Books of this nature age well with me. I keep thinking about what happened, what Ellis might have meant. I find it fascinating what people walk away with from this and American Psycho. It seems rather obvious to me that this book is not just about spoiled rich drug addicts wasting away while taking some of their world with them. The characters' actions, more specifically their lack of action, says so much for the state of the times in this book, for LA, for American culture, all of which I find

Reading this book is almost a painful exercise. Everyone is drugged up, f*@$ed up and nobody cares about anything other than getting high and wasted. Everyone is literally sleeping with everyone. Many meaningless sexual encounters where morals are left by the highway. The 80's were really about living the excess lifestyle and no place more than L.A where this book centres around. The book is one painfully awful situation after another, a lot of aimless wanderings, with lots of bad pointless dial...

One question before we start, "Anthracite?"Less than Zero is a meditation on the soul-less, physically obsessed world that was born in the 1980s. Yes, perhaps the pedulum has swung to and fro since the publication, but I find the relevance striking to today's pop-culture aesthetic. If Easton Ellis was writing this story today, which his website says he is working on a sequel!?! TECHNOLOGY would or will seperate the characters even more. The Internet is the most convenient place at this time to "...

Last year I spent a few months as an intern for a major national arts publication, which shall remain nameless because that makes me look cooler than if I just blurted it out. I had a few regular duties at this (unpaid) gig, the primary one being transcription of interviews. You might think that transcribing is drudgery, and in a sense it is. But if the interview subject was interesting—and, given this publication's bent and cachet, most of the subjects were interesting—it provided a rare glimps...

Why should I care about Bret Easton Ellis' characters if he doesn't care about them? The aptly titled Less Than Zero didn't bother to go into the character's inner-dialogue any more than it bothered to show a character that anyone might care about. Sure, the things they do (random sex, drug abuse, etc) make great fodder for fiction, but if there's no counterweight of compassion, what do I care if they fuck up their lives?I get it: they're emotionally vacant and aimless because of the environment...

This book seems boring and shallow, and reading it gives me an anesthetized, hollow, detached feeling that I would not describe as entirely pleasant.And yet I cannot seem to stop, and whenever I have to, I become very anxious to return to it as quickly as I can. Its appeal is no less powerful for being difficult to pinpoint or explain.This experience reminds me of something, but I'm not sure what.... Oh yeah, I know: Bright Lights, Big City. Way better, though, so far. I love all the characters'...

Rich kids doing drugs. Ugh.Actually, my view of this book was kind of distorted by this man I used to work with at this coffee shop.He was a huge fan if this author. And he was also a writer himself (published in Hustler!). He was in his 40's and still trying to break out. He had a son that was autistic and had tons of medical bills but because he still wanted to be a struggling artist his family had to suffer.So, he gives me the manuscript of one of his books (that was rejected by several publi...

I read this book with the constant eerie feeling that I was reading someone else’s diary. I wanted to stop but couldn’t! And trust me, this was proper scary stuff. How simple it is to stop caring or not to be afraid to lose if you think there’s actually nothing left to lose. How easy it is to think you can replace affection with a credit card. How so much easier it is to let yourself go when you’re young enough to think you’re going to live forever. There’s a reason why this book became a bestse...

‘’If the book is an existential satire, its actual premise is that the world is hell disguised as paradise.’’- Ottessa Moshfegh ‘’You’re a beautiful boy and that’s all that matters.’’ Cruelty, depravity, exploitation, hopelessness…Okay soooo I read the sequel Imperial Bedrooms last year because it was 2€ and I didn’t know it was a sequel. I will probably reread it when finals are over. I read it at 1am while watching Blackmail Boy (Οξυγόνο) and because it’s less than 200pages long I finish

some books are like the face of Justin Long: this is a highly punchable face. don't you just want to punch that smug look right off of his corny face? it is a face born for being stomped into the ground. ugh, i hate justin long. although i loved him in the last few seconds of Jeepers Creepers, he was perfect for the role of Gutted Horror Victim.i also hate Less Than Zero. i blame this book for all of the ennui-laden, masturbatory nonsense that was foisted upon the world in the 80s. shouldn't

Unloved rich kids in 80s L.A. desperately try to feel something. It's depressing and disheartening, but worth it if you can stomach the apathy and hedonism. It's pretty awful at times (the events of the book).

Honestly, I didn't like it. There were very few redeeming qualities, and I'm ready to die on this hill.For a while, I was going to leave this review blank and pretend that I was more neutral about it. I was worried that people would tell me that I "didn't get" the book, or the messages that it was trying to send. After 3 months of reflection, I have decided that this is bullshit. In fact, I have decided that this book is bullshit.A 1980s journey into sex, drugs and nihilism, this book builds a c...

The defense I see most often of Ellis is: "You just don't get the joke." And could there be a more annoying defense? How can you even respond to that? It's meaningless.And it's not a joke. It's satire; that's totally different.I spent tonight arguing about Ellis with some very smart contrarians, and here's what they said: Ellis has captured the soulless Me First Generation, and their failure to connect with life, in a really effective way. He refuses his rival David Foster Wallace's edict that l...

TW: drug abuse, pedophiliaThe person who recommended this to me cited it as her favorite book of all time, but she had read it for a class, so I think we had different experiences with it. This book is steeped in melancholy and nihilism, which I typically enjoy, but the format and emotionlessness of this often made it difficult to read, so it took me over a month to complete. Still, I enjoyed its themes and totally understand why my friend connected with it so much. I'm jealous that she got to d...

Another empty novel about emptiness, oh joy! I read this because friends were always like, “You’ve never read Bret Easton Ellis? Whaaaaat?” But now I have and we never have to talk about it again. Yay.

Less Than Zero is an affecting ridealong in a car full of coke-addled rich kids. The ending is properly shocking. I was, as was intended, thoroughly disgusted, as I'm sure you will be too. I didn't like a single character. The book has all the appeal of a trainwreck that causes a chemical spill at your local kindergarten. You don't read this book for fun. You read it to justify your hatred of humanity and all things wealthy. Christian Rummel does a fantastic job with the audiobook. In summation:...

A young student called Clay returns to Los Angeles for Christmas break to see friends and family. His visit reads something like this: “We’re rich kids in LA! Let’s do drugs and have sex – we’re soooo hedonistic and transgressive! Ooo, let’s have sex again and do MORE drugs!” Repeat for 200 pages and you’ve got Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel Less Than Zero!Ellis can write really well so it’s a shame he doesn’t really have anything to say besides: rich LA brats are aimless, lost youth, their pare...

Disappear here... In modern times, it’s hard to imagine a better published first novel than Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, published in 1985, when the writer was just 21. The tender age didn’t seem to bother Ellis as he effortlessly deconstructs the youth of his generation in Los Angeles. It’s cold, nihilistic, raw and driven by emotionless desires. It’s this detachedness that gives power to Bret Easton Ellis’ minimalist prose.Tightly controlled, the novel follows the narrator, Clay, an e

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 steer...

Bret Easton Ellis lays the groundwork for the discussions of "surface aesthetics" in literature: Contrary to the reigning attitude of the dominant literary elite in the 60's and 70's, he relentlessly focuses on surfaces, insisting that they are, in fact, deep. Everybody in his debut novel is blond, tan, rich, and on drugs, even male prostitutes drive Ferraris. The soma (hello, Brave New World) that 18-year-old protagonist / narrator Clay and his, ähem, "friends" use has different forms, but much...