Tampa

Tampa. Nutting, Alissa. New York: HarperCollins, 2013.

POST UNDER MAINTENANCE

Far From the Madding Crowd

Far From the Madding Crowd. Hardy, Thomas. 1876. Naples, FL: Trident Press International, 2001.

Cuter than a Wes Anderson set, this is the tale of a Victorian hottie who has to choose between three horndogs til she finds the right one—like Goldilocks and the porridge. Bathsheba Everdene has recently inherited her family farm, which in modern terms is like saying her STACKS of GREEN are so high that she can't see the HATERS. Naturally Bathsheba becomes Weatherbury's hottest commodity and the servants start gossiping about who is to take her hand (and farm and something else ifyaknowwhaimsayin).  In an interesting feminist twist, Bathsheba decides to try to run the farm herself which is entirely inappropriate for a young hardbody. Y'all saw that reality show with Paris Hilton and her friend having to work on a farm right? Farming ain't the province of beautiful ladiezzz. Bathsheba attempts to master buying and selling crops at market but realizes that she ain't cut out for that shit. What she needs is a man to manage the boring stuff while she chills in her mansion and gossips with her BFF Liddy.

At this point she has already turned down one of her suitors, the indefatigably honest shepherd Gabriel Oak, who is still getting over it. Oak ain't the most socially adept bloke in Wessex because he proposes to Bathsheba like the second time that he meets her (and before she becomes Bath$heba). Girl is freaked out for reals. But Oak is a morally upright character who, as is typical of Hardy, gets tragically fucked over by the forces of fate. His mutt goes berserk and drives his flock over a cliff leaving Oak to have to pay back the deposit on the animals. Just like credit card debt...sooner or later you gotta pay up for all those borrowed dollars/sheep, naimsayin? Oak settles with his creditors but has no green leftover for himself. But his good nature ends up getting him a job, as he proves to be adept at saving a corn harvest from a sudden fire. The locals put in a good word and Bathsheba decides to hire him even though she kinda knows that he is sooo not over her. Also Oak is a master shepherd and there's this one scene where the sheep start dying of this rapidly accelerating disease and the farmhands are powerless to stop it and Gabriel is all like EVERYBODY CHILL THE FUCK OUT I GOT THIS. Except he didn't curse like that but he has that kind of confidence about matters of sheep.

Bachelor no. 2 is Boldwood, and the first part of that portmanteau is a misnomer. Boldwood is a stick-up-his-ass...I mean stick-in-the-mud sort of fellow who has a good reputation in the community, but like Oak he isn't the type to spend his vacay in Ibiza. Boldwood takes a fancy to Bathsheba after the latter, in a totally girly move straight out of seventh grade, conspires with Liddy to send a letter to Boldwood that says "MARRY ME AND MAKE ME GO UNNNNH UNNNNH UNNNNH" (OK I made that last part of it up). Teehee. Girls can be so capricious and conniving, amirite? Bathsheba doesn't really fancy him but TOO LATE SINCE BOLDY AIN'T NEVER GONNA FORGET THAT. Girl, you don't tempt a lonely, reserved farmer like that and expect he's not gonna take it seriously! So Boldy now fancies Bathy and she's like "jk lol sry about that" and he's like "you cruel bitch...I mean you delightfully angelic creature who has acted cruelly toward me!" See, Boldy is one of those idealistic lover types and since he has fallen in love with Bathy nothing shakes him out of it. I'm talkin' Heathcliff style bitches, 'cept his love is unrequited.

But look, a challenger approaches! It's Sergeant Troy: rogueish, fit, Anglo-French, Byronic badboy with a sword. Troy is all about breakin' rules and breakin' hos. His idea of a good time is a Casterbridge pussyquest during a furlough and while this lad has class, he's a right proper socialist, baby, when it comes to the ladiezzz. Meaning he likes the servant girls as well as the rich bitches. Meaning he has sex with runaway servant babe Fanny Robin (you expected a fanny joke there didn't yer?). Prolly the best scene of the novel is where Troy tries to seduce Bathsheba using his sword trick. He blindfolds her and wields his peen-blade marvelously all around poor Bathy but he promises that it never touched/penetrated her. Wooing...you're doing it right.

