Examines the empty lives in a society lost in too much money and self attention/loathing. In retrospect, this is the perfect warm-up to American Psycho. I had trouble warming up to any of the characters, though. ( )

very impressive for a first novel of a like 20 year old. He sticks to his strengths, painting little scenes and developing characters through snapshots of the culture rather than over arching plot, and overall I like writing about drugs and sexuality being turned into a hideous (or, alternatively, impotent) force so that appealed to me. very bleak. ( )

What can I say about this book that wasn’t said while I was still in diapers? Probably nothing, but I’ll still give you my opinion.

Less Than Zero usually gets compared to Catcher in the Rye, but the book I always think of while reading it is Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. In both books, the characters wander around like ghosts, imbibing various chemicals (alcohol in Hemingway and drugs in Ellis) to either give themselves the illusion that they’re still alive or to numb the pain of being alive (I still haven’t decided which). There is such a sense of despair to both books that after reading them I always feel empty.

Even though I find no joy in its pages, I still find myself re-reading Less Than Zero at least once a year. Perhaps out of a desire for catharsis? Anyway, I highly recommend. For added pleasure, try reading it over Christmas. ( )

While I love Ellis's style, I just couldn't get into this book as easily as the other two I've read by him (American Psycho and Rules of Attraction). I would read an entire page and realize I had no idea what just happened (although it's rare that anything ever did happen). Still, though, there were parts of this book that were redeeming, and I plan to read more of Ellis's work. Just a note: if you've seen the film, it is NOTHING like the book. ( )

Meet Clay. He's bummed. No, "bummed" is too passionate a descriptive for Clay. Clay is emotionally neutral nonstop in this flatlining naught-plot narrative; he's pathologically emotively neutral to his empty core; he'd score a big fat zero on an Emoto-Meter, if such said device existed.

Living in Beverly Hills his whole life has gotten Clay feeling blah, blase. Never having had to work for anything at all at anytime in one's life might do that to a fella. Clay's eighteen, but unlike that classic Alice Cooper song, he's eighteen and doesn't like it, even no matter now much cocaine he consumes or Valium he pops (to bring himself down from the coke), he's simply not content being so young and good looking, with a Mediterranean mansion for a pad (albeit his parent's posh pad), and driving a Mercedes Benz to all the Sunset Strip hot spots nightly, because, ultimately, doin' the same 'ol-same 'ol's a real drag man. It's a hard life being Clay, being wealthy, educated, possessing every perk money can buy, and yet...yet...he's so bored. He's so bored it's depressing. Ennui, Dude; ennui. Who wouldn't be inevitably bored by -- as Ellis' much loved Eagles once sang -- "everything, all the time".

Malaise. Such malaise. Malaise of the sort made famous by that fictional Russian slacker, Oblomov, way back when; only Clay's emotional/spiritual malaise is much more pharmaceutically induced, I think, than Ivan Goncharov's classic character. One can't help feeling sorry for him, for Clay (ahem, 'scuse me), especially when he sees his psychiatrist and lies to him about his bizarre sexual fantasies, because nothing, nothing really matters, just like in that classic "Bohemian Rhapsody" song. Nothing really matters except for MTV with the sound turned off and dope and Elvis Costello posters and the brand name of every pricey piece of hipster attire -- as seen in GQ and Vogue -- imaginable, and of every high end boutique and trendy dive in town. Dupar's, Privilege, Jerry Magnin, La Scala, etc., et.al.

What's Clay's family life like? His mother drinks a lot of red wine, his father, at the moment estranged from his wife, listens to Bob Seger in his convertible (sad sad) and Clay's 15 year old sister, a Galaga fanatic, can get her "own cocaine," she protests to her older brother, since Clay had just accused her of stealing a gram out of his room. Clay's 13 year old sister, confronted by the reality that Galaga is too expensive for mother to purchase and that she already, after all, owns Atari, whines mournfully that "Atari's cheap!". Sweet girls. Lovely family.

Clay's girlfriend, Blair, we learn, has been cheating on Clay while he was away at college with his best friend, Julian, an aspiring male prostitute working to pay off his heroin debt to Rip, he & Clay's drug dealer. Clay doesn't really mind though, Blair and Julian hooking-up and gettin' free-kay, since he soon sleeps with Blair anyway fresh upon his return from college, and sleeps, as well, with many other beautiful young offspring (both male and female) of Beverly Hill's finest. Clay, Blair, and Julian, in fact, sleep with literally dozens of people during a relatively short (Christmas Break) duration of time, sleeping with so many people that sometimes Clay can't recollect if he's slept with so-and-so or another. Could Clay's memory loss be associated with the early onset of Alzheimer's, or perhaps a negative consequence of his excessive marijuana consumption? I'd posit the latter.

