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Book Description: Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while afterAmerican Psychoyour celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs.
Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety--only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions," and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events--a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son’s age--Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.
Lunar Parkconfounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution--about love and loss, fathers and sons--in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.
A Tale of Two Brets: An Amazon.com Interview with Bret Easton Ellis In his novelLunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis takes first-person narrative to an extreme, inserting himself (and a host of real characters from the publishing world) into the haunting story of a drugged-out famous writer living in the suburbs trying to reconnect with his wife and son and reconcile his damaged past. Ellis is at the top of his game inLunar Park, his first novel since 1999'sGlamorama, delivering a disturbing and delirious novel about celebrity, writers, and fathers and sons (not to mention a cameo from notorious Ellis creation, Patrick Bateman). Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons spoke with Ellis in a Seattle to Los Angeles phone call to talk about the fact and fiction behindLunar Park, New York versus LA, '80s music, and the whole "American Psychothing."
Read the Amazon.com interview with Bret Easton Ellis
Less Than Zero(1985) Published when Ellis was a junior at Bennington,Less Than Zerois the mesmerizing first-person chronicle of Clay, our laconic, zoned-out guide to a subculture of over-privileged nihilism in early '80s Los Angeles. He travels back home from Camden College (a thinly veiled Bennington) for Christmas break and re-enters his circle of jaded friends--including his ex-girlfriend Blair, and his best friend Julian, who's now hustling to support his drug habit--and a parade of Porches, late-night parties, cocaine, and casual destruction.
Ellis on Ellis:"I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19."
The Rules of Attraction(1987) A line-up of Camden College students share the narrating duties inThe Rules of Attraction, Ellis' sex-fueled, drug-baked second novel. There's Lauren (who's in the midst of losing her virginity as the book opens), who longs for her boyfriend Victor, currently traveling through Europe; Lauren's ex, Paul, a bisexual party boy who hooks up with hard-drinking closet-case Sean (surname Bateman--that's right, younger brother of Patrick), who also has the hots for Lauren.Less than Zero's Clay makes a cameo appearance as well as a passing glimpse of Ellis' Bennington classmate Donna Tartt's murderous Classics majors fromThe Secret History.
Ellis on Ellis: "It might be my favorite book of mine. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for."
American Psycho(1991) Shopaholic sociopath Patrick Bateman's killer grip drags readers into a bloody, brand-name, urban nightmare as the 26-year-old Wall Street yuppie executes his grooming habits and eviscerates strangers with equalélan. Simon&Schuster dropped the too-hot-to-handleAmerican Psychowhich was then published as a paperback original by Vintage Books. Ellis received death threats while the book was boycotted, sliced up by reviewers, and went on to become a bestseller. Mary Harron's 2000 film version starred then little-known British actor Christian Bale, who would later suit up as the Dark Knight in 2005'sBatman Begins.
Ellis on Ellis: "It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to re-read those passages."
The Informers(1994) Ellis returns to early '80s Los Angeles ennui withThe Informers, a loosely connected collection of stories of the bored, rich, and morally depraved, written around the same time asLess than Zero. Sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence take center stage, with characters including an aging, predatory anchorwoman, a debauched rock star tearing through Japan, and a pick-up artist vampire. While some of the vignettes echo better Ellis works, ultimately the stories don't add to much as a whole. Book critics are less than receptive to Ellis' post-American Psychooffering.
Ellis on Ellis: "Those were written while I was at Bennington. I wrote a lot of short stories between 1981 or 1982 or so...The Informersmore or less kind of represented probably the best of those stories. I wrote a lot of really bad ones, but those are the ones that worked the best together."
Glamorama(1999) Actor-model Victor Ward (who first made an appearance in the Ellis oeuvre inThe Rules of Attraction) is the narrator ofGlamorama, Ellis longest novel yet. Ellis offers bold-faced names and celebrity skewering in the first half of the book as Victor tries to open a Manhattan club while cheating on his supermodel girlfriend and double-crossing his partner, but the second half takes a violent, paranoid turn as Victor is sent to England and unwittingly lured into a sadistic ring of international terrorists (posing as supermodels) leaving a bloody trail across the globe.
Ellis on Ellis: "[T]he book wasn't necessarily about terrorism to me. It was about a whole bunch of other stuff. It's definitely the book that I can tell--I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer--is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it."
Ellis on DVD
Less Than Zero
American Psycho
The Rules of Attraction
Will the Real Bret Easton Ellis Please Stand Up? Visit the author's Web site at www.2brets.com.
Ellis' Best Days Are Gone I'm somewhat divided after reading this book. Part of me can understand that the author is clearly ageing and dealing with certain issues that pertain to his troubled existence - so I could see this is being some kind of carthartic experience for Bret.
But although the book starts off quite well, it morphs into a boring and kind of pointless series of "shocking" ghost stories.
I've read all of Ellis' books, this to me is easily his weakest story. If you want to read a great scary book, written the way Ellis used to write when he was in his prime, check out "Lullaby" or "Invisible Monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk.
I found "Lunar Park" to be very disappointing, especially after a seven year wait.
Ersatz Stephen King A fantasy tale about (but not about) the author (or a fictitious alter ego), who deserves no sympathy for destroying his own life, and most precious relationships, while living high off gratuitous fame as a gonzo writer. More horrid than scary. Kind of a confused and confusing narrative from which one should be able to expect more, based on the pleasing quality of the writing style. I could easily have done without this one.Not the best, but better than what's out there today. If anyone ever wondered about an NC-17 version of Catcher in the Rye, then he/she found out in 1985 with Less Than Zero. If any parent ever wanted the real phone call from their college kids, then they picked up The Rules of Attraction. American Psycho anyone?
