Customer Reviews

Less Than Zero

5 star:		(102)
4 star:		(59)
3 star:		(41)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

This novel - written and set in Los Angeles in the 1980's, so be prepared not to understand many of the pop-culture references if you're much younger than 30 - details four weeks in the life of eighteen-year-old Clay, who returns home from college halfway through freshman year for a month-long Christmas vacation. He spends most of his time hanging out with his friends from high school, going to bars and nightclubs, having sex, and doing drugs.

So what's the big deal? Booze, sex, and drugs might be fun to *do* for four weeks, but reading about them for 200 pages sounds like it might get old. And it does. You begin to lose track of the characters, because there are so many of them. You begin to forget where Clay was this morning, where he was last night, what day and what time it is right now. You begin to stop caring how much crack he smokes or how many other drugs he mixes it with, whether his sex partners are male or female. You stop worrying that his parents might catch him, that he'll have a bad trip, that - even in 1985 - he'll get HIV.

And that's the point. The book is less a narrative than an experience. The manic highs and desperate lows of Clay's existence will blur together and you'll grow confused about the purpose of your own life. The 200 pages of this book - with large print, and broken up into easy-to-handle page-long vignettes - will become 200 minutes of ebb and flow, the swell of a wave under which you, because you aren't the one doing all those drugs, will never become trapped.

Be aware that this book can be frustrating. The central conflict is an internal one, and only vaguely delineated, and never really resolved. The book seems to end not because it is finished with the story it tells but because it has reached the end of its allotted span.

Do not read this book if you are looking for something pleasant, or something gripping, or something sweet. Do not read it for humor or suspense or an interesting plot. Read it if you read "The Catcher in the Rye" in junior high and didn't quite understand. Read it if you're nostalgic for futility. Read it on a train or a bus or in an airport, to contribute to the timeless, anchorless feel of the book. Read it quickly, in as few sittings as possible, and then leave it somewhere - in the pouch where they keep the barf bag, on the end seat of one of those long, featureless rows, on the counter in a public restroom - to keep company with somebody else, on some other journey.

So 18-year old Clay comes home to Los Angeles from college in woodsy New Hampshire for Christmas Break and very rapidly resumes LA cruising altitude: partying, booze, getting a tan, partying, seeing all the hot bands making the rounds at clubs-of-the-moment like the Roxy or The Edge, more partying, checking out movies in Westwood blitzed out of his mind, cruising around LA, watching bootleg Mexican snuff porn (featuring underage victims & chainsaws and wire hangers),

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Bret Easton Ellis's "Less than Zero" is a fine little primer on how the Rich & Famous live and die in LA, with Clay as our Virgil in this descent into a 1980's Dante's Inferno peopled by the Lithium-addled (but thin, baby, thin! and tan! and loaded! filthy stinking rich, Maserati country baby!)Walking Dead. Tunes, by the way, courtesy of Duran Duran and Psychedelic Furrs.

He goes to lots of parties: celebrity parties, pre-movie deal parties at Spago with his movie producer Dad and his estranged mother, etc. He does a lot of good drugs. He does a lot of bad drugs. He drives around in his Mercedes. At times he practically shoves whole boxes of Kleenex up his brutalized, quivering snout to calk up the torrent of blood & snot, the collateral damage of his cocaine habit. He scopes out corpses in alleys.

"Less than Zero" proves you really can't go Home again, particularly if Home really wasn't much of a place to begin with. And you know, the thing is, with all the bling, the bank, the field trips to Spago & Chasen's, the road trips on the Pacific Coast Highway in the Porsche, holing up at the beachhouse at Monterey---with all that, if your life is so featureless there are no real markers or mileposts, it's pretty hard to get There from Here---or figure out how Here relates to anything at all.

As the billboard says: "Disappear Here."

Think of "Less than Zero"---the text, our guidebook into this Wonderland of banality, boredom, and high-octane depravity---as a kind of camera obscura, its image fused, heightened, now sharpened, now distorted, with light, speed, and time.

When Bret Easton Ellis released "Lunar Park", a kind of transgressive lament for his estranged father, critics howled that Ellis was playing dilettante, dipping his toes into the weedy moat of Horror reserved for Stephen King & Dean Koontz.

Really? Ellis hasn't ever written Horror? Even leaving "American Psycho" out of this, read "Less than Zero" and answer that question for yourself: Ellis's palmy, leafy, luxuriant LA is less American Dream than Nightmare, a twilight-realm of hardbodies and supercars where the daytime shadows flit across the flickering water-bottoms of swimming pools, and monsters move in the palm groves.

With that in mind, "Less than Zero" revelatory as a scalpel, is also as simple as an elementary school essay: bottom line, it's all about what Clay does on his Christmas vacation.

No, really.

So it's a little spyglass into the world of Clay & his old school buddies and their parties and sushi lunches and aimless high-end meanderings through the LA jungle. And the Kids are really, really, really *not* aliright.

