The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis

The context in which one reads The Rules of Attraction may color one’s view of it.  That was the case for me, at least.  The first time I read it was in September of 2003.  I was 20 and going to Paris for the semester.  I seem to recall reading the entire book on the plane flight from New York to Paris.  I seem to recall considering it a very good book for the reason of such speed—considered it to be on the same level of Less Than Zero.  Recently I have felt the opposite—that Less Than Zero is clearly the superior work, and that The Rules of Attraction is the “weaker sophomore effort.”  This is not the way I felt about The Beautiful and Damned (which oddly enough is the most popular review on Flying Houses—and by a long shot) and people tend to think of Bret Easton Ellis and F. Scott Fitzgerald in a similar vein.  For one, they both go by three names, which people generally do not take as a sign of pretension, but may be so (think of the “stature of the artist” view—or maybe just an attempt at accuracy for the names they were called).  They both write about young people and how their social lives affect their interior and exterior selves.  They both had success when they were very young (Ellis younger, however) and both were tagged as emblems of the generations they sought to capture in literature.  Popular films have been made out of their novels and short stories—and they continue to be made. 

They have also both been equated with the characters they portrayed.  And it would be too hard to ignore Ellis’s recent doings: the recent New York Times article about The Canyons is more than an instructive exercise.  In it, Ellis is painted as a screenwriter who has seemingly abandoned the novel writing for which he is known and generally admired.  It is worth noting that Ellis is not known for having written the screenplay for anything yet—so a good deal of whether this latest entre into film remains to be seen.  But I will make a small prediction that The Canyons is going to be about as memorable as The Informers.  Which is to say, nothing compared to Less Than Zero or American Psycho.  The Rules of Attraction and Glamorama get mentioned as secondary works (though I personally believe there is a strong argument that Glamorama is Ellis’s best work—but see also this present review, regarding re-assessment of Ellis as one ages) and most people only know about Imperial Bedrooms or Lunar Park if they are devoted readers of Ellis.  Maybe Ellis has achieved his goals in literature and is now seeking success in film—but it is irresistible to question whether this is just another fact by which to compare him to Fitzgerald—that late Hollywood period, when he had to write for the movies to make a living, and where he burnt out too young.  Fitzgerald died at 44 and Ellis is currently 49 but there have been advances in longevity.  Rumors have flown about Ellis (hardly ignored by the author in his two most recent efforts) and whether he shares certain characteristics with his literary creations.  I will just say that personally, I have my views on this matter (okay I went to NYU and more than a couple people I met claimed personal connections to him—then again one kid in Los Angeles claimed that B.E.E. read his self-published first creative non-fiction book and as time as passed I have increasingly felt that the kid was a liar) and no review of The Rules of Attraction should fail to mention its obsession with “gossip,” but I will decline to offer any personal tidbits that might paint an unfortunate view: we will respect the separation between artist and art object in this review.

                To return to context, then: I liked The Rules of Attraction much better when I was 20 than I liked it when I was 29.75 years old.  Maybe it’s because of something that’s captured in one scene: dismay over the reality that you have reached a certain age, which Sean experiences when he finds out that a centerfold in the pages of Playboy is 19 years old—two years younger than him—when he has always seen centerfold models as being “older”:

“This girl is younger than me, and that does it—instant depression.  This woman, this flesh was always older and that was part of the turn-on, but now, coming across this, something I’d never noticed before upsets me more than thinking about the conversation that Lauren and Judy must have had.” (210)

And perhaps it summarizes my view when I say I don’t consider it a spoiler to tell the reader that Sean has had sex with Judy while Sean was going out with Lauren.  This is because I seriously doubt any reader gets into the nitty-gritty details of this text—draws a massive chart detailing every relationship and how they are part of a larger intelligent design—but also seemingly rough outlines of variations on the same theme: spoiled brats at a small liberal arts college, drinking and doing lots of drugs and having lots of sex. 