Clay, also, I'm sure the potential reader would be delighted knowing, engages in some rather explicit, uh, mutual masturbation with this girl he's met somewhere (who knows where? an uber-cool club presumably, read the book to find out where, I mean, no, don't read the book) and since slathered lotion was involved during the mutually and doubly self satisfying process -- a pleasurable process in which Clay had to slow his own stroking-motion down some so that the two undoubtedly ohhing-and-ahhing self-lovers could climax (beautiful) simultaneously -- we learn the experience wasn't without its drawbacks, as Clay laments, "it stings when I come".

Later on, Rip, the sporty drug dealer, throws a rip-roaring coke-fest extravaganza at his plush highrise Century Blvd. condo, and shows everybody, proudly, a "snuff" movie. Grainy images, but clear enough for all in attendance to witness a "big black dude" with "this huge member" sodomize a boy and girl, then the big black dude procures an ice-pick out of nowhere (yeah! entertaining stuff, er, snuff!, go Ellis go!) and surgically inserts it deep down their ear canals. Instant (except for the victimized children's autonomous body-spasms) entertaining death. Immediate gorey gratification. That'll shock the shit out of these nihilistic cokefiends, right? Uh, no. What was the name of that Jane's Addiction album at the close of the 80s -- "Nothing's Shocking"? Exactly. Rip might as well have given his party zombies more Valium rather than a snuff flick based on their minimalist emotings of moral outrage.

Yawn.
Shrug.
Don sunglasses.
Light a cigarette.
Exhale.
Snort another line.
Another.
Pause.
Talk about that new XTC album.
Watch the exhaled smoke disappear.

"Disappear here." Disappear here's a recurring motif in Less Than Zero (gee, wonder what that could possibly signify? Bash us over the head with the not-so-subtle symbolism Bret!).

Other obvious and less than artful motifs: Asphalt, freeways, palm trees, warm Santa Ana winds (courtesy of Joan Didion), "dead end streets" as bluntly crafted metaphors for dead end lives. Dude. You were only a teenager when you wrote this? Wow, I never would have guessed! Like, totally.

Less Than Zero, iconic mid '80s teenage melodrugdrama helped pave the way for such future iconic works of Americana like "Beverly Hills 90210" and MTVs "The Real World". Thanks, Bret!

Less Than Zero is Less Than Literature, but who cares? And there's great jokes about Jews and "Orientals" in the novel too! But I'd be lying, indeed I'd be, if I said I'm not still -- STILL -- mysteriously, perversely, shamefully, sweet-sickishly, attracted to Less Than Zero like I'm a fly jonesing for some good human decomp, and Less Than Zero's the rotting husk of a maggot-laden corpse oozing amoral stench and nihilistic stink and plethora of icky sticky creepy-crawlies spreading depravity and disease upon all like me foolishly buzzing 'round the fetid carcass. So swat me somebody swat me!

Happy Birthday Bret! :-D ( )

I did not enjoy Less Than Zero as much as I did The Informers. It's a very impressive novel to have come out of a 21 year old, and I'm glad to see that his style has progressed in the time since then. Still, I wouldn't specifically recommend this book to anyone but a fan of his work.

I enjoy Ellis' stream of consciousness writing style, but I think he did more in The Informers to leave you with some kind of moral. This book just felt..pointless.

Still, I'll keep following his work into the future. Wikipedia tells me that in 2010 he's releasing a sequel to Less Than Zero. I'm anxious to see how he'll deal with these characters with more than 20 years of writing behind him. ( )

This is Ellis' first novel. He wrote it when he was 19, which I find amazing. Our narrator is Clay, an east coast college student visiting his friends and family in Los Angeles during winter break. Basically, all these characters do is take drugs and have sex with one another. Seriously. This book has pretty much every sin and depravity you could think of: male prostitution, pre-teens doing coke, a snuff film, etc. There were a few funny moments toward the beginning, but after a while the stream-of-consciousness writing and complete amorality really wore on me. I had to stop every once in a while and read a Baby-sitter's Club book just to keep my spirits up.

I marked a few passages that I found interesting, but I don't think I'll quote them here because I don't want to offend or upset anybody. But please don't let that turn you off the book. It has an oddly hopeful ending, despite all the nihilism along the way.

