Imagine that you're Bret Easton Ellis. You became an instant star in college, writing two brief, nihilistic novels (Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction) that became the uneasy voices of an era. You cemented your stardom and controversial status with American Psycho, a novel that combined outrageous violence and deadpan delivery to drive the reading public into a frenzy of speculation - was it a penetrating social satire, or a misogynistic glorification of violence?
Your next novel, the sprawling Glamorama, did nothing to stem the tide of suspicion and venom that had become your milieu. At least since American Psycho, people have largely forgotten to investigate the big themes presented in the work; obsessed with the question - does he mean it? Everyone wants to know the size of the gulf between the 'real' Bret Easton Ellis and the one that wreaks such ugliness on the page. What do you do? Simple: you give them exactly what they want, exactly how they want it. Or so it would seem. But you've got a few tricks up your sleeve yet.
Your next novel, the sprawling Glamorama, did nothing to stem the tide of suspicion and venom that had become your milieu. At least since American Psycho, people have largely forgotten to investigate the big themes presented in the work; obsessed with the question - does he mean it? Everyone wants to know the size of the gulf between the 'real' Bret Easton Ellis and the one that wreaks such ugliness on the page. What do you do? Simple: you give them exactly what they want, exactly how they want it. Or so it would seem. But you've got a few tricks up your sleeve yet.
Bret Easton Ellis's new novel, the apocryphal memoir Lunar Park, is a feat of literary sleight-of-hand, a bait and switch game that finds Ellis addressing his controversial work and his relationship to it in a fictionalized confession. Its first spellbinding chapter relates the lurid story of Ellis's rise to stardom, exactly the sort of tell-all that readers have craved. Ellis blames his abusive, manipulative father for the bleak worldview that would inform his writing, and portrays his first two novels as neither indictments nor glorifications - he was writing what he knew through the lens imparted to him by his father.
This period also marks the beginning of his tortured relationship with one of the main characters of Lunar Park, the actress Jayne Dennis, whom he impregnates and abandons. Ellis describes his downward spiral throughout the writing of American Psycho and Glamorama, becoming fatter, more narcissistic and nihilistic, more drugged-out and profligate by the day. Finally he hits rock bottom: broke, strung-out and friendless, he returns to Jayne and their now-teenaged son, moving into the suburbs of New York for one last chance at a normal life.
This period also marks the beginning of his tortured relationship with one of the main characters of Lunar Park, the actress Jayne Dennis, whom he impregnates and abandons. Ellis describes his downward spiral throughout the writing of American Psycho and Glamorama, becoming fatter, more narcissistic and nihilistic, more drugged-out and profligate by the day. Finally he hits rock bottom: broke, strung-out and friendless, he returns to Jayne and their now-teenaged son, moving into the suburbs of New York for one last chance at a normal life.
But if Ellis is being suitably penitent to appease his critics and suitably open to thrill his fans, all is not as it seems. While the author emphasizes that "Every word is true", there are plenty of clues to let us know that we're getting a caricature of Ellis, the creature of pure impulse that critics accused him of being. The most glaring clue is Jayne Dennis, an entirely fictional character. As soon as the ruse reveals itself, we're back to square one, trying to separate truth from fiction in the author's work and to figure out what he means.
This murkiness of intention is what makes Ellis's books so fascinating, and what imbues the first chapter of Lunar Park with such power. There are essentially three movements, three narrative modes, which comprise Lunar Park. The first fills in the back-story. The second, which begins the book proper at chapter two, is the strongest and funniest, as it sets up the novel's mysteries and finds Ellis attempting to assimilate into suburban family life. He's up to his old tricks from the start - at a Halloween party, the supposedly clean Ellis does cocaine with Jay McInerney ("The Jayster"), tries to make out with a grad student in the bathroom, and gives his medicated son alcohol.
This murkiness of intention is what makes Ellis's books so fascinating, and what imbues the first chapter of Lunar Park with such power. There are essentially three movements, three narrative modes, which comprise Lunar Park. The first fills in the back-story. The second, which begins the book proper at chapter two, is the strongest and funniest, as it sets up the novel's mysteries and finds Ellis attempting to assimilate into suburban family life. He's up to his old tricks from the start - at a Halloween party, the supposedly clean Ellis does cocaine with Jay McInerney ("The Jayster"), tries to make out with a grad student in the bathroom, and gives his medicated son alcohol.
Ellis is hilarious at painting himself as an outsider in his family - he's like an alien who's studied humans and memorized their gestures, but not the cues to deploy them, and he strikes notes of indignation, concern and paternal authority at all the wrong times. This section of the book also contains some great meta-commentary on his work. He's working on a new novel called Teenage Pussy, a "pornographic thriller" about a young, hip, Manhattan bachelor's erotic life, "elegantly hardcore and interspersed with bouts of [his] laconic humor." Baiting his critics, Ellis writes, "You could read the novel either as a satire on 'the new sexual obnoxiousness' or as the simple story of an average guy who enjoys defiling women with his lust." It's a terrific self-parody, and will be hilarious to those familiar with Ellis's work.
