Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. They live in a world shaped by passivity. The place lacks feeling and hope.
Three high school buddies, 2 male and 1 female, venture down very different paths after graduation. Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern College and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege. In this immoral world everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for the third best friend, Julian. Julian ends up getting into hustling and doing heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs. This is illustrates the seamy world of L.A.
The Catcher in the Rye
After the reading of Bret Easton Ellis (American P...
Bret Easton Ellis at the 2010 LA Times Festival of...after dark.
This book is a teenage slice-of-death novel with no holds barred. This was one of the first books about success and wealth that was so frighteningly realistic. It was one of the most disturbing novels I've read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality. All the obstacles facing the characters were fairly easy for me to relate to.
Less Than Zero is not a long book but it contains reflections upon the entire world. The images described of youth adrift, of neon towers, palm trees, black nights, parties, clubs, drugs and cars and sex will never leave me. This amazing story sounded extremely real and scary to the reader, me. I recommend it highly and will argue that it is the Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation and should be examined by all who can read.
This well written...