For instance: Daniel sliced his hand up, has wires poking up through his raw phalanges, takes way too much lithium and is uncomfortably numb.

Julian is inaccessible, gomezing around his haunts in LA in a black porsche with tinted windows and stalked by wild-eyed panic; Blair, Clay's former girlfriend, who wants to know what love is---you know? alana & Kim, her friends, who evidently have an abortion competition going; muriel, who's anorexic and likes shoving shiny pointy things into her blood vessels, and Rip the drug dealer, who's *way* upbeat.

Clay gets driven around in the luxury cars his friends own, or rather, the cars their parents bought them: Ferraris, Porsches, BMWs. He goes to Fatburger; he checks out flicks half-bombed at Westwood, the Beverly Center, high in the Hollywood Hills, he worries about werewolves. about earthquakes. about a billboard that says, ominously & nonchalantly, "Disappear Here".

There are a few writers I'm actively, wrenchingly jealous of: Cormac McCarthy is one of them, Ellis is another. Ellis's peculiar talent is to infuse this bleak landscape with a kind of narcotic readability, while simultaneously excising his own voice, the presence of the author, entirely from the pages.

Fitting enough for this nasty little piece of grue & High Society, a world that excises its creatures as effectively as the High Sonorran Wind howling over the desert floor erases the hardtable playa.

JSG

Probably my fav book by Ellis seeing as I felt so utterly empty inside after finishing it. These characters Blair, Julian and friends have got to be the most shallow and unfeeling people I've ever read. Sure, Bateman in "A. Psycho" was materialistic but he was insane unlike these kids who're supposedly NORMAL teenagers!! If this is what the rich life in L.A. is all about than I'll be certain to never visit. But I am so sick of hearing people say this was a boring story and don't feel sorry for these kids just because they're spoiled and rich! Can we honestly say we wouldn't be as empty if we lived the way they did with only cocaine and meaningless sex to entertain us? Ellis is brilliant in depicting the lives of materialistic, spoiled brats having to live without love and emotional security. If you're looking for a novel to leave you feeling hollow and disturbed emotionally, I highly reccommend this. It gives the word 'dreary' a whole new meaning.

I read this book and I expected it to be a simple trip into a dark place. I was wrong. This book takes you into a place and a state of mind that is so dark and disturbing it is hard to believe. The book is scary, to be honest. To think that a world like this actually exists should apall people.
The book, about an eighteen year old who returns home to L.A. after his first year of college, is deeply rooted in the idea that underneath a lot of things is a darker side. Ellis takes the reader into a place that people thought was only a myth, where sex is as casual as conversation, snorting cocaine is like eating dinner and spending time with your family is like having a root canal.
The book is sad beucase it depcits a generation that is lost. They have seen too much at far too young an age. Clay'y (the main character) little sister says to him "We can get our own (coke)." She's thirteen years old.
Ellis has done a great job of capturing a mind frame. These people love the life. Clay is seen as an outcast when he is shocked by what he sees. There are sertain passages about Clay's past that are written with such eeriness, they made me shiver. The book acutally gave me feelings of paranoia when I read it. This book is wonderful and is a lot more than less than zero. It is highly enjoyable and interesting. It is one of the darkest, most original, most frightening books I have read in years. It is well worth the time.

I first bought this book at a used bookstore when I was in 8th grade and it completely changed my life. Up until then, I'd been reading the standard young-adult fare required for school and this was my first foray into anything slightly unusual.

At first glance, Less Than Zero seems to be more of a travelogue on Los Angeles for the rich and fabulous during the 80's. There is almost no plot to speak of, and the characters exist in an seemingly emotionless vacuum of privilege, drugs, and casual sex. Everyone is more concerned with clothes, cars, and being tan than anything else, and the flippant, 1st-person, present-tense style backs up this assumption. However, a deeper reading proves there's much more lurking below the surface.

This is a very well-constructed novel, sparse and economical in the use of words. It is a deceptively easy read, yet immensely satisfying. I have read this book at least a dozen times since I first purchased it, and now own my 6th copy--I keep loaning it to people who refuse to give it back! This is, in my opinion, by far Bret Easton Ellis' finest work.

Any book that people either absolutely hate or absolutely love is definitely a book to read. I personally loved this book because I think that the casual amoralism of Clay and his friends is an authentic look at twentysomething life in LA. This book works as a drug book (a cocaine counterpart to the heroin Trainspotting), as an Eighties book, and as novel about stumbling into adulthood. Like Ellis' other books, Less than Zero is flawed but like his other books (save for the the vast majority of the vile American Psycho) the charms of the book far outweigh its weaknesses. Forget the movie unless you love the brat pack. The book is infinitely better.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS) I was past page 100 when I started thinking this novel was the same as every other novel by Bret Easton Ellis: repetitious dialogue that seems to just take up space; self-absorbed characters that talk that dialogue like they're infected with tumors from radiation fallout; and LOTS of drug consumption.

