The Official Love/Hate Brett Easton Ellis Thread

[strangedaze]

Lunar Park, American Psycho, Glamorama, Less Than Zero, The Informers, High Fidelity, and so on.

Why I love BEE:

His books somehow manage to be screaming things in my face while whispering others in my ear. There's something profoundly human in all of his characters, even when they seem callous and two-dimensional. Stylistically, he manages to come off as articulate without being pretentious, writing with an aesthetic that doesn't require a dictionary but that still reads like poetry (Pat Bateman's endless fashion descriptions in AP come to mind).

So far I've done Less Than Zero and American Psycho, the latter of which I can honestly say is one of my favorite novels. Ever.

Tell me more.

[SxThorntonxS]

High Fidelity is Nick Hornby. Youre talking about the book with the guy that owns the record store right? I liked American Pyscho, but i didnt like the over abundance of description. I dont need a 2 page description of his stereo. Have you read any of Chuck Palahniuk books, i highly suggest Survivor or Fight Club. The next Ellis book to read for me is Rules of Attraction

[strangedaze]

i like how i not only spelled his name wrong but also fucked up by listing one of hornby's books. im not going to bother editing it as punishment for my sins. as for chuck palahniuk, ive read both survivor and fight club (and the horrid diary) and honestly i cant stand his writing style. i like the themes he tries to tackle and the eccentricity of his novels, but im let down every time i try to read his words. but thats just me.

[gohn67]

I'm reading AP right now. I'm liking it so far. It does seem like some of the things that Palhnuik does are similar to what AP does. Like the amount of repetive devices that he uses (ie the Patty Winters Show and the Clothes descriptions) are similar to what Palanhuik does with his repetive phrases - (like the rules of fight club and jack's blah blah)

Anyways I'm only half way through because I have too much school work and have been reading only 40 pages a day.

I don't think it's a bad thing, but the lack of plot movement doesn't force me to keep reading on. Since most of the chapters can be read as stand alone.

Best dialogue that I've ever read in a book by far. That's what really stands out for me is the way he does dialogue. He breaks the supposed "rules" of good writing in his dialogue a lot by using said bookisms and adverbs, but I think they really help paint the scene incredbily well. I guess some people could argue that those said bookisms and adverbs are cheating and telling the reader and making it easier for the reader to understand the feelings of the character instead of having to figure it out for ourselves. But I don't know his dialogue style really works for me.

[strangedaze]

gohn, the deeper i got into AP, the more hilarious it all seemed to me. the dialogue is hilariously inane, and i like what he did with the labels. in a world that exists only on the surface as signifiers, never pointing to any signified, what happens when the individual becomes a signifier himself, easily replaced by other replicate signifiers? bah im babbling. i did a review on AP, if interested, and two other BEE books.

[gohn67]

I'll check out the review once I'm done with the book. Just finished the Christmas Party Chapter with Elves and the Waldorf Salad.

[Bad Craziness]

IMO Less Than Zero is Ellis' best book. Every other book after it just seemed a little redundant in comparison...

[strangedaze]

Originally Posted by Bad Craziness

IMO Less Than Zero is Ellis' best book. Every other book after it just seemed a little redundant in comparison...

i might be with you on this one, though i think AP is on par. there was just something... intensely creepy about Less than Zero. i thought AP was hilarious, though. i never could get into rules of attraction or glamorama.

[Avarice]

glamorama gets brilliant once he reaches england and gets off that fucking boat, from then on its chic terrorism and vicious bombings. But ya, while hes in New York its very repetitive. I only kept reading since hes my fav writer.

AP is way better than less than zero, it has far more humour and you can relate to the character much more. The dialogue is far better too, most of less than zero is " i sigh and light a cigarette" its still a defining book though. I hate " bright lights big city." People recommended it to me since him and Bret were the " toxic twins" but its written in second person! how sickening, I can only read " you smoke the heroin" so many times.

I have the Ebook of the rules of attraction, but it seems repetitive, I'm only going to read it to say I did. The Informers is meant to be good, meant to have AP sort of violence.

After reading Lunar Park I got worried since after the first chapter which is total ellis style, writing about drug addiction and all that kind of horror, he went into this bloody boring thing about a pink house and a feral bird.

It got especially worrying when all those blasé interviewers said " it seems like the best of ellis is to come" since they clearly enjoyed that boring horror story.

[strangedaze]

i read the informers and liked most of it. the tokyo story is pretty harrowing and i was so stunned when i read the one about the sick chick on the beach. i was so fully entrenched in BEEs surreal world of muted emotions that it was like, holy shit, theres reality - there is circumstance that requires humanity. and there i go, rambling again.

LTZ and AP are battling for the coveted title of my fave BEE book.

[IamLegend]

I love BEE. I've read everything by him excluding Glamorama and The Rules of Attraction. From what I've read, he's in my opinion the best modern author of transgres fiction out there. Yes that includes Palahniuk. I was slightly disappointed by Lunar Park, however. His horror elements seemed somewhat un-natural and forced, but the dialouge made it up for it mostly, so it was still quite enjoyable.