And so the B.E.E. multiverse of madness expands... Great to read about some familiar faces from other novels

Ha tingut el que em va faltar a "Menos que cero". M'ha agradat molt també llegir els dos primers llibres d'un autor seguits. El llibre tracta de com els personatges (joves, estudiants d'art, rics majoritàriament, dels 80) mai fan el que volen. Si en l'altre llibre semblava que mai feien el que volien i anaven d'un lloc a un altre sense saber per què, en aquest segueixen sense fer el que volen però no és que es deixin emportar (a vegades sí) sinó que acaben per fer el contrari al que volen fer. Si un vol estar amb un altre, aquest un estarà amb el que l'altre vol estar.

Vaig llegir que el llibre, que jo pensava que d'alguna manera podria mostrar l'ambient de creativitat i llibertat a Bennington, realment tracta més de l'inici del declivi de tot això: tothom cada cop més alienat, s'obre un gimnàs de peses, marxen bons professors,etc... De totes maneres, jo he trobat que fins i tot es riu de la raó de ser original d'aquesta universitat, la pinta com un frau, on en realitat molta gent hi està per estar, ridiculitza la majoria dels projectes artístics dels personatges.

Fi de la review, no sé com acabar-la.

If you're young and you feel helpless/hopeless, like life is meaningless, then this is the book for you. Not because it will give you answers, but because it will put everything in perspective.

For the record, I HATED the movie. The movie was trite, meaningless, just another college movie but darker. The book has a lot more meat to it. I mean, it's still a lot of drugs, drinking and fucking, but done with a lot more style and panache. I especially like the way that Ellis uses narratives from different characters, and how they're all connected by thin strands. You get a real overview of each character, because you understand how they see themselves and how they're seen.

A (college) term in the lives of a group of privileged affluent students at a small liberal arts college, where the story is moved on by short first person narrated chapters (from the point of view of one of the group). This highly acclaimed 'comic' novel comes across to me as more of a look back at how these people behaved in the 1980s, having the hindsight of the revelations made many years later.

Despite the content, the storytelling device of one person's point of view chapters works quite well, in providing a rounded and seemingly overarching sense of this soulless world of privilege and naked individualism - featuring the early Sean 'American Psycho' Bateman. 8 out of 12 fierce Four Star read.

2019 read

at the end of the day how much can you really care about any of these people when you’re being beaten over the head by one million meaningless actions. and i don’t even care that that’s the point.

Spend a semester in the 1980’s at a remote New Hampshire liberal arts college where rules are nonexistent.

There’re the drama students that are vaguely gay, the unhinged fine arts students, the pretentious writers and poets. Everyone’s on drugs, depressed and yearning; for escape, for release, for connection, for more drugs. But majors change as fast as relationships and identity is fluid or perhaps nonexistent, boundaries not even worth considering.

Alternating perspectives establish these characters as having no real character. Sure they make decisions, often the poorest ones, but can we trust them? When events are recounted by another in not quite the same way?

‘I wasn't acting on passion. I was simply acting.’

This novel has cemented my obsession with the BEELU (Bret Easton Ellis Literary Universe) which in many ways reminds me of JD Salinger’s world of the Glass family; both in the weaving of characters and the metafiction element of the author’s presence amongst his characters. This kind of writing just really tickles my freaking fancy.

There are cameos galore: Clay post-Less Than Zero and not coping, Patrick Bateman’s compulsive liar brother Sean. Alternate reality Judy Poovey.

AND—
—as a Donna Tartt stan I can’t not mention the weird group of classics students ‘probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals’ (this was published five years before the Secret History btw) ??. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and spend a weekend at Bennington College... but only if I could take a taser or something

‘A great numb feeling washes over me as I let go of the past and look forward to the future. Pretend to be a vampire. I don't really need to pretend, because it's who I am, an emotional vampire. I've just come to expect it. Vampires are real. That I was born this way. That I feed off of other people's real emotions. Search for this night's prey. Who will it be?’

I see why Easton Ellis is controversial, why he is not for everyone. But he is so for me. I’d heard so much about how dark and twisted he was, and sure. But why would I want to read about the disillusionment and cruelty of the elite in a form that shies away from the horror? He commits fully, moreover his work is fucking funny. Like I was laughing out loud. And I think the reactions truly cement his satire skills because this feels blown up, dramatised, but in no way inauthentic.

Detached and hollow, but is the absence of something nothing? Or something else altogether?

so so funny and surprisingly touching and self-aware I loved the intertextuality

gawd I always feel like such a loser when I read Bret Easton Ellis that I want to go and stick a fork in a toaster when's he gonna write about an unconventionally attractive middle class wasian girl from christchurch who's only ever tried 2 drugs and didn't even like them

"Got you. You're mine now. For the rest of the day, week, month, year, life. Have you guessed who I am? Sometimes I think you have. Sometimes when you're standing in a crowd I feel those sultry, dark eyes of yours stop on me. Are you too afraid to come up to me and let me know how you feel? I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings."

The rules of attraction is not a likeable book, but surely is an unforgettable one. Love it or hate it, once you have read it you really can't let it go, or feel indifferent about it. Wandering through a library or a book shop, even 20 years from now, you will see this book and remember how strange and dark and pointless and sad it was.
In one word: how lifelike it was.

It follows the lives and affairs of a group of students at Camden's college in the Eighties, but don't expect to find a linear plot or a storyline whatsoever. It's like the chain of events broke and all that's left is a bunch of different points of view, all disjointed. This can be disorienting, but I really found it original and brilliant to show that the characters live their lives one party at the time.

The writing style is raw, simple, often graphic. TW for abortion jokes, rape jokes, sexist jokes, homophobic jokes, racist jokes and everything that now Makes America Great Again.
I usually loathe finding this kind of content in books, but here it felt really appropriate: Camden's students are a bunch of rotten people, so their language and their humour completely mirror it.

I feel really conflicted giving it a rating, because I hated the characters and I didn't find any development in their personalities, but the truth is that not everybody learns from his mistakes. Not everybody moves on. Not everybody grows up.
Deal with it.
Rock and roll.

It beggars belief
they must be spreading herpes
thrush from head to toe.

ummmm not Ellis's finest work in my opinion, but did enjoy the unreliable narration and dramatic internal monologues all the characters had. Every character was superficial and boring.

5 días y 250 páginas después, el cuarto libro que leo autor. Fue un buen momento de la vida para leerlo, ya que no soy ni tan joven como para asombrarme, ni tan viejo para asustarme, el maravilloso paisaje de excesos, drogas y sexo sin control estadounidense. ¿Hay tanto más que decir?

Personajes jovenes que se acuestan con todos, que dificilmente se acuerdan de que hicieron el día de ayer, que han probado todas las drogas, y se la pasan más de la mitad del tiembo ahogados en alcohol, esto es el retrato de los jovenes, no solo estadounidenses, sino de gran parte del mundo. Follar. Alcohol. Drogas.

Una existencia vacía, plagada de burdos intentos para llenarla, de una forma u otra, en esta ocasión no queremos descifrar que hay antes que el cero, ahora queremos comprender las fatidicas reglas de la atracción y como funciona en los jovenes... sin importar la sexualidad.

Si usted es demasiado pudido, por favor no lea este libro, pero puede ver la pelicula.

Probablemente habrá reseña.

Even Ellis agrees in his autobiographical novel, Lunar Park, that there was no discernible earnestness from his side while writing his sophomore book to outdo himself. He already knew whatever he'd write post Less Than Zero would sell, and the perfunctoriness shows.

The point of the novel is the nonchalant carelessness and some startling apathy one has during college. But it's too direction-less for my liking.