Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

Never fear, I have many more Bronte books to unleash like child-crackens upon this blog - but even I can get bored of the amazingness of that family and long for a change of scene and society. I wasn't quite prepared for Bret Easton Ellis' debut novel Less Than Zero though. I think the cover of this book tricked me by provoking happy David Hockey swimming pool thoughts like this -



whereas actually what this book makes you feel like is this -



This is actually an image from the 1987 film made of Easton Ellis' book, which I haven't seen and I'm not sure if I could bear it now - even though it has my future husband Robert Downey Jr in it. It's my own fault, the Bronte sisters tenderised me and I've never read any of Easton Ellis' books before or managed to develop anything more than a vague idea about what they might be like. Less than Zero is like an 80s version of one of my favourite books Catcher in the Rye, just without as much verbal roguishness, Robbie Burns references or good headwear. I wish I had been the first to make the comparison between Easton Ellis' and Salinger's teenage-angst-coming-of-age stories because that would have been amazing of me and I could die happy but it's actually so obvious it could easily have been a deliberate 'update' on the classic by the younger writer. The title was taken from an Elvis Costello song that attacks the conservative politics of England in the 1970s by making nasty comments, and rightly so, about a butt-headed English fascist from the 1930s called Oswald Mosely. Both song and novel are concerned with a world in chaos, and the often disastrous consequences of materialist culture. In fact the David Hockney allusion on the cover of the edition I read may be quite appropriate in it's hyper-real, luscious, perky-bottomed other-worldliness...

Less than Zero is about an eighteen year old guy called Clay who has come home to Los Angeles after living in New England for four months. He is beautiful, bored and ridiculously wealthy, as are all of his friends - they do a lot of drugs, have sex with everyone regardless of their age or issues of consent, look at a few dead bodies, watch porn and snuff films, do more drugs, have more sex, there's a dalliance with prostitution, trips to the grandparents summer house, some eating disorders and lots and lots of nihilistic angst. Surprise, surprise, it's a critique on consumer culture! Easton Ellis was 21 at the time this book was published and from what I've read about the author significant episodes of Less than Zero are autobiographical. The anger and despair that presents as the apathy of the narrator feels real. It's a good and useful book. It marks a scary moment of excess and dissipation in capitalism. It's just really unpleasant to read because it's so unrelenting - because the narrator isn't a hopeful existentialist like Sartre or even Holden Caulfield but is instead more akin to the depressed blackboard in Mr Squiggle. And there's no comic relief! Easton Ellis is a talented writer though, and it's certainly a memorable novel but that doesn't mean I could ever bring myself to like Less Than Zero. He also announced that a sequel called Imperial Bedrooms, focussing on the same characters now middle aged, will be published in May this year - hopefully it'll be slightly more uplifting on the philosphical front, though I imagine the bottoms wont be quite as perky.


**/***** (Two stars out of five for freaking me out).

Literary Tattoos

Does everyone know about this site? It's pretty neat!

Contrariwise Literary Tattoos - http://www.contrariwise.org/

My favourite tattoo on Contrariwise - a nod to the Marauders :)

The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Elizabeth Gaskell

Earlier in my Bronte summer, while immersed in the wonders of Kinokunuya I forced myself (in order to aid a future trip to Bronte country) to choose between a biography of Branwell Bronte by Daphne du Maurier and The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell. I eventually chose the latter - for once thinking more of the merits of the biographers than the sexy mysteriousness of their subjects. Being filled with recent memories of Richard Armitage from a recent TV version of Gaskell's North and South and remembering vaguely that Mrs Gaskell and Charlotte had been bffs - I decided that I could spend time with my literary crush now and come back for Daphne's Branwell on my next trip to Sydney.



Is it bad that I enjoyed reading about the Brontes more than some stuff by them? Elizabeth Gaskell is a hoot - she's funny and thoughtful and lets her imagination run away with her just enough to enrich but not undermine her meticulous research. The Life of Charlotte Bronte is well put together too - appropriating material about Charlotte and her family from letters that the subject wrote to her school friends, some publishers and a few other acquaintances as well as info from interviews Gaskell sought out with Charlotte's friends and father after her death.

The importance of The Life of Charlotte Bronte as a feminist piece - the first biography of a female novelist by another female novelist - is not lost on me, and I'm sure it accounts for the thoroughness of Gaskell's dedication to verisimilitude. The status of the female novelist was a major subject of concern for all the Bronte sisters, and for Gaskell herself throughout her life. Charlotte, Emily and Anne famously adopted the pen names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell while trying to publish their work - fearing that their work would be discriminated against or just dismissed as women's writing. A letter from Charlotte to one of her reviewers argues this point so strongly and eloquently in Gaskell's book - it's actually the most passion we hear from the eldest surviving Bronte outside of her own novels.

My favourite part of Gaskell's biography is where she tries to put in a good word for Emily - whom Charlotte loved above all others, but who comes across in all accounts from outside the family as the prettiest and most obviously brilliant sister, but certainly high-maintenance and probably more than a bit anti-social. I've always been a fan of the tortured weirdo artist school of genius anyway so all that made me like Emily more and Gaskell is so polite that none of the worst stuff that we now know about the Brontes (well mostly Branwell) now appears beyond a vague, charming illusion in the book or is reconfigured as an illustration of the sisterly love and concern the Bronte girls had for one another, their father, and brother.

Gaskell's biography of Charlotte works so well because they were contemporaries, peers and friends. Gaskell understood the pressures and problems Charlotte and her sisters faced in regards to earning a living through teaching and writing but by virtue of her close friendship with Charlotte she also caught a rare glimpse of the personal lives and relationships among this very private and territorial family. As a biography The Life of Charlotte Bronte is fascinating as it contains so much of the authors own sensibilities and feelings while painting a vivid and very believable picture of the inner workings of Charlotte, mostly in her own words. Gaskell's account of the troublesome Branwell, emo Emily, saintly Anne and kind, down-to-earth Charlotte was the beginning of a mythmaking process that grew around the Brontes then and continues unabated and ever increasing in fantasy to this day - the book is practically fanfiction, and all the better for it! I think more biographers should feel such a reasonable but very real emotional stake in the reputation and appreciation of their subjects.

It's really good dudes - go read it!
****/***** (I'd have made it four and half stars out of five if I could but we don't have a key for that)