It is hard not to mention the context in which I viewed this book at age 20, too.  Briefly, from September through December of 2002, I was the editor of the film review section of the NYU student newspaper.  That context matters for two reasons.  First, the film version of The Rules of Attraction came out while I had the editorial reigns, and I published a vaguely positive review of the film while not feeling an especially strong urge to go out and see it (this in contradistinction to American Psycho).  Second, New York University is a college filled with the same types of characters as those that populate The Rules of Attraction.  So the book is successful on the second front.  If you have been to college—and more specifically, this “type” of college—then you will be able to identify with this book in at least some small way.  Even though the characters are ensconced in the mid-1980s, one may indeed be shocked by how little youth culture has changed—apart from “screen time” which is vaguely anticipated in certain scenes, such as when Sean thinks Lauren will think he is cooler if he says he is majoring in Computers….but I cannot find the page that this detail emerges in.

And that is one important thing to note about this book: it is either one long chapter, or about 80 mini-chapters (maybe I’m off on that number—it’s just off the top of my head—I don’t want to spend the time to count up every single number of times that each character speaks in an attempt to make some sort of numerological quotation, nor do I believe that Ellis wants us to do this)—and if that parenthetical is any sign, it’s harder to view it as the latter.  This plot evolves over the course of one fall semester—roughly the months of October and November.  This includes Halloween and it is worth noting here that it bears a similarity to Daylight Savings Time, in ways that I did not even think about.  Really, I must have considered this book to be of such an inspiring nature that I adopted one of its narrative techniques: present tense first-person shifting narration (except that I kept it in third-person).  Indeed some of the scenes we both include probably share some of the same “one-liners at party” dialogue.  I wrote Daylight Savings Time when I was twenty-three and twenty-four, and Ellis published The Rules of Attraction when he was twenty-four, and while I would not suggest that I was on the same level of Ellis at that age, I would suggest that our “mental age” was probably not far off.

                This can be interesting material—but generally it is not.  It suffers from the same problem as Palo Alto (recently reviewed here) by James Franco: we don’t know which character to root for because we’re not sure of what they care about, or how smart they really are.  It appears that Sean is smarter than he appears, but we never really get any satisfaction out of seeing that side of him, except maybe in the scene at Vittorio’s (a 70-year-old poetry professor relocating to Italy that makes passes at Lauren)—that is, we do not know whether the things he tends to remember have significance or not.  At one point Sean mentions how his "hippie" ex-girlfriend knows to talk about Ginsberg, but then does not realize he wrote “Howl.”  I suppose Sean is supposed to appreciate that he can see through her “feigned coolness,” but the reader is never exactly sure how much of the behavior of the three major characters is “feigned coolness.” 

                This is most apparent in Paul’s interactions with Sean, and perhaps less apparent in Sean’s interactions with Lauren.  Which leads me to recognize that I have not provided a plot-line for this novel yet.  It concerns Sean Bateman (younger brother to Patrick Bateman, who makes an appearance and even gets his own “monologue-mini-chapter”), who rides a motorcycle and says “rock and roll” and “deal with it” in response to other people’s random statements, Paul Denton, who is bisexual but seems more gay than straight, who is from Chicago and generally seems the most “stuck-up” of the characters, and Lauren  Hynde, who pines for her boyfriend Victor who is “spending some time in Europe,” who keeps  changing her major, who slept with Paul before the action of the novel “starts” and who sleeps with Sean in the course of it, and who may be the social conscience of the book itself.  These characters attend the same school as Clay from Less Than Zero (who also has his own “mini-chapter monologue”): Camden College.  Maybe it says something when I recall that Clay’s “excerpt” is one of the best parts of this novel, and apparently shows that Ellis has not “lost his gift” but has just shifted it in a less interesting direction.  This is not to say that the subject matter of this book is boring: it takes on a topic which is rarely examined in literature and provides a somewhat fascinating resolution of that issue.  The issue is sort of referenced in Less Than Zero but attacked head-on in this book—but maybe it’s the case that a good deal of the allure of Less Than Zero is its almost mystical, mysterious quality.  This is not as strongly the case here, and though Ellis begins and ends the novel mid-sentence and includes a “blank” Lauren mini-chapter, he generally is content keep his authorial gaze fixed upon “society” as the “topic” of the book. 