Bathy is totally into him even though Oak warns her that Troy seems to be a...how you say...WANKER. Oak suggests she marry Boldy instead, but rich bitches get what they want (even in Victorian times, reader) so the two hotties marry each other. Oak's crit of Troy ends up being spot on since he dunno a thing about farming and the like and attempts to ingratiate himself to the servants by getting them plastered. Unfortunately this happens right before a storm is about to brew so everyone is too drunk to remember to cover the corn harvest. See, in this book corn is like the same thing as money so it is even more shocking to find out that poor Boldy has been neglecting his crop ever since Bathsheba turned him down. Oak comes to the rescue, as per usual, and manages to limit the damage, but Bathy won't have a servant instruct her on her love affairs so she has little patience for Oak stating the obvious fact that Troy is a...how you say...douche. However she seems to allow Liddy to give her love advice, which must fall under the "girl talk exemption clause." Troy also has a taste for gambling and since he's married to Bath$heba "Cha-Ching" Everdene, he's always like "canna yer lend me five quid for the races—I mean investments—that I am looking into?" At the same time Troy is carrying on a sexy affair with Fanny, but Bathy never fully catches on (though Oak does).

This is a Hardy novel so TRAGEDY STRIKES. Fanny, exiled in shame in a Victorian workhouse, dies from unknown causes (broken heart? VD?). Troy and Bathsheba are absolutely shaken and they handle the funeral which (conveniently) allows Fanny's body to rest at the house before burial. Oak covers the casket because he does not want Bathsheba to know the truth about Troy's phallic escapades. But alas, in her grief Bathy opens the casket to find that poor Fanny was with child. Troy's evasiveness toward her about Fanny and the fact that he carries a lock of her hair in his watch allow Bathy to piece together that her douchebag husband is unfaithful. The marriage falls apart and Troy wanders about, only to go for a swim and (conveniently, for later purposes of the plot) leave all his shit on the shore. He is carried out by a strong current and a bystander reports that he has surely drowned.

News reaches Bathsheba that she is newly single and ready to mingle but she's in no mood for fun. Poor girl still blames herself for Troy's treachery. But the news excites someone in Weatherbury...dear old Boldy, still nursing his lust for Bathsheba. He's like "Hey girl, now that your husband is out of the picture, how about we elope lol" and she's like "um...I could only marry for love and I don't love you" and he's like "s'cool I'll just bother you about it all the time and remind you about how you fucking played with my emotions with that letter so much that I wished I were dead. You owe it to me bitch." While it is true that Bathsheba wants to marry for love she also believes that Troy is not dead since they never found his body. And wouldn't you know it, but her wifely instincts are right! Troy survived and was picked up by a ship and by some naked, cray cray method makes it to America where he becomes, and I quote, "Professor of Gymnastics, Sword Exercise, Fencing, and Pugilism." Then he remembers that he has a hott wife waiting back in Engerland so he returns and takes the perfect job for a disgraced-husband-seeking-to-win-back-his-wife-and-her-estate: he joins the bloody circus. His object is to get a sense of what Bathy is up to and how disgraced his reputation is with her and the town folk.

Everybody who's anybody (livestock included) show up at the Sheep Fair at Greenhill, where Troy plays the performing role of legendary highwayman Dick Turpin. In order to conceal himself he has to rely on disguising his face and limiting the speaking of his part and he seems to pull it off as Bathsheba does not notice...but the narsty baliff Pennyways does. This Pennyways was sacked by Bathsheba earlier on for stealing grain so he's desperate to curry her favour by informing her that her hubby is alive and well. But Troy has other plans; he follows Pennyways to the tea tent where Boldy and Bathy are having a quaff and after Pennyways gives her the note which says that her husband is alive, he furtively reaches from behind the curtain and snatches it from her before she has a chance to read it.