Well, I must say I was surprised when, at around page 130 or so, "Less Than Zero" became a startlingly emotional and even tragic novel. The plot (such as it is) has Clay, an 18-year old college student, returning to his L.A. home for Christmas break only to discover his friends are lost in a world of drugs and partying.

At first, Clay's interaction with these characters is redundant and dull, like a hangover after a drug warp. The first hundred pages are typically anticlimactic of Ellis, but when Clay begins to show concern for what's going on around him, "Less Than Zero" becomes frighteningly real. Some examples of great, tragic scenes are: the motel room where Clay watches the businessman have sex with his friend, Julian; the discovery of the dead body in the alley; and the rape of the 12-year old girl. Ellis lavishes such attention to these segments that they burn themselves onto your memory and embody the dead soul of his version of Los Angeles.

But what I think won me over was the italicized sections that chronicled the decline of Clay's grandmother, who was dying of pancreatic cancer. I was shocked at how Ellis made these sections heartfelt, considering most of his novels since this one have just emphasized emotionless, heartless characters. Also surprisingly Un-Ellis were the scenes when Clay goes out alone into the desert or to a movie or to his old elementary school--this brings back the cold air of teenage alienation and is handled subtly, without exaggeration.

Some may argue over Ellis's writing ability, but it's hard not to argue with the nihilism and emptiness of this debut. It's justified, and the characters assimilate to that emptiness because that's all they know how to do. Probably the most "moral" novel Ellis has written.

If there's ever been a book that made me want to kill myself, it was "Less than Zero"; and I mean that as a complement. In a dizzying trip through the world of L.A. in the 80's through the eyes of a young man, Ellis gives us the book of his lifetime. Though lacking a plot and any serious character development, this book is hard to put down. It's like one long drug-induced trip filled with meaningless conversations, sex, drugs, and the occasional violence. Brilliantly, though, Ellis let's the humanity of his main character come through in small passages scattered throughout the book that describe his recent past and especially a family trip to Palm Springs. The desparation of the book's characters and their futile search for happiness will leave you hopelessly depressed and pessimistic. If you haven't killed yourself by then, read Ellis's other, not so brilliant book, "American Psycho" which will make you want to kill somebody else for a change.

Bret Easton Ellis was twenty when he wrote one of the new masterpieces of contemporary fiction, Less Than Zero. The novel is a chilling, disturbing depiction of a group of first year college students returning home to Los Angeles during the Winter Break. Although he may not be the most stylistically talented writer, Easton Ellis captures the aura, atmosphere, and attitude of Los Angeles and its wealthy, westside-inhabitants like no one else before him. Easton Ellis not only conveys the despair and disillusionment felt by all the charachters, but he is able to encompass the reader with the same emotions. All of his charachters are jaded, desensitized, and left numb by living in Los Angeles. All of the outlets they seek for solace and comfort wind up only driving them deeper into their downward spiral that is life. This is a must read for anyone. I am not sure if someone who has not lived in LA would be able to appreciate the book to the extent that an Angeleno would, but it is a quick read so its worth the try.

7.1 STARS OUT OF 10

I don't think I have ever read a book that was so bleak and depressing. A book where the 7 or 8 main characters are so devoid of personality that it's sad.

It starts with rich boy Clay coming back home for Christmas break from a college in New Hampshire. He quickly gets back into the rut and lifestyle with his fellow trust fund L.A. friends. The 200 pages or so are what happened on his month hiatus from school.

I've read a lot of books and seen a lot of movies in my time and I understand what was going on in the 1980's out in that L.A. crowd. The money, the sex, the drugs etc. Just look at Robert Downey Jr for a reference. But there had to have been brighter days for these people. Seriously, give me a few million dollars and a bunch of coke and I'm pretty sure my book would be a little happier. I honestly hope Ellis took what was going on out there at that time and seriously exaggerated the events in this book. I mean the coke, the heroin, bulimia, straight sex, gay sex, male prostitutes, 13 year olds on coke, rape, snuff films, gangrape on a minor, and the casual way each and every character sees it everyday and just doesn't care. I know there's a crazy world out there where people have too much money and too little to do, but this was over the top.

This was Ellis's first book and you can tell. I read American Phycho a few years ago and loved it and he evolved a long way from the writing in Less Than Zero. Not that it is totally bad, but learning that he was a freshman in college when he wrote this didn't surprise me at all. What Ellis really did good was capture the social scene in the 1980's pretty well. The music, movies, and videogame references all draw you into what was going on at the time. Trent paying $15,000 for a Temple of Doom bootleg really cracked me up because today you can get a movie bootleg for 4 bucks in Manhattan.

This book also reminded a bit of the Catcher in the Rye. A cracked out, 80's version of it, but the themes are very similar. Young man who has it all, yet is extremely unhappy and a little deranged. Only difference is in Catcher in the Rye, Holden was the only character with these feelings. In Less Than Zero, EVERY single character is like that.

Overall, a decent book, albeit bleak and depressing, but go with American Physco if you are new to Bret Easton Ellis's sick mind.