Wow, supremely depressing but something more..makes you wish you could cry about their world but you couldn't if you tried.
Easton Ellis paints the characters as shallow, mean, nasty and frankly, stupid, but somehow he shows something that draws you to them at the same time.
Sean, I really liked him. He made the book for me, even though he was a fool, a drug dealing user, but he loved someone and she didn't love him. Lauren, is also stupid. She loves a guy completely unworthy of her love. Why do we do that? It's a question I cannot answer.
This book, written so differently starting in mid sentence and finishing in mid sentence is definitely amazingly constructed and his detail about characters is something I need to learn from. At first it is difficult to get into the different points of view, every chapter, but then I found as soon as I started reading their voices, they must have been so well created that I knew exactly where they were and what they were doing.
It was interesting that - particularly with Sean and Paul how differently they portrayed their time together. Paul smitten by Sean and Sean barely acknowledging that he was even with Paul. It was tragic but very true to life. Perceptions of events by different people especially with love, is a fascinating and endless topic.
Paul says to Gerald a guy who likes him, "No one ever likes the right person," which could be described as the whole premise of the novel.
Sean loves Lauren, Paul loves Sean, Lauren used to love Paul, Lauren loves Victor, Victor loves Jaime, Paul used to love Mitchell, Susan loves Sean.
The other premise is everything is boring - they are constantly bored with everything, people have abortions, commit suicide, take drugs, have sex, attempt suicide, take cocaine, don't pay their drug dealers, and the characters are constantly bored with it all. There is no reaction or emotion towards it.
I mean the way Easton Ellis writes about all of the drug taking and sex etc ad infinitum the reader does feel bored and overwhelmed with it. Everything is meaningless and no one cares about anyone, except who they will have sex with or where they will score from next. The parts that keep you reading the novel are the parts where the characters actually reveal they have something more to them.
Sean tells Lauren he loves her, they agree to get married (which ends) actually that's probably it, except there are some scenes with Victor and empathy towards some people in the crowd that are good. Mainly, Sean has the scenes of something more to him, with his dying father and his overbearing brother. He, for me is the character that stands out in all of his ugliness he was something actually. He had something deeper to him, the way he describes Lauren and the way he loved Lauren.
One thing though it does become funny in some scenes where a girl talks about all the people who are sleeping with each other, cheating on partners it just sounds absurd. Which is the point I guess. There are constant 80s references that I love because I grew up then. It is amusing the references to the things they are wearing, swatch watches and tab and diet coke and radios and tapes.
There is a line at the end where Sean says and nothing has changed and they all seem to go back to their hopeless behaviour. Sean picks up a girl he's not interested in, Lauren goes off with Victor who is using her, Paul chases more boys...the meaninglessness of their behaviour continues.
This is a truth in some people's lives. Only through spiritual transformation can people change, but these people, there is nothing they wish to do beyond feed their physical desires. So their cycle goes around and around and sometimes it disgusts them like with Sean when he says he doesn't want to sleep around anymore only be with Lauren. But eventually her lack of love for him destroys that.
So anyway, this was a bit of a ramble but it's the kind of book you have to ramble about. You feel like you have to have therapy after the book or debrief or cleanse yourself somehow. I think it is the same with Less Than Zero. Life is so dirty and disgusting in this book and its all over you, and you need a bath.
It is great to read books like this. I will take a lot from Easton Ellis in techniques and I will admire what he has done. But my basic philosophy is different. Although, I think this book proves Easton Ellis is not really a nihilist he is showing the greed, futility, reality, shallow qualities and pain of the 80s. The funny thing is AIDS does not come into the novel. Maybe it was only just being discovered. Some of those characters in this book would have AIDS, and would probably have died in the following years of that or another STD.
This is a rich book. A book that completely enveloped me into its world. The characters are stunning to me in their abhorrence and depth and in the fact that he keeps you reading about people you don't even like! He is an exceptional writer. This book I could try to say I enjoyed it, but it is much more than that. So I could say, it was amazing.
A revealing deep book about shallow, self centered, people doing whatever they wanted. It is the result of believing in a nihilistic world. It is people living what they believe, with no spiritual framework for life. At least they are being honest and authentic, so many people believe nihilistic things and yet they live in a valued filled world, that is based on spiritual ideas.
Anyway now I am off the topic. Characters that are living without morals, come what may. That's the ugliness and sincerity of this book. It is honest, raw and gritty, and remains, lingers...impacts. whoa. I could say so much more but I will stop now.
Actually I just had a thought, and maybe someone can comment on this. Is Easton Ellis sort of commenting on the 80s the way Nick Hornby is also commenting on the 90s? I think they are doing similar things. I am so thankful that maybe this decade compassion for other people is not totally out of the question, I feel like there may be a different feeling now. Actually even in Hornby's novels this theme of self centered character who doesn't care about anyone actually decides to be different, so Hornby differs to Easton Ellis like that. The character in About a Boy changes at the end and in High Fidelity.
Anyway, I like the comparison with these authors. Also, I wonder who is writing for this decade? And indeed what would we write? Are we all just out for ourselves as usual? Of course it is the same but there are peculiarities that will be distinguised in this time over any other. There always are in history. Different world leaders, different economic climate, different wars being waged, threats or lack of threats.
Every era is different its human nature that stays the same.
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