Meanwhile Boldy guilt-trips Bathy into considering the prospect of marrying him in six years, because at that point Troy would be considered dead and she could then legally remarry. They agree Bathsheba will give her answer at the upcoming Christmas Eve bash at Boldwood's crib. Troy consults with Pennyways' and with his help constructs a costumed disguise (of the type that work in novels and not in real life), intending to gatecrash and wifegrab with one swift stroke. But news of Pennyways' discovery of Troy spreads throughout Oak and the farmhands. They decide to tell Bathy the truth before she foolishly commits to Boldwood but (conveniently) they haven't the heart to break up the absolutely bonkers partay. Boldy's plan to strong-arm Bathy into being his betrothed works and she agrees that she will marry no one else until the time period elapses and she will be his. Boldwood, raging with a boner of joy, gets hammered and welcomes a new stranger into the house who just so happens to be Troy. He orders Bathy to leave with him and Boldy snaps and shoots the adulterer. Bathy feints. Troy dies. Boldy turns himself in (but is spared the noose).

TIME PASSES and the town folk start treating Bathsheba like she's got a case of the crabs. I'm talking glacier cold, and the worst of it is that Oak avoids our poor hottie as well. Bathsheba no doubt thinks that Oak has saved her ass like three times and has had enough and that is why he wants to leave England for Cali. But she's wrong, my friends, because if there is one true theme in this tale of cattle and cads, horse dung and horndogs, it is FRIENDSHIP. Oak and Bathsheba's relationship oscillates from Death Valley to the bloody Matterhorn but they never give up on each other and so it is only natural that this wonderful novel ends in their marriage.

Is this book too dated for modern readers? (It isn't...BYDHTTMWFI). Read it and decide for yourself.

Keep turning those pages, readers.

Glamorama

Glamorama. Ellis, Bret Easton. New York: Vintage, 1998.

This is my favorite book of all time. I'm often at a loss as to how to explain why I love it so much, since I generally don't care for American fiction. I think the reason why is that it offers an invigorating reading experience. You will get the full gamut of emotions from this novel. It is as likely to make you laugh as it is to make you cry as it is to make you wince as it is to make you hurl as it is to turn you on. If you can make it past the first third of the narrative then you will likely finish it, as at that point it takes a three hundred sixty degree turn. Not a full turn, since the protagonist Victor Ward's character never really changes even if the plot does.

Glamorama is an achievement because the world of vapid supermodels does not seem well fitted to literature. After all, in a profession where one look says everything who cares what anyone says? And indeed, this book is filled with trite and ridiculously banal dialogue. Victor Ward has the philosophical depth of a paper plate. It is only when his life and everyone in it are endangered that he even begins to act introspective, to comprehend the magnitude of fashion in bed with terrorism. As the book goes on there is less of the label conscious itemization that has been attacked by so many critics and retched at by so many readers. Vicariously we want to be Victor Ward because of who he sleeps with and who he hangs out with. We are superficially in love with what he is capable of, even if he himself stands for nothing. He is an imbecile, but some of us would willingly give up their intelligence in exchange for that body and what comes with it. As it is with Ellis, surface is what matters.

What many fail to pick up on is that this book is a satire. Ellis does not praise the fashion industry in Glamorama. Instead he viciously attacks it. None of his characters are happy because they are too busy being hip; they prefer pouts to grins. The smell of shit is a repeating trope in this book, jockeying for position with the Chanel infused molecules of the hippest of parties. The claim that models can become terrorists is reasonably sound given that their lives are all about access: what exclusive clubs they can get into and what material pleasures (drugs, sex) come with that. Perhaps it is simplistic to say that models are docile, unquestioning (but good looking) pieces of meat, oblivious to questions of morality or sexual decency. But you have to admire the courage of this author because he absolutely does not back down from making that claim. Ellis is the type of writer who is not afraid to scare and offend you. It is these types of writers who come to define an age, not the mildly shocking drivel of the "pick your genre" crowd. Where others feint a strike, Ellis delivers a knockout punch. Read it to understand what the 90s were about and prepare to be shocked and amazed.

Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock. Greene, Graham. 1938. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1970.

Graham Greene achieved the seemingly impossible: he was popular with the common reader as well as the critic. But once you read his works you can see why. If there is one thing that people who read literature love it is commiseration. His books are a celebration of commiseration. Not emo depressing commiseration. I mean commiseration as in the constant reminder of how many emotional wounds the business of living requires. It is commiseration combined with tolerance that defines Greene's writing. He is so very aware of the difficulties that his protagonists face. He does not dismiss them in a nihilistic way. He expounds on their suffering but without being overly melancholy. It also helps that he has extraordinary powers of imagery. So one can see why his books are so relevant and readable.

To write about the rich, the all-powerful and the intellectually charming is the easy road. That does not mean that writers that focus on these matters should be dismissed. But to limit the intelligence, freedom and power of your characters requires more skill. This is especially true with matters of intelligence since it can be assumed (but maybe not proven) that all writers of literature are intelligent. It is easy to write about intelligent people who love conversation but harder to write about those that use language in a stoic, utilitarian manner. Introspective people make wonderful characters but not everyone is introspective. Sometimes the decision to not speak does not mean that the person has some hidden thought that justifies the choice. To write about the ignorant and feeble-minded truthfully requires a great use of imagination since it requires the writer to lower himself. It is for this reason that we admire books that deal with the sordid. As I Lay Dying (birthplace of this blog's title). Wuthering Heights. Sons and Lovers. There are many examples. We enjoy these stories about the poor even as we cling to our Austens, our Waughs, our Fitzgeralds.

Brighton Rock is an achievement because it concerns sordid people grounded in a provincial mindset. Pinkie's gang are laughable excuses for gangsters. They seem on the verge of destitution yet they continue to risk being caught and hung for the transgressions. Perhaps this is typical of prewar gangs but the promise of wealth seems to be the main reason why people break the law for a living. Yet Pinkie's gang never seem close to a windfall. Furthermore they are constantly reminded that Brighton is the turf of the slick Colleoni (who fits the gangster archetype a little better). One gets the feeling that Pinkie and his cohorts are gangsters because they are ignorant and don't know any better. Rose is stupid. Her limited intelligence does not deserve a more exhaustive adjective...though one feels for her poor upbringing. She is an example of someone that is given absolutely nothing bar the fact that her parents are alive (even though they are depicted as cretins). Even the heroine Ida Arnold is a working-class girl fueled by good sense grounded in pleasant but limited maxims. Her relationship with men borders on prostitution, or at least it probably did in the 1930s.

There is a certain degree of duality in this novel. It is a tightly drawn, intricately plotted mystery stemming from the ramifications of the death of a newspaper salesman. But it is not mere noir. Like others works of Greene, there is a distinctive Catholic element at play as Pinkie and Rose are both "Romans." Part of their Catholic identity is shaped by how Catholicism is defined in opposition to Protestantism (a betrothal instead of an engagement, the rigor of Catholic schools, how attending Mass on Sundays is the path to heaven). But the other aspect of it is purely sexual. A reader would be hard-pressed to find a book that approaches sex with such a degree of repulsiveness. Of course the repulsiveness is not universal (what is fun to Ida is sickening to Pinkie). But Brighton Rock reminds one of the story of the child who sees his parents have sex and is spiritually (and psychologically) cursed afterwards. This is what happens to Pinkie and it shapes him into a teenager who is utterly disgusted with his burgeoning sexual yearnings. Pinkie is not really a psychopath since he holds out on a rather forgiving view of the faith; that confession at some point before death equals absolution. One could argue that he has transferred his sexual urge into an urge for blood (and that is certainly less healthy than the other way around). Yet Graham Greene is too smart, too human a writer to present only one side of Catholicism. He does not dismiss it as self-flagellating and overly tense because of its sexual close-mindedness. Rose trusts the murderous Pinkie and can only absolve herself by means of confession in the final scene of the novel. And even though the record of Pinkie's wrongs is clear, the priest sees his love for her as evidence of his innate, God-given goodness...even if only scraps of it.

