3.5 stelline ☆
Se doveste bere un sorso ogni volta che viene descritto un personaggio biondo, abbronzato, che si fa una pista e guarda Mtv, finireste in coma etilico dopo una decina di pagine. E se anche vi prendeste solo una sbronza, forse non cambierebbe niente: del resto, in questo libro sembra che non succeda niente. Ma è solo un'impressione: tutte le feste, il sesso, la droga, la noia, la noia, la noia, dipingono uno scenario sconsolato in cui l'apparenza scintillante lascia spazio a un nulla cosmico di relazioni umane. Una volta levata la patina, di quella vita apparentemente invidiabile resta ben poco.

The prelude to American Psycho. Same writing style but I didn’t find myself caring too much about the hollow, superficial lives of teens living in L.A.

In Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis is writing about his favourite time period, the 1980s, and his favourite location, Los Angeles.

The way he captures the mindset of a certain element of society in the 1980s in a particular place and pushes it to it’s logical conclusion is very much something I was trying to emulate in Drug Gang, with my chosen time period being the early 2000s and my chosen location being Manchester.

Less Than Zero is an incredible debut novel and a nihilistic masterpiece.

As I feared, this is "less than zero", for me. All the stereotypes of the drugs-addicted, alcohol-addicted, promiscuous generation of American Westcoast youth in the 1980's, you can find them all in here. In this sense you can call it a kind of documentary book. But after 20 pages of stupid dialogues, going nowhere, you get the picture (and it goes on for another 180 pages). Even from a literary point of view it barely equals the level of the chicklit-books my youngest daughter is digesting, at the moment. This is 'tristesse' made into cult.
On a side note: for reasons I don't understand myself, I liked his American Psycho!

"C'era una canzone che avevo sentito quando ero a Los Angeles, una canzone di un gruppo del posto. La canzone si intitolava Los Angeles e le parole e le immagini erano così crude e amare che il testo mi sarebbe ritornato in mente per giorni. Le immagini, lo scoprii soltanto dopo, erano personali e nessuno che conoscessi le condivideva con me. Le immagini che avevo io erano di gente impazzita per via della vita della città. Immagini di genitori così affamati e insoddisfatti da divorare i loro stessi figli. Immagini di persone, ragazzi della mia stessa età, che alzavano lo sguardo dall'asfalto restando accecati dal sole. Queste immagini restarono con me anche dopo che lasciai la città. Immagini così violente e malvagie che sembrarono essere il mio unico punto di riferimento anche molto tempo dopo. Dopo che me ne fui andato."

Datemi un libro ambientato a Los Angeles, dove i protagonisti si muovono tra le celebri Mulholland Drive, Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood bvd, fanno shopping in Rodeo Drive, partecipano ai party a Bel Air con ogni tipo di alcol e droghe, passano le vacanze a Palm Springs e me ne sarò già innamorato.
Se poi a scrivere è un genio come Bret Easton Ellis che con la sua penna riesce a farti volteggiare fino a farti perdere il senso dell'orientamento e darti un senso di stordimento ed estraniamento, lo stesso che provano i personaggi sotto effetto di coca e valium, allora le 5 stelle sono assicurate.

DISAPPEAR HERE.

Less Than Zero paints a bleak portrait of detachment and moral apathy that ultimately leads to destruction.

There was no better time to reread this book than my own holiday break from college, while following Clay during his. It was so detailed and atmospheric, that I could easily slip into the story and get lost. Honestly, I love this book so much, and I can't write a review that would do it justice so I can only talk about how it made me feel. Which is ironic because the lack of feeling, lack of anything is its driving characteristic.

“Where are your parents?” I ask.
“My parents?”
“Yeah.”
“In Japan, I think.”
“What are they doing there?”
“Shopping.”

There's no thrill, no lovable characters, no endearing moments. It's like watching a film reel of different moments, loosely strung together. Most of the characters are entirely forgettable. The people and places and even the sentences start blending together into a soupy haze until you feel like you're high too while reading. Everyone is the same. Everyone is tan and blond. Everyone has to go but we'll get lunch sometime, dude, totally.

In the background, a palpable anxiety builds throughout the trivial daily activities of Clay and his friends. At the same time I was being lulled by the monotony of another party, more drugs, another party, a hookup, more drugs, I started becoming increasingly disturbed as the story got darker and darker and eventually, reached its sickening peak.

I watched the movie a while ago, and holy shit it really missed the tone of this book. They're not even the same story. The book is WAY more dark. And has a much stronger message in my opinion. While Less than Zero does an excellent job of encapsulating its setting - 80s LA, told through the eyes of privileged, upper class teens - it also reaches across the decades and highlights problems that are still relevant today. Fake friendships, transactional relationships, and kids who are exposed to the adult world far too young.

“I want to go back,” Daniel says, quietly, with effort.
“Where?” I ask, unsure.
There’s a long pause that kind of freaks me out and Daniel finishes his drink and fingers the sunglasses he’s still wearing and says, “I don’t know. Just back.”

