Glamorama [Paperback]

Bret Easton Ellis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1999

A man in what is recognizably New York is drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a much darker place where fame and terrorism, and family and politics, are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Glamorama is a satirical mass-murder opus more ambitious than Bret Easton Ellis's 1990 American Psycho. It starts as a spritz-of-consciousness romp about kid-club entrepreneur Victor Ward, "the It boy of the moment," an actor-model up for Flatliners II. Ellis has perfect pitch for glam-speak, and he gives nightlife the fizz, pace, and shimmer it lacks in drab reality. Anyone could cite the right celeb names and tunes, but like a rock-polishing machine, his prose gives literary sheen to fame-chasing air-kissers. He's coldly funny: when Victor's girl tries to argue him out of a breakup, she angrily snorts six bumps of coke, stops, mutters, "Wrong vial," snorts four corrective doses from whatever she has in her other fist, then objects to a rival at the party wearing the same dress she's wearing.

You had to be there; Ellis makes you feel you are. But such satire is a very smart bomb targeting a very large barn. Models' status anxiety doesn't merit Ellis's Tom Wolfe-esque expertise. Glamorama gets better when Victor gets drafted into a mysterious group of model-terrorists who bomb 747s and the Ritz in Paris, wearing Kevlar-lined Armani suits. Oh, they still behave like shallow snobs, pronouncing "cool" as if it had 12 o's. But now when somebody swills Cristal, it's apt to be poisoned, to horrific effect, which Ellis expertly, affectlessly describes. His enfant-terrible debut, Less Than Zero, aped Joan Didion. Now Ellis has grown into a lesser Don DeLillo--and that's high praise. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The evil twin of fellow brat-packer Jay McInerney's Model Behavior, Ellis's (The Informers) bad trip through glitterary New York has everything his fans (and critics) have come to expect: graphic sex, designer drugs, rock 'n' roll allusions, splatterpunk violence and characters as deep as 8"x10" glossies. Protagonist Victor Ward, a "model-slash-loser," is opening his own trendy Manhattan club while cheating on his supermodel girlfriend and back-stabbing his partner. After some adventures in clubland, the plot takes a turn for the paranoid. Victor is recruited by a mysterious figure, F. Fred Palakon, to track down a former girlfriend gone missing in London. There he becomes unwillingly drawn into a terrorist group?run, like so much else in the novel, by a supermodel?that bombs fashionable hangouts, hotels and jetliners. Throughout, Ellis clutters his hallmark proper-noun realism with excessive name-dropping and strung-out plotting. The satirist in Ellis seems to want to indict celebrity-obsessed, materialistic and superficial contemporary culture. With this novel he, perhaps unwittingly but certainly ironically, provides Exhibit A. 100,000 first printing.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan (December 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330372092
• ISBN-13: 978-0330372091
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (319 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,364,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bret Easton Ellis is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories; his work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Horror Novel?, January 29, 2002

By 

Alexander Zalben (Long Island City, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Glamorama (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)

I consider myself a fan of Mr. Ellis' writing. Each of his books has a different point of satire, and each skewers its target mercilessly. Glamorama surpassed surpassed all of his works before it.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most horrific, hilarious, and many other words starting with "h" novels I have ever read.

Victor Ward and his "friends" are everything I've ever dreamed and feared New York City society is like. At first, the book seems to be about quite possibly the most insipid male model in history. But Ellis had a lot more in his sights: what celebrity does to our perceptions of ourselves; how we can let ourselves become passengers in our own lives; and how we've become inured to violence in the media and movies.

This book has such an incredibly slowly developed sense of menace and spiraling insanity, that I didn't even realize it was there until it was already too late. Which is exactly what happens to Victor in the novel.

I'll say this. I read this every morning on the subway into work, and found myself alternatingly cackling with laughter, and clutching the handstrap for support. I don't think I've ever had such a visceral reaction to a book before.

One of the most shocking, surprising, novels I've ever read. It's definitely not for the easily queasy, but otherwise, I cannot recommend it enough.

*A little note: I'd also recommend reading Rules of Attraction before picking this up.

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just a "Book for the 90s", October 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Glamorama (Hardcover)

It was hard for me to admit, after finishing "Glamorama," but Ellis is one of the most original satirists we have working today. Hard because I used to buy the criticism about his trendiness, the endless pop-culture references masking a lack of vision. Not so: in fact, one great irony of our ironic fin-de-siecle culture is that so many critics fail to recognize real irony! Folks, the vapidity and the inconsistency of the pop culture cataloging is done deliberately--deliberately--to invoke a sense of the impermanence and interchangeablity. I've read the hacks who think pop culture references are substitutes for cultural commentary; hell, most of them write for magazines, TV and Hollywood. Ellis, if you're willing to cut him the slack you'd cut any other writer who isn't Ellis, is cut from a different and classically American jib. His is a moral satire akin to some of the works of Hawthorne, West, even Fitzgerald. The use of surrealism in this work is probably it's shakiest premise because it asks you, de facto, to surrender your need for clear cut reality; this really is nothing new in writing. Glamorama works when you accept its surrealism instead of working against it. Why people work so hard to put this writer down, especially after the knee-jerk reaction to the underrated American Psycho (a very funny book!), is not hard to see. They mistake the writer for the soulless, vapid yuppie partyboys of his novels. Here's the news: Ellis is really one of the most talented and traditional writers working today. He deserves at least a little credit.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Better You Look, the More You See, December 8, 2002

By 

Noirgirl "Noirgirl" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Glamorama (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)

The above quotation, spoken by the protagonist, Victor Ward, sums up in true Easton Ellis style the themes of this fantastic novel. The quotation, like the whole book (and most of Ellis' writing) can be understood in a number of ways and a reader can find within it many layers of meaning. This isn't a book for everyone, and people who read "American Psycho" and took it literally rather than as a satirical commentary should definitely not read Glamorama. If you can take the above quote, though, with its proper irony and all the meanings that Ellis lays out in this book, you'll really enjoy the whole book. A word of caution, though: though Ellis is rarely what I'd call linear in his narrative in any case, this book may strike some as particularly jumbled or nonsensical. It sort of needs to be read like you'd watch "Mulholland Drive." If that kind of analysis and symbol-seeking is your thing, as it is mine, you'll like this book. But even if you are left confused, the hilarious name-dropping and continuous 90's pop-culture references make it well worth the read.