Bret Easton Ellis is my hands down favorite writer. You don’t really read his books as much as you think them.
In most of his works, Ellis sets up the main character with a unique and rather fucked up thought pattern that this character then uses to narrate the story with, as seen through this character's eyes, leaving you no choice but to get sucked into the mind of the book. Rather than being an outside observer, you become the main character and you feel and think the same things he does. Since you have now become conditioned to the same type of responses as the character has, it doesn’t matter that Ellis can sometimes be a wordy and rather overly detailed writer. You’re already IN the events and the action so he could be writing in ancient Greek for all you care. You are no longer reading; you are living the damn book.
To the kind of reader who just flips through the pages, Ellis’ books must make no sense at all. Especially since the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll storylines are always far out there:
* Reagan era yuppie, obsessed with toothpaste, dinner reservations and bad pop music, kills people in the most gruesome way possible ("American Psycho"),
* Night club entrepreneur and male model/crap actor is so strung out on drugs he doesn’t realize it when becomes a part of an advanced network of terrorists, operating under the guise of attractive models ("Glamorama").
You either love Ellis’ books or you hate their fucking guts. Either way, love or hate, is fine ‘cause they do have guts. A lot of guts. You could forever analyze how “American Psycho” was a stab at the superficial greed of the 80’s, and how “Glamorama” is about how we fail to connect with our fellow human beings. But in the end, it’s the reading experience I cherish the most. It’s the chance to actually, for a few hours, become somebody else. As fucked up as that somebody might be.
In “Lunar Park” Bret Easton Ellis puts himself in the role as the main character. The book is a totally fictitious spin on his own reality, only here Ellis is an ultra famous author on the decline who is still living off his royalties from glories past. He still wrote “American Psycho”, “Less Than Zero” and “Glamorama”, but in this book that was a decade and a half ago and he was then the biggest thing to hit the scene since the goddamn Rolling Stones. He lived life in the fast lane, coked out of his mind, and pulled all sorts of celebrity stunts on an awed public. His life was ablaze in a champagne supernova.
Now, he’s sobered up and married and has moved in with his insanely famous actress-wife, Jayne, and her kids in her luxurious house. The son, Robby, is actually Bret's own since he and Jayne messed around already in the late 80’s, but no father-son relationship was ever established since the famous writer was more interested in overdosing in jacuzzis than being there for his kid.
Now it’s time to make amends. It’s time to grow up.
He gets a job as a course tutor in writing at the local college and he is generally, if not whole heartedly, trying to make an effort to be the All American Dad to his family.
But there’s something rotten in the State of Ellis. He’s too selfish and too neurotic to adapt to his new role.
Shortly after he moves in, things start to happen after the Halloween party they throw. The furniture keeps rearranging itself every night, the carpet grows mysteriously darker, and the outside paint begins to peel off the house. The little girl’s toy bird is alive and eating squirrels, kids disappear from the neighborhood, and a student at his college bears an eerie resemblance to himself in younger years. A serial killer plagues the community by acting out the killings in “American Psycho”, and Bret’s dead father haunts him through e-mails and apparitions.
As usual, you never really know whether this is all actually happening, whether it’s all delirious hallucinations taking place only in the main character’s, or whether it’s a cleverly written metaphor by Ellis the Writer in a fucked up autobiography for the purpose of exorcising actual demons in his real life.
Ellis (the character) gets back on the drugs and tries even harder to play house, almost getting in touch with his fatherly side in the process. Nonetheless, the deeper he reaches into himself, the stranger his surroundings become, until they reach a supernatural climax that blows through his existence like a raging storm, complete with possessed dogs and floating monster heads. (Don't you wish you knew why?)
You’re left with a deep admiration for Ellis’ way of once again writing something about basically nothing and still dress it up as if it was the most important thing in the world. I could, of course, put on my propeller hat and analyze the book, drawing the arrogantly literary conclusion that Ellis is describing how lost we all can be in the jungles of parenthood, how we try in vain to connect with our children in a society who overmedicates and encourages instant gratification, and how the past and the now are intimately intertwined. But in the end it is the Lunar Park 2000 Ride I still enjoyed the most. That’s why I came in the first place. Being Bret Easton Ellis (the character) throughout this exhilarating book, living his life and feeling the things he did is what leaves the lasting impression.
I always feel like making an appointment for some serious therapy after I’ve turned the last page of an Ellis book.
That’s a good thing.
~ The Red Collar Report ~
"Lunar Park"
by
Bret Easton Ellis
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