                Maybe I am putting words in his mouth or providing my own interpretive gloss but I swore I once read an article where B.E.E. claimed to be inspired by Balzac’s La Comedie Humane and that his work was his take on that sort of vision.  If this is the case, the problem mentioned above (i.e. the same problem with Palo Alto) makes this attempt a failure.  But, like Palo Alto, it is a book that I read very quickly the first time around, and that will certainly remind liberal arts B.A. holders of scenes from their own life and maybe cause them to write books vaguely imitating its literary style that lack sufficient quality for publication.  However I doubt that any of them had as much sex as occurs in this book.  Aside from the hypersexual element, the book is generally true to life, and thus good.  However, I would consider it to be a notch below even Imperial Bedrooms, which, while no masterpiece, at least involved a more mature narrator.  For the uninitiated to Ellis, reading about a Dressed to Get Screwed Party and then holding your own Dressed to Get Screwed Party is reason enough to experience this book once—just don’t expect to be as blown away your second time around.    

Imperial Bedrooms - Bret Easton Ellis

A genuine literary event.

That is what it says at the bottom of the front jacket cover for this book, underneath a general description of the plot, which is this: the sequel to Less Than Zero, twenty-five years later. Clay is a screenwriter, who is interested in a girl, and he tries to get this girl a part in the new movie he's producing. Plus Blair, Julian, and Rip are back from the original.

But calling it "a genuine literary event" seems, I don't know, desperate?

And all of the praise on the back seems nice, until you realize it is for Lunar Park. Then maybe you venture over to Amazon to check the reviews to see if it will be worth the investment in a hardcover edition--and you see the reviews are scathing. And you wonder, oh great, what did I get myself into.

But I am here to tell you that you do not need to be worried--those reviews are wrong. This book is good. It may not deliver on every single level that every reader could possibly desire, but it is not a bad book. It is not poorly written, as much as amateur critics may point towards nonexistent complexity of language, poor, vague description, and meaningless run-on sentencing. It is a different sort of book in the same way that Lunar Park was. Obviously, it's not the classic that Less Than Zero is, or even up to the level of The Rules of Attraction, and of course its scope pales in comparison to American Psycho (which I haven't even read to the end) or Glamorama (which I think is the real masterpiece in his oeuvre, thus far). It's better than The Informers, and I like it better than Lunar Park, I think, though that book had moments.

Why is it so similar to Lunar Park? Because the theme is the same: paranoia. In that novel, it may be imagined, and it is played for horror. In this novel, it is not imagined, and it is played for mystery. If Lunar Park is BEE doing Stephen King, then Imperial Bedrooms is BEE doing Raymond Chandler. Aside from paranoia, and genre-hopping, Ellis pokes more fun at himself in the opening segment of the novel. In Lunar Park, it is one of the most dazzling sequences of any of his books, re-telling the history of his literary career, and the various lies and half-truths that have been told about him over the years. In Imperial Bedrooms, it is a parallel segment relating the history of Less Than Zero--except Clay is claiming that it all really happened, and none of their names were changed, and the author was someone they knew. Ellis takes advantage of the opportunity to critique the adaptation of his debut:

"In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. ('I'll sell my car,' I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. 'Whatever it takes.') This was slightly less true of the adaptation of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group--jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. 'Be good to her,' Julian tells Clay. 'She really deserves it.' The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. (7)

And then more obvious differences:

"The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material--surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality--had to be reshaped. The best way to look at the movie was as modern eighties noir--the cinematography was breathtaking--and I sighed as it kept streaming forward, interested in only a few things: the new and gentle details of my parents mildly amused me, as did Blair finding her divorced father with his girlfriend on Christmas Eve instead of with a boy named Jared (Blair's father died of AIDS in 1992 while still married to Blair's mother). But the thing I remember most about that screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded." (8)

And here is a good opportunity to talk about spoilers: many of the reviews on Amazon say they are not spoiling anything by revealing two different plot points of this novel--but they are. In the same way they're idiots for calling the book a piece of crap, they're idiots for saying they're not spoiling anything (...because you wouldn't want to waste your time anyways, etc.)

Clay is in his mid-40's, splitting time between New York and L.A., and recently returned to L.A. for the casting of his new film The Listeners. It is perhaps worth noting that this is more L.A.-centric than anything Ellis has done since Less Than Zero. The city is used in almost every paragraph of the story. Angelenos will find Ellis's choice settings appropriate for the tone of the novel, and that they add another layer of enjoyment. By page 100, it seems clear that Ellis is writing a mystery novel in the tradition of Chandler or James Cain, and the L.A. setting circa 2008 or 2009 is a wonderful update on that sixty or seventy-year-old geographically-centered story.

Most of the plot hinges around one of the girls auditioning for a part in this movie--Rain Turner--and the mystery of her former employment, ex-boyfriends, and general lifestyle. It's a bit mundane--perhaps not all that imaginative--and there is a line near the end of the novel that seems to poke fun at how cookie-cutter/predictable the plot becomes--but even with that, it is surprising enough to keep reading.

Most importantly, Ellis delivers magic with this book: in a way that none of his other books have since, he captures the pace and intensity of the prose of Less Than Zero and puts it to use in a new narrative with old characters. Towards the end, again, there seem to be a few scenes that are reminiscent of the first novel, and this has something of a disquieting effect. The big relief though is that Ellis does not mess it up. Like the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm, there can be a lot of doubt about the point of bringing back once-popular characters. And maybe there's no point to Imperial Bedrooms, but I don't see it as an opportunity to cash in on Robert Downey Jr.'s reinvigoration, or to reflect upon the passing of Michael Jackson and John Hughes and 80's nostalgia. No, it writes a new chapter in the previous book, and while its story is nowhere near as fresh and original as the first, it's still a pretty good story: tell me that a film adaptation of Imperial Bedrooms with the original actors from Less Than Zero would not be one of the coolest things ever done.

But people in Hollywood are idiots, and one of the good things about this book is the way it casually acknowledges that. To sum things up, the best thing about Imperial Bedrooms is the way the pace matches Less Than Zero. This is a short book at around 170 pages, but for nearly half of it, let's say between pages 60 and 130, I didn't want to put it down.

And it should be clear at this point why most people like to trash Ellis--you either get it or you don't. You either love him or hate him. People that trash him don't get him. People that trash him might quote the passage I am about to quote and call it a perfect example of why his writing is terrible. Of course, I am quoting it to show the opposite, how a casual epiphany can come out of a commonplace situation:

"Dr. Woolf leaves a message on my landline canceling tomorrow's session and telling me that he can't see me as a patient anymore but that he'll refer me to someone else and the next morning I drive to the building on Sawtelle and park on the fourth floor of the garage and wait for his noon session to be over because that's when he takes his lunch break and I'm listening to a song with the lyric So leave everything you know and carry only what you fear...over and over again and I'm nodding to myself while smoking cigarettes and making a list of all the things I'm not going to ask Rain about and deciding I'll accept all the false explanations she's going to give me and how that's the only plan, and then I'm remembering the person who warned me about how the world has to be a place where no one is interested in your questions and that if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you." (107)

That is all one sentence but I happen to think it is a very good one. And while I totally acknowledge that this book is not a masterpiece, that Ellis has done better, there are totally memorable moments in this novel that will exist comfortably alongside previous ones. I'd rather read Less Than Zero again (especially since my copy was lost)--because that book, more than any other book, can be viewed as a guide to writing your very own breakout novel--but Imperial Bedrooms is a nice treat. You can read it even if you haven't read Less Than Zero, but it helps.

