, for LA, for American culture, all of which I find maybe even more relevant today.

The fact that people can walk away from this book thinking it is only about drugs, that they "did not get it", or they thought it pointless, just makes me sad. Ellis is an extremely talented writer. His writing is deceptive and layered. The best way for me to convey why I so far love his books is to relate what I think when I read them. I wonder what his characters say about me, why I am able to relate and what my reactions to what happens reflect about me. About LA (a place I hope never to return to) and other such cities, with sterile environments and filthy underbellies, places where people come together to consume and waste. About the indifference of youth and American culture. About relationships and detatchment, self abuse and self worth, vanity and denial. What Ellis writes feels real, no matter how awful or horrific. That is truly frightening.

This book is especially disturbing to me because the youth protrayed are now everywhere, no longer only the rich or confined to the cities. Indifference spreads with each generation.

The main character has zero emotional attachments to his world, his family and friends. He has desensitized himself into acceptance. When he faces things in the book that shock or bother him, his true self shines through.

Three scenes really shocked me and that is all I will say about that since I did not see them coming at all.

Some of the most disturbing parts of this book are simple comments made by Clay's family. Family should protect and it is little wonder how Clay started on his current path. Clay and his friends are at that age when they are becoming adults and are now responsible for their actions more than ever before. I am a firm believer that people instinctively know basic rights from wrongs and when a youth becomes an adult and chooses a knowing wrong, then they may be close to evil. Ellis' characters choose evil and let the guilt run off instead of settling in.

I think the book tried a little too hard towards the end but it worked so I bumped 4 stars to 5 stars. The typical use of brand names, music, and posh scenes, cities and clubs and film and music, all shine through as in American Psycho, though maybe not as strong here . This is an incredibly sad book about, as one character describes, a beautiful boy who makes no effort, and though I am having problems writing coherently, summing up my thoughts and reactions in an organized manner, I know I could ramble all night about this book and still be slightly confused as to why I like it so much.

I do not know how to rate this book properly or what to think of it. At one hand it was very easy to get invested in but at the same time the descriptions and the horrid way people was handled made my stomach turn. I'm clearly not as cold blooded enough to listen/read Bret Easton Ellis books, witouth being extremely uncomfortable. I've only got 30 min left but I cannot listen to it anymore because it all became to much for me. I will probably not read something else by him in the future.

Il romanzo di una generazione, il mia, quella degli anni ‘80, con tanta cocaina, sesso e una tristezza che annichilisce. Secondo me, però, Less Than Zero non riesce ad essere incisivo ed equilibrato quanto Bright Lights, Big City di Jay McInerney, che resta dunque il mio preferito fra gli scrittori del cosiddetto “Brat Pack”.

After reading Ellis’ The Shards last summer and binging Lili Anolik’s podcast Once Upon a Time at Bennington College I wanted to reread Ellis’ debut novel, Less Than Zero. Anolik’s entertaining and gossipy podcast details Ellis’, among other literary notabilities like Donna Tartt, formative years at college, while The Shards can be seen as the fictitious 'real-life' inspiration for the characters we meet in Less than Zero.

I first read Less Than Zero as a teenager and I honestly can’t remember what I thought of it then. This time around the story of jaded and world-weary priviliged youths in eighties Los Angeles kind of depressed and stressed me out. It also felt less fresh than I’d expected – probably due to the fact that I’d recently read The Shards and that the book is almost 40 years old(!).

Still it’s one of the instances where Ellis’ nihilistic sensationalism and spare prose works the best making up a depraved and bleak kind of LA noir. So I definitely ended up appreciating the Ellis style and the feat of this novel more than I probably did the first time around.