Bret Easton Ellis writes books on things society swears it doesn't want to hear about. He also writes books that are commercially successful and usually finished within two hours. Whether the pages flip through the corroded, matted streets of Los Angeles or flutter up toward the skyscrapers of New York, Ellis creates a world that is nothing but uncomfortable, campy and interestingly realistic. This time he's turned to "non-fiction."
Lunar Park is about a haunted writer named Bret Easton Ellis who's highly successful, has written four to five books, is raising a broken family, and is the sole creator of Patrick Bateman. Wait a second, you're thinking, who wrote this book? Bret Easton Ellis.
In what was earlier described as a memoir, Lunar Park is everything that is not linear. The book passes over generic horror, familial melodrama, and of course, Ellis's tongue-in-cheek cynicism. This is a book with Bret Easton Ellis, but think of a parallel universe, one where stuffed-animals attack and fictional characters actually become reality. In other words, this is the melting down of a writer who writes about melting down.
No real tricks here, but the formula is so exciting, so enticing, that this is a highly original and organized piece of work. One might even think Ellis went so far as to live some aspects of his life just for the pages themselves. Anyone who reads it might wonder where the lines between fiction and non-fiction dissipate, and the barriers of fictional reality and fictional fantasy lie. Perhaps this is the melting down of the reader; the writer is just taking anyone along with him.
And while Ellis has recently discussed a follow up to Less Than Zero, look no further for his follow up to American Psycho. Lunar Park acts as the predecessor, only the complexities in dealing with the real life Patrick Bateman. Imagine the remorse the writer might feel if such a character could exist. Lunar Park takes the reader into alleys and passages of American Psycho that only Ellis would have known when typing the actual book.
Interestingly enough, Lunar Park is the first novel of the new millennium for Ellis. Just reading the first 50 or so pages, it is quite clear Ellis' eyes have been open for quite some time. Duly noted descriptions hint that this seemingly present world is an America deeply distraught, where terrorism exists everywhere, and surprisingly, nobody cares. Life is just as it is: medicated children running rampant and clueless adults adapting to newer ways of achieving oblivion. All the horror in the book shadows his commentary, making them more of a subtle hint than a flat out statement.
While Lunar Park is original for Ellis, the book is not so important on a literary sense as it is for Ellis himself. This novel is Ellis cleaning out the closet and throwing the skeletons either in the grave or some far away, damp swamp. He really digs into his own soul, and it shows. Regarding his writing, however, rather than having a free sway with his words, Ellis seems to carve and sculpt a story. Some of the areas are fast and alarming, while other pages are drawn out and slow. This is one of the first books of his where it actually reads like a different writer at times. A new ground for Ellis and, after seven years, I'm impressed.
So curl up, grab the book and perhaps enjoy being scared of the things under your bed, outside your home, working in your office, living in your neighborhood, driving next to your car, and maybe, just maybe, the demons dwelling in your country.
In his novelLunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis takes first-person narrative to an extreme, inserting himself (and a host of real characters from the publishing world) into the haunting story of a drugged-out famous writer living in the suburbs trying to reconnect with his wife and son and reconcile his damaged past. Ellis is at the top of his game inLunar Park, his first novel since 1999'sGlamorama, delivering a disturbing and delirious novel about celebrity, writers, and fathers and sons (not to mention a cameo from notorious Ellis creation, Patrick Bateman). Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons spoke with Ellis in a Seattle to Los Angeles phone call to talk about the fact and fiction behindLunar Park, New York versus LA, '80s music, and the whole "American Psychothing."
A line-up of Camden College students share the narrating duties inThe Rules of Attraction, Ellis' sex-fueled, drug-baked second novel. There's Lauren (who's in the midst of losing her virginity as the book opens), who longs for her boyfriend Victor, currently traveling through Europe; Lauren's ex, Paul, a bisexual party boy who hooks up with hard-drinking closet-case Sean (surname Bateman--that's right, younger brother of Patrick), who also has the hots for Lauren.Less than Zero's Clay makes a cameo appearance as well as a passing glimpse of Ellis' Bennington classmate Donna Tartt's murderous Classics majors fromThe Secret History.
Shopaholic sociopath Patrick Bateman's killer grip drags readers into a bloody, brand-name, urban nightmare as the 26-year-old Wall Street yuppie executes his grooming habits and eviscerates strangers with equalélan. Simon&Schuster dropped the too-hot-to-handleAmerican Psychowhich was then published as a paperback original by Vintage Books. Ellis received death threats while the book was boycotted, sliced up by reviewers, and went on to become a bestseller. Mary Harron's 2000 film version starred then little-known British actor Christian Bale, who would later suit up as the Dark Knight in 2005'sBatman Begins.
Ellis returns to early '80s Los Angeles ennui withThe Informers, a loosely connected collection of stories of the bored, rich, and morally depraved, written around the same time asLess than Zero. Sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence take center stage, with characters including an aging, predatory anchorwoman, a debauched rock star tearing through Japan, and a pick-up artist vampire. While some of the vignettes echo better Ellis works, ultimately the stories don't add to much as a whole. Book critics are less than receptive to Ellis' post-American Psychooffering.
Actor-model Victor Ward (who first made an appearance in the Ellis oeuvre inThe Rules of Attraction) is the narrator ofGlamorama, Ellis longest novel yet. Ellis offers bold-faced names and celebrity skewering in the first half of the book as Victor tries to open a Manhattan club while cheating on his supermodel girlfriend and double-crossing his partner, but the second half takes a violent, paranoid turn as Victor is sent to England and unwittingly lured into a sadistic ring of international terrorists (posing as supermodels) leaving a bloody trail across the globe.