I'm just sad that I'll probably have to wait until I am 30 to read a new book by Bret Easton Ellis. He has continued with his relative consistency, and has not done anything to make me lose any interest in his work. If I were Ellis, I would want to write a Pulitzer-worthy, six-hundred page piece de resistance for publication around my fiftieth birthday, to silence all doubters and haters, but it seems too easy. Perhaps people want to criticize Ellis for not attempting to write a masterpiece here--but he has accomplished something that many in the "industry" often fail at: he's delivered a sequel that isn't disappointing. Who knows if he is going to go back to writing longer books, or books that get mentioned as the best of the year, and who cares. He's about as commercial as you can get, as far as fiction writers go, but I don't consider him a sell-out in the least, and maybe that is what continues to impress me about him.

Closer - Dennis Cooper

We follow up one re-read with another in what will not be a continuing trend (our next item is the much-anticipated Imperial Bedrooms, referenced quite a long time ago on Flying Houses, here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/05/informers-bret-easton-ellis.html?) with Closer, what could be considered Dennis Cooper's breakout novel, published in 1989. This preceded Frisk, and later Try. They form a trilogy which can be considered his strongest work.

In the same way Ziggy is the central figure of Try, George Miles is at the center of Closer. However, the story is not as narrowly-focused, which distracts, but also allows the work to delve into a few experimental episodes that coalesce and form its own unique symmetry. There are eight relatively short chapters in 131 pages with seven narrators, or protagonists in what could be considered short stories, all of which link. This is definitely a novel, though.

John, where the novel starts, draws portraits of his classmates, and gets involved physically with them. He meets George Miles, who takes several tabs of acid every day and smokes grass in between and keeps a shrine to Disneyland in his bedroom. Sex ensues, thoughts of violence ensue, and then they end up meeting a punk who goes with them into a purportedly haunted house and then later the punk describes his predicament:

"'Hurt me,' he yelled in a hoarse voice. 'Fuck me up and I'll never forget you. I really fucking love violence. I want to tell all my friends what we did so they'll hate me or call me a fag or whatever, but fuck them. I'm not a poser like they are. I want to do everything so when I die they'll say I lived and tell bad jokes about me but who cares. I like getting crazy and you seem okay. Anyway, why not?'" (10)

The second chapter is narrated by David, who believes he is a pop star, or fantasizes about it often enough to become his fractured reality. The novel shifts its tone and voice drastically in this chapter and becomes a bit humorous, while still very dark. David is paranoid and talkative, the chapter is breezy, and it serves as a nice transition between the 1st and 3rd chapters.

The 3rd chapter is George's first chapter, and in it he describes getting asked to leave school one day, hitchhiking, getting picked up by a carpenter, more sex, going to a school dance, smoking a joint with his teacher, who is a closet case, and then later meeting Philippe. The segments with Philippe are the point at which Closer tips the obscenity scales at 10. Philippe has a particularly gross fetish that is four letters long and starts with the letter s. That is all I will say about that. But it does become an important plot point.

The next two chapters are 1st and 3rd person alternately with Cliff and Alex, who are more of the same, basically--they are friends, and they watch old scary movies together, sometimes they smoke pot together, they talk about George Miles, and how obsessed they are with him (as does everyone), and then there is always more sex. Cliff watches Philippe perform his act with George, and then later tells Alex about it, who wants to recreate it for a project in his film class. Later an accident happens.

George's second chapter comes next, and it has the probable climax of the novel in his encounter with Tom, who attempts to kill him, because that is what he understood their meeting to mean.