Night and Day

Night and Day. Woolf, Virginia. 1919. London: Grafton, 1987.

Why bother with Virginia Woolf? When one reads her one gets the impression that he has ventured into exalted territory—a domain in which every intricacy of the English language is exploited and celebrated. In short she is not for beginners and occupies a perch beyond which lies that radical branch of modernism that does not make literal sense, where cohesive thoughts and sentences are not taken for granted.

Yet despite these and other flaws (in addition to a voluptuous use of English a stubborn Metropolitan snobbery exponentially stronger than Woody Allen) she is worth a writer's time. I could say the same for readers but there are plenty of great writers who are easier to digest. Woolf is a writer's writer and if one is not too interested in the craft of expression then she may not be worth the effort.

But her prose is so damned good—so good that you wonder how anyone could write this well. Writers and aspiring writers can and should love her (or at least substitute envy for admiration).

Night and Day is not a novel to read for the plot. Typical love triangle. At the centre is Katherine Hilbery—rich, beautiful, noble, well-bred and yet flawed. Katherine does not know how to love and would prefer to entrench herself in calculus and astronomy. This despite the fact that she is of poetic nobility as the granddaughter of a fictional prototype of Lord Tennyson. Indeed Katherine is the perfect  foil to the extraordinary character of her mother who is eerily similar to a hippie except she predates Woodstock by half a century. Katherine is no poetry junkie (despite her bloodline) and does not wax poetical about stepping on the hallowed ground upon which the Bard may have squatted as her mother does.

Perhaps the two do agree on one thing: don't marry a man unless you are in love with him. Katherine almost breaks this rule when she is engaged to Rodney, who by all accounts should be her perfect match. Rodney is an academic sort but he is not privileged enough to earn his bread solely by means of his Elizabethan monographs (though he licks his lips at the possibility once entered into the Hilbery fortune).

Katherine must hear his blatant poetic rendering of herself as the Muse even though it is rubbish and she can't believe it. Her noble resolve is finally broken (as is the engagement) not by means of a frank declaration that she does not share Rodney's love...at least, not originally. Katherine only becomes forthright after her apparent public ridicule of Rodney forces him to chastise her in a effort to justify the apparent emasculation. We are speaking of nothing particularly devastating (at least by today's standards). Apparently agreeing to take a walk and then standing one's partner up is enough to constitute ridicule according to Rodney. Despite his devotion to literature he is still attuned like a satellite to the public opinion of himself in elevated Chelsea circles. He seems to lack the poetic abandon and fearlessness towards scandal that is sometimes expected of those who write verse.

But Katherine is a woman of class and women of class eventually have to settle. She has not the unfettered quality of her friend Mary Datchet whose life is fueled by the passion for justice that is a necessary consequence (for those modern and enlightened) of Parliament's beastly avoidance of the suffrage issue. Woolf seems to suggest that Katherine is not a woman of ideals precisely because she has money. Or perhaps she is a woman of ideals except that her ideals are personally and purposefully dehumanized (mathematical figures; constellations in the sky). Perhaps it is a facile treatment of the sciences but Virginia Woolf probably never would have called herself as a scientist.

Anyway Katherine settles for Ralph Denham even though he shows similar attributes of the idealistic, fanatical, "head in the clouds" love that she rejects from Rodney. Katherine's social status towers over these two male friends of hers and to both of them she does not reciprocate their love. Yet in the end she chooses (or considers or settles upon) Ralph. Both men adore her and she ultimately rejects the respective angelic depictions of herself but there is a difference that draws her to Ralph.

It certainly helps that Ralph (unlike Rodney) does not fall for the youthful, exuberant Cassandra, dearest cousin of Katherine. Cassandra, due to her inexperience, lacks the cruelty of Katherine; she must learn  how to ridicule a man as society has not endowed her with the foul seeds of that knowledge. Things don't end happily for Rodney but it is perhaps excusable that he falls for a relation of Katherine's. It is also excusable (and perfectly reasonable) that Katherine almost welcomes the news as a feasible (if controversial and scandalous) way of justifying the end of her engagement to her parents.