The aspect that hit me hardest was Clay's descent from a passive, uncaring observer of the events around him to almost becoming a participant in the violence and depravity. By doing NOTHING, he turns into the villain.

This book will stay with me for a very long time. I'll probably reread it again and I'll still be trying to piece everything together.

Me recordó a las películas de Gregg Araki y creo que solo por eso me gustó. Por lo demás, el libro me parece bastante decadente, aunque supongo que me habría encantado de adolescente.

Okay, so I was willing to accept this book as a criticism of the emptiness of modern culture. I was willing to overlook the dullness and amateurishness. But it just got duller and duller and duller. And yes, we know American culture is a wasteland. But there has to be a more interesting way to get this across. And if I am to accept this book as metaphor, I'm going to have to disagree with its premise because I think it's cynical to the point of inaccuracy. It was like a Wes Anderson movie: I can only take so much "art" centered around the neuroses of wealthy assholes.

I appreciated the bit about how when the old lady fell down or whatever and all these people outside La Scala attended to her and an ambulance came and nobody inside the restaurant gave it any notice. I thought that worked. And the crazy homeless lady squatting on a sidewalk by the freeway. But, just as I was beginning to appreciate these details a voice in my head reminded me that my time would have been better spent reading stories about those characters.

I'm sure Ellis was being critical of his milieu but much of it comes across as a sort of earnest reveling.

There were a few things I liked here but mostly my response is a mixture or boredom and "barf!"

Books read & reviewed: 1️⃣2️⃣4️⃣

Πάρ'τη σαμπάνια μας, πάρ'τα καφτάνια μας. Στην Καλιφόρνια πια δεν έχουμε ζωή.

n  

Disappear Here.
The syringe fills with blood.
You're a beautiful boy and that's all that matters.
Wonder if he's for sale.
People are afraid to merge. To merge.

n

.

It took time, but finally I got it. Or it got me, more like

This novel irritated me but at the same time I couldn’t take my hands off it. I so clearly recognized the hardened apathy reflected in the eyes of Clay. He is a young man immobile, paralyzed by indecision, slowly rotting as he waits for whatever doom comes his way. His problem is not that he doesn’t know what he wants, but rather the ability to want has been lost in him. His circumstances, which usually is being driven by the person, is rather moving of its own accord, and he is aboard not steering but watching indifferently as his fate is sealed without any resistance from him which could have prevented the crash he might be moving towards. It is a disease, this disregard, and it is terminal. He is alienated from himself, locked inside a wall of nothingness, and thus also unreachable to those around him. He is resigned to his life, a third person looking at his own body unconcerned with its wellbeing, going with the flow, only a voyeuristic sort of fulfillment in his gut. And as the days go by, he is disappearing more and more until the day that nothing remains and his invisibility is deemed permanent.

Less Than Zero is the story of a university student who comes home and discovers that there never was such a thing as a home for him. Clay was born of a rich family in Los Angeles. His grandparents own hotel chains, his father is a big shot in Hollywood, he lives in a mansion in Beverly Hills, all his friends are high society people. It is apparent that he was raised in an environment that fostered dysfunction, an environment so enamored by its own wealth and glamor that it kills off any other function it has to offer. And so fresh off his freshman year from the relatively quiet place of New Hampshire, he goes home for summer vacation to kill time until classes start. Uncertain that there is anything else to do he goes on a psychedelic romp and engages in all sorts of debaucheries from snorting cocaine by the minute, gender indifferent acts of sexual deprivation, not to mention other sort of drugs, liquor, and all the twisted novelties Hollywood has to offer, moving from party to party in search for some unreachable form of satisfaction. He goes through all this in a kind of painful stupor trying to feel something, anything while balancing his rocky relationship with his girlfriend Blair, and trying to make sense of his best friend Julian. Amidst all that is happening there lingers a dreadful clarity, a soberness that can only be found as one dwells in the most chaotic of places, like a man in the middle of a bacchanal, realizing that he feels awful.

A lot of people will read this novel and hate it. A few, however, will sense an unsettling familiarity in its hollow pages. There needs to be a certain disposition for someone to truly appreciate this novel, a disposition so readily seen in the addled millennial. Those who can understand Clay when he says "Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing." Because as a book, this is infected with the same disease that Clay is suffering from, an emptiness seeping away the lifeblood of its unfocused words. This novel doesn’t know what it wants. It reminds me of a certain passage from its body that goes:

“But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him.
“That doesn't matter.”
“What does?” I asked, after a little while.
“Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.”

There is no other purpose to this story. It moves resigned to its writing with no higher aim or message. Ellis, then a 21 year-old, writes his work and in his prose he injects a virus that permeates an enigmatic lifelessness, a wayward languor that eats away the vital soul.

In the end, in order to not feel depressed, I shall borrow a line from Yukio Mishima, something I read I few days ago that pierced me deeply.

“I dream of a moment when, without my asking, my actions will betray completely this part of me that asks for nothing.”

Maybe Clay, in one of his reveries, had this thought. Maybe you’ve had it too. Maybe then it’s not too late for us.