Philippe is the next chapter, and in it he describes the root of his perversion in relatively original prose, such as the interior-dialogue he has with himself as he tries to sleep:

"'What are you feeling, Philippe?' Tired. 'Then you should sleep.' But I am too tense; I keep thinking. 'What kind of thinking?' Well, everything. 'Of Georges?' Some. He represents something I have desired for a long time. 'How long?' Since before I came to America.
'Why did you come?' I came because in my own country I felt afraid. 'Of what?' Everything, but mainly of myself. I was beginning to want what I could not have. 'Can you be more clear?' No. When I try, my beliefs or desires come out beautiful. They are beautiful to me, but I cannot understand them in that form.
'You wanted to kill someone?' That is too simple. I thought about killing someone, though I did not know who. My ideas about death are very beautiful, so I wanted to think about killing a beautiful person. 'A boy?' Yes. 'And you could not find him there?' I could not find myself there. I was known as what I am not.
'Who are you?' I am trying to find this out. It is hard. I am driven to do certain things, and I believe they are helping me, because they seem strong. 'Why Georges?' He makes me feel something. I do not know this answer. 'He has been hurt?' Yes. 'By someone you know?' Yes." (109-110)

The novel's final chapter is narrated by Steve, who starts a nightclub called the Forefront in his parent's four-car garage. Later he meets George, and then an accident occurs, and the novel ends, in fairly effective order.

If there's anything to criticize about this book, it would be its subject matter, but that is a discussion I don't care to offer. I think it's unfair. More to the point: this novel meanders. Sometimes the meandering is great, and Cooper will find some new way to say something simple, in a sentence that the reader feels they might have read before, but with a word or two exchanging positions in order that changes the meaning. Other times, when a new narrator enters the picture, the reader can feel that they're losing the story, or missing the point. My first time reading it, I didn't like it as much.

The second time, I must admit it seems much longer than its 131 pages, but is consistent all the way through, and offers many quotable passages, as deranged as they may be. One of my favorites is more innocent though--it is George's declaration to change his life, in his diary:

"'I'm going to use this to make myself change, like a starting point. I think that's the best thing to do. I won't buy any more drugs. I'll try not to do what I always do. I never do anything other than school and Philippe.
'Tomorrow I'll clean up my room and make it look like a normal place. I think I'll burn all my Disneyland stuff so I can't change my mind. Nobody else was ever interested in the stuff anyway and all my feelings for it are destroyed by the drugs now.
'I called Cliff tonight, just to talk. He doesn't care anymore. He kept saying how cute David was. I guess they're in love. He said that David is sort of obsessed or whatever with me. I don't know why, but it pisses him off. I hung up.
'It's strange I'm not sad about Mom. I guess it took such a long time I felt everything I could feel already. I wish I hadn't been there, but I'm glad the last person she looked at was me. She really loved me once. Likewise, I guess.
'I think I'm afraid of stuff. Maybe that's it. I was afraid Mom would die, but now she has and it's okay. I can't let it stop me from doing things. I'm going to keep that in mind from now on. I mean it." (97)

Closer envisions an alternate reality of sex and violence that many will find shocking, and while it does not reach the heights of Try, it is nearly as good as Frisk, and a decent enough introduction to Cooper's work. It's definitely above-average, but something about it does seem longer--and there is something else worth noting: compared to the rest of the work in Cooper's oeuvre, it seems bland in some way. Like, there is no defining factor that makes it memorable.

For me, this isn't exactly true, but I could see how others might regard it in this light. The final chapter in particular, and the idea of the Forefront, stuck enough in my mind to imagine a parallel setting in my second novel. All of Cooper's work in general influenced my writing it, but several details reminded me of specific scenes, or even phraseology that I would later use, that were pleasures to re-discover. Though it is not a pleasurable read! Reading any of Cooper's books is not a pleasant experience, but it can also be cathartic in ways few other books can match.