Customer Reviews

Glamorama

5 star:		(99)
4 star:		(73)
3 star:		(49)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(74)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Glamorama is Ellis's fifth novel and his most daring achievement thus far. The novel starts off in Manhattan, the time is 1990s, and the main character is Victor Ward. Victor is a supermodel, the IT boy for the moment, who is a womanizer, a would-be actor and musician, and overall man-about-town. He is about to open a very trendy nightclub but things don't go as Victor plans. Through a variety of circumstances Victor is plunged into a world of violence, conspiracy, and international terrorism. By the end of the novel Victor and the reader is left in a profoundly different mind set compared to the beginning of the book. One of the strengths of this book is Ellis's keen ear for dialogue. Victor's speech has a crsip flow that is well crafted by Ellis. In the novel Ellis gives us a surreal atmosphere with poetic and disturbing descriptions. I can honestly say that I will never look at a pool party the same way after reading the segment of how Victor meets his girlfriend Chloe. His characters run the gambit of either being hip or sad or funny or extremely dangerous. Eight years in the making, and it shows, Ellis had given the world a modern day masterpiece that will be read a hundred years from now.

Many of the reviews I have read on this book have said that they liked the first half of the book, because it was "funny", but were completely thrown off by the second half of the book. If you are of this opinion, you are willing only to digest the shallow surface of this book, and are completely ignoring the actual meaning. Honestly, the mental image i get in my head when I think of this book is of Victor Ward leaning over vomiting on the ground. I don't think that any part of this book was meant to be funny. Yes, some of the exchanges and dialogue in the book could be seen as comical, but they are presented not for entertainment but to show the shallowness of hollywood glitz. I believe that Ellis put these in intending for the reader to be disgusted at the way life is for his characters. There is no way this book was intended to be a light and comical novel, the author struggled for years and years to complete it and Ellis himself stated that the book nearly killed him. That sure doesn't sound like the testimony of someone who was trying to write a book for humor. I wouldn't recommended this book to everyone, but I do recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the obscure of absurd. I personally absolutely loved the book, and I'll admit that the second half of the book threw me off track at first, but I soon loved it. The second half of the book may either be a delusion of the main character Victor Ward, or real events, it is open to interpretation. The sense of delusion created by the second half of the book mirrors the frenzied terror of protagonist Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. In many parts of American Psycho the reader wasn't sure whether Bateman was imagining events or not, which I felt was a very cool effect. Glamorama is a political statement about the corruption of hollywood glitz and glamor, and how that culture has affected society. Victor Ward begins the novel as a stuck up and conceited airhead, but from his traumatic (whether real or not) experiences in the second half he is able to get a deeper understanding of his life and most readers can develop sympathy for him. Again, I'm not saying that everyone will love this book, but I can personally say that I enjoyed it. I like odd movies as well as books, I'm a huge David Lynch fan and I found elements of Lynchian style in this book. I think that this is a deep novel that you have to be devoted to to gain some understanding, and its not exactly a casual read. To those of you who say that this was a horrible novel, thats your opinion. However, if you fail to see the deeper meaning hidden in it and only grab at the shallow "humor" given in the first half, in the words of Victor Ward, spare me.

After reading the many reveiws bashing this book and dismissing it for "having no plot" or being "severly disjointed", I felt the need to put in a few good words for poor Mr Ellis. I feel some of these reveiwers have missed the point. The point being that there is no point---if you can follow that. The protaganist, Victor Ward and his deviant cohorts are simply props in Ellis' satire of the celebrity obsessed society that we live in. He shows his thorough understanding of the topic with his irreverent, witty dialogue, and his ludicrous storyline. Yes, Ellis is an acquired taste...but if you start off small with maybe Less Than Zero--my personal favorite--and work your way up to Glamorama, I truly beleive that you will learn to appreciate his obsessive attention to detail and long run on sentences. It is Ellis' unique style that makes his books so intruiging. Nowhere else have I found the dark poignant nihilism that fills the pages of Ellis' novels. If you like that kind of thing, then by all means read Glamorama, because Ellis is this genre's master and this is his masterpeice.

It apparently took Ellis about 8 years to write this book, and it certainly shows. Despite whatever was going on his personal life that made him take time off, he tried to pack too much into this work. It feels very labored, and there are too many devices which impede the story from moving forward in any satisfying way. Most notably, the whole idea of the different film crews running the show. Also, Victor is too unlikable, and frankly, too stupid of a character to justify nearly 500 pages of his little journey. The story goes awry when he leaves New York on the QE2, and the terrorism, of course described in loving detail by Ellis, including pages and pages of description of a place crash, is utterly without poignance. Even the sex scenes are unnecessarily over the top, almost numbing and certainly pornographic. Overall though, a must for Ellis fans I guess. There is quite a bit that is downright hilarious in this book. It just feels a lot less complete or neat as American Psycho, if that makes sense.

This book freaked me out, I felt compleetly lost, the few days it took me to read this book! And when I wasn't reading, I was walking around pondering Victors life, and the whole 'filming a movie' thing! At night I even had dreams about certain scenes in the book! When I was finished I was actually a bit pi**ed off about the wierd double ending, and the fact that I couldnt get the book out of my head!

It's an EXCELLENT read!!

After reading and re-reading American Psycho several times, I decided that I would like to try another of Easton Ellis's books. I picked up Glamorama and started reading that very night. From the first page I was intrigued and amused. I love the author's style of writing and was looking forward to enjoying another Easton Ellis epic. About half-way through the novel, I started to become bored and lost. As soon as the mysterious film crew was introduced, I realised that this story was not exactly what it first appeared to be. I actually lost interest in the book and put it down for a few days, and then out of curiosity, I eventually finished it -but I did have to push myself. I'm still thinking about this book. I understand the general themes and the gist of it, but the story line really got me. I had no trouble at all with American Psycho, which is now one of my all-time favourite books. I understood it, I "got" the humor, as I am a huge fan of black comedy. But Glamorama...what the hell was going on? I'm thinking that maybe Victor was filming a movie on his experience with the terrorists and got confused with what was real and what wasn't. Does anyone want to help me out?

Glamorama is easily Ellis' best novel yet. He has created a great character in Victor Ward, and even though I hated his guts I couldn't help but want things to turn out ok for him, but this is a Bret Easton Ellis novel, and "redemption" never comes easily!!! The name dropping and pop culture references are very entertaining and the plot leaves some huge holes that allow the reader to plug in their own conclusions with a little work, which is very rewarding. The way Glamorama so rapidly changes tone is genius, and you feel as hopeless as Victor when he's pulled from his NY fashion model world into...something else!! Highly recommended, a brillant commentary on both fashion and terrorism, two topics I never realized had something in common....