Yet it is scandal that marks the difference between these two intellectual young men—in particular Ralph's complete lack of fear toward it. He is perfectly alright with making a fool of himself by staring into the window of the Hilbery drawing room. So deep is his love (or infatuation or vision) that the poor man cannot help it.

The ending of this novel is beautiful in that there is a working agreement; a compromise between the two (dare we call them lovers?). It is majestically left unfinished as it should since the two of them must resolve the different visions of their relationship.

No doubt Katherine expresses the view of Woolf in that true knowledge of another person is impossible (even among lovers). She cannot believe that if she loves Ralph the way he loves her the world would suddenly change for the better (as Ralph believes). But she is willing to try to believe it and perhaps that's all that love is, or at least all that we can expect of it.

The Informers

The Informers. Ellis, Bret Easton. New York: Vintage, 1994.

Generally considered to be among the weakest of Ellis' works, The Informers is a victim of its own form as the author's only short story collection. In a way it qualifies as a novel since many of the characters from Ellis' universe reappear and interact. The problem is the utter anonymity of Ellis characters as well as the uniformity of their appearances. The latter is expressed strongly in American Psycho in which one of the running gags (or tropes) is how Patrick Bateman is unsure of the identity of the people that he sees at parties and clubs. In fact, Bateman himself is completely mistaken for a colleague by Paul Allen simply because both he and his doppelganger wear Armani suits and Oliver Peoples eyeglasses. Whether or not these two men have different personalities is inconsequential. Ellis is all about "surface, surface, surface" (to paraphrase the man himself).

Why doesn't this work in The Informers? Because the incredibly toneless narration robs the cast of any semblance of sympathy and cognizance to the reader. It's hard enough to stomach a dose of absolute nihilism in a novel with a coherent plot and a protagonist. The short story form makes Ellis' words even more unhitched from anything approaching morality, justice or decency. If you don't care about an Ellis protagonist; a Clay, Patrick Bateman or Victor Ward, then why would you care about a narrator who you only have twenty pages to get to know?

This problem is compounded by the necessarily Ellisean aspect of characters. Or to put it rhetorically (for those that have read the book): what is the difference between Tim and Graham? Besides the obvious connections to each character (parents, who they are fucking, etc.) there really is no difference. Both have the same personality, same interests, both are wealthy, hang out at the same places, even dress similar. Even in appearance Ellisland is uniform: blondness, tallness and attractiveness are ubiquitous. The only ethnic minorities in The Informers (besides some Hispanics used as scenery) are surfers.

The result is that when one reads this novel one often forgets just who is who. Unlike in Less than Zero (which is pretty close to this novel stylistically) there is no main narrative to hold together the plot and the reader's attention. Ellis has publicly stated that the film adaptation of this novel was the greatest of the four that have been done on his work and it's no wonder why. What the film is able to do is to lace together the independent stories (albeit at the expense of some others that are left out) in a way that is never really done in the novel since there is no sense of chronology. The result is that we know why Martin is not Graham and Graham not Martin. In the book the distinction is much less clear.

Ellis is not one to place particular attention toward development of character as his premise is that surface develops character far more than do thoughts or emotions. So much of Ellisland is about being the right type of person at the right types of places having access to the right types of debauchery and sex. Whether or not you happen to be eloquent, sympathetic or even coherent is far less important. There is no room for free thinkers in such a morally depraved view of the world. Though Ellis never makes this point clear in his work, his devotion to surface and its nihilistic consequences makes him a moralist, albeit a subtle one.

The Informers is imperfect as is often true of short story collections. But as a work it is decidedly in line with Ellis' literary experiment – if you create characters that have everything and can do anything, is there anything left to be said beyond the surface? Apparently not.

Lunar Park

Lunar Park. Ellis, Bret Easton. New York: Vintage, 2005.

