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Aug. 26th, 2011 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupI finished Imperial Bedrooms this afternoon. Like its mirror-twin from twenty-five years earlier, Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms is an incredibly quick read. The two books are Ellis's fastest; The Informers might be shorter -- I haven't done any kind of measure -- but it's much more (possibly needlessly) complicated, and takes a lot longer to read.
Imperial Bedrooms is a sometime sequel to Less Than Zero. It opens with an explanation that Less Than Zero was written about real people, but not written by them; written by someone observing them, who changed very little, not even the names, when he published. Clay himself, now a middle-aged screenwriter, recalls seeing the film version of this and watching Julian's reaction to seeing himself killed off, which is a fantastic moment located within a pretty sincere and scathing attack on the film that actually was made and which you can actually see.
Sometimes it's hard to differentiate not just reality from fiction, with Ellis, but degrees of reality.
The situation, for Our Hero Clay, hasn't really changed in twenty five years: he finds himself back in Los Angeles from New York in December, reacquainting himself with the other characters from Less Than Zero, just as in the earlier book he returned from school on the east coast to spend winter break in California. The difference is that this time, Clay is "the writer": an active participant, the god of the story, often controlling events. And that can't end well, because Clay...well, Clay's never been a nice person. One of the really compelling aspects of the book is watching the slow reveal of Clay not as an innocent, wounded boy from Less Than Zero but as first manipulative, then cruel, then violently abusive in pursuit of his own desires, which themselves are twisted back to cause himself pain as well. It's not that it's entertaining to watch, but it's masterfully written.
The book's plot also involves a conspiracy, some murders, and a complicated web of relationships and power exchanges -- in that sense it calls back to Glamorama, and I'm not sure it did the book any favours. But it is much more concise and cutting than Glamorama, so I can't say how much it harmed the book either.
Final Verdict: Well, it isn't his best work, but it's better (and shorter) than his worst. I think it's a compelling, disturbing follow-up to Less Than Zero; at least before this you could pretend they got happy endings.
Now that I've read all of Ellis's work, at least all the novels -- there are a ton of interviews and magazine article and all -- I'm working on a sort of comprehensive "My Thoughts On The World" essay, which I don't expect will be terribly coherent but should at least be interesting.
Imperial Bedrooms is a sometime sequel to Less Than Zero. It opens with an explanation that Less Than Zero was written about real people, but not written by them; written by someone observing them, who changed very little, not even the names, when he published. Clay himself, now a middle-aged screenwriter, recalls seeing the film version of this and watching Julian's reaction to seeing himself killed off, which is a fantastic moment located within a pretty sincere and scathing attack on the film that actually was made and which you can actually see.
Sometimes it's hard to differentiate not just reality from fiction, with Ellis, but degrees of reality.
The situation, for Our Hero Clay, hasn't really changed in twenty five years: he finds himself back in Los Angeles from New York in December, reacquainting himself with the other characters from Less Than Zero, just as in the earlier book he returned from school on the east coast to spend winter break in California. The difference is that this time, Clay is "the writer": an active participant, the god of the story, often controlling events. And that can't end well, because Clay...well, Clay's never been a nice person. One of the really compelling aspects of the book is watching the slow reveal of Clay not as an innocent, wounded boy from Less Than Zero but as first manipulative, then cruel, then violently abusive in pursuit of his own desires, which themselves are twisted back to cause himself pain as well. It's not that it's entertaining to watch, but it's masterfully written.
The book's plot also involves a conspiracy, some murders, and a complicated web of relationships and power exchanges -- in that sense it calls back to Glamorama, and I'm not sure it did the book any favours. But it is much more concise and cutting than Glamorama, so I can't say how much it harmed the book either.
Final Verdict: Well, it isn't his best work, but it's better (and shorter) than his worst. I think it's a compelling, disturbing follow-up to Less Than Zero; at least before this you could pretend they got happy endings.
Now that I've read all of Ellis's work, at least all the novels -- there are a ton of interviews and magazine article and all -- I'm working on a sort of comprehensive "My Thoughts On The World" essay, which I don't expect will be terribly coherent but should at least be interesting.
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Date: 2011-08-26 07:44 pm (UTC)As well, MTA is posting information here (http://www.mta.info/) on their emergency page. It seems like they are planning to shut down all bus and subway lines starting noon on Saturday.
Be safe, everyone!
(And here are the full links in case anyone wants to spread the word, but a quick google search will get you more.)
http://gothamist.com/2011/08/26/nyc_starts_mandatory_evacuation_of.php
http://www.mta.info/