One could call this book a Bret Easton Ellis tribute novel which just happens to have been penned by Ellis himself. Lunar Park is kind of like a graduate thesis on Ellis and his work except that it is also a novel and an intriguing story in its own right.

The first part of the novel is a brisk first person account of Ellis rise to fame as a literary superstar who never really needed to grow up. He seems to have hit upon a niche spot in contemporary fiction and his signature style of moral blindness and harrowing depravity satisfies (or at least shocks) readers worldwide. In his creative process Ellis depends more and more on the drugs that fill his novels and his Syd Barrettesque behavior eventually contributes to his demise in that he fathers a child with a well-known actress with which he has a characteristically self destructive relationship. Fatherhood, to put it mildly, is not given much attention in the Ellis oeuvre (just read Glamorama or "In the Islands" from The Informers).

We must stop here for clarification: this is not an autobiography of Ellis (even though the first section basically is). In real life Ellis is bisexual and (so far as we know) has no children. Ellis in this way creates a kind of pellegrino Ellis who lives through the metaphysical hell of the plot but who is distinct from poeta Ellis. Dante shielded his readers from the mundane world of his wife and family whereas Ellis shares these themes in an attempt to make himself appear normal. It does not work on the one hand. Father Bret attempts to fit in with the upper class parents in the ubiquitous McManshion neighborhood in the northeast (not sunny SoCal). But the end result is that he's just the same type of guy as before except on a kind of liberal rehab regiment in which he can slip off from responsibility and do a line or two provided he can lie and keep a straight face.

Yet this honesty is refreshing because Ellis undertook a massive risk in making a fictional character of himself. This book could have been unbearably pretentious in the wrong hands. Ellis succeeds in poking fun at himself. For all the praise and scorn heaped on the man, he has published comparatively little (seven novels in twenty five years). Ellis wisely writes in a romantic subplot with a beautiful graduate student who is doing her masters thesis on his work as the pellegrino "teaches" a creative writing class and spends the rest of his time crafting his new work "Teenage Pussy". Her graduate advisor attempts to persuade her from studying literary trash in depth as if, below the nihilistic LA surface, there lies some nugget of truth or virtue.

Ellis is at a point in his life where money doesn't really matter all that much; he's already made a fortune since publishing Less than Zero while still in college (though he blew a lot of it rockstar style). Of more importance is learning how to deal with being a dad and with leaving behind the vestiges of his enfant terrible past life as a substance abuser. And then weird things begin to happen and pellegrino Ellis finds his home besieged by the demons of his past both real (his father) and imaginary (Patrick Bateman).

This book is an acquired taste and one could say the same about Ellis in general. Yet this novel is profoundly different from the rest of his work, and not merely because Ellis himself is the protagonist. Ellis deftly touches upon multiple themes and genres. Lunar Park is part memoir and part horror story but below the surface of this novel is the awesome power of family and its potential for destruction. Ellis never comes to terms with his falling out with his father (who seems like a real shithead but I suppose Ellis has to be a little biased) and he must rectify this in order to save his own relationship with his son. The deadpan moral depravity that Ellis so usefully provides in his earlier work is here morphed into a malevolent force which pays homage to the power of literature. I don't wish to give away the details any further than that, but one of the points of this novel is how dynamic the creation of the written word is.

Lunar Park is the closest we have to Bret Easton Ellis opening his mind for his fans. This book is so entrenched in the author himself that even the title is not explained as it's a kind of inside joke shared between father and son. Even if one doesn't care for Ellis complaining about his bitter relationship with his father (not all of us can drive off in a BMW and snort eight balls in the Hollywood Hills to escape our family problems), there are moments of brilliance here. Ellis is spot on in describing the new wave system of parenting in which children are a kind of commodity raised to fruition even if that means stunting their emotional growth with unnecessary medication. Depravity and malevolence are the bread and butter of this author and in Lunar Park he does not disappoint. But Ellis shows with this novel that he can branch out and show his emotional side and the last chapter of this novel is so touching that you wonder how the author of American Psycho could have written it.