While doing research for this post (read: Wikipedia), I discovered that Less Than Zer0 was made into a movie in the 80's - starring Robert Downey Jr. - and now I want to see it. According to the article, it deviates greatly from the book, but still. ( )

Enjoyed the hell out of this book. Interesting writing style, very staccato, almost like a journal entry. Very much a satire about life in the eighties. Rich and stoned and bored with life. ( )

I had high expectations when picking LTZ up at B&N, it being my first (and the most notable) novel by Bret Easton Ellis. In all honesty I wanted to finish it, yet find myself dragging in the process. The prose is wonderful and some paragraphs--some sentences are true literary gold, but there is nothing much going on except repetition of what we already knew from reading the description. Still, I was done with it through many sittings. I was not entirely disappointed, if only for said lines that worked wonders in my mind, and to the book's benefit, the ending paragraph was very pleasing (without being sarcastic here). ( )

Just when I was so bored I didn't think I could read another line I realized that was the point! Bored and boring is what these wealthy L.A. kids are!

A story about rich, snobby drug addicts that are bored with their LA lives. Yay, I get it, coming home from college, some of us mature, others don't and our perception and values change. Dud. How can this be written by the same guy who wrote American Psycho???! ( )

I think this may actually be my new favorite Bret Easton Ellis book. It also happens to be his first one. I didn't think much of Glamorama (second most recent) so I didn't read Lunar Park (most recent), but I've liked everything older than that to varying degrees. I've heard his next book might be a sequel to Less Than Zero, so hopefully he'll be on an upswing (although we all know how sequels tend to compare to the originals). Anyway, Less Than Zero is apparently based on the Elvis Costello song of the same name (which I haven't heard yet, but now want to track down...). In the book, the protagonist has an Elvis Costello poster hanging on his ceiling that looks down on him (Like God? Accusingly? Providing moral judgment? Now is where I suppose it'd be cool to know more about Elvis Costello and his music, because he's definitely a presence in this novel.)

According to good old wikipedia, Ellis is considered one of the major Gen X writers, and he's definitely got a thing for those 80s drugged out rich kids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Eas...). Even though I'm not always into what he's doing, at least he's definitely doing something a little different than most of what's out there. He likes to push the envelope and shock. Like typical Ellis, there's tons of seemingly random drugs and sex, and it seems to create a tone of disconnect within the novel. It just seems to have a more pointed effect in this novel. Clay comments on his "need to see the worst" and Ellis doesn't let him look away.

He's definitely channeling Ernest Hemingway in style in this one. There's a definite sense that the narrator, Clay, is only scratching the very surface of the things he comments on. Though I don't think he ever offers up how some pretty fucked up events make Clay feel, Ellis kind of gives you road signs to Clay's internal workings. Like the fascination with the dying coyote. There's also a bit of a Gatsby moment with Clay and an ominous billboard (in addition to the ominous, judgmental Elvis Costello poster...).

Probably the key scene in the book for me:

'"It's... I don't think it's right."
"'What's right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it."
I lean up against the wall. I can hear Spin moaning in the bedroom and then the sound of a hand slapping maybe a face.
"But you don't need anything. You have everything," I tell him.
Rip looks at me. "No. I don't."
"What?"
"No. I don't."
There's a pause and then I ask, "Oh, shit, Rip, what don't you have?"
"I don't have anything to lose." ( )

I have mixed feelings about this book really. At a simple level, reading it sentence by sentence you think it's not having much of an effect on you, that it's just the dull goings on of unlikeable characters. And then you stop for a moment and realise how powerful it is. I didn't think I thought very highly of it until I came to write this review and trying to think back about the story, I got an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach and realised how it had affected me. It's truly depressing and yet I can't work out why. I didn't read it thinking "Wow, these sentences!!!" and the words didn't strike me as especially imaginative or intelligent. It didn't make me pause to admire the wording of certain things - in fact, as I was reading it I can remember thinking that there was nothing particularly special about the writing. I was indifferent to it so I found it slightly strange that I kept on reading. I didn't feel strongly compelled to keep reading like you would when there's cliffhangers everywhere or a suspenseful plot. I just kept reading because I did, I didn't tire or bore of the text, it was unchallenging and simple... I thought.

And that's why I honestly can't put my finger on what made it so effective. Before I began, I had almost dismissed it in my mind after reading the blurb thinking it would be just another "detached teenager" where the author tries to create that 'reckless abandon' atmosphere but just falls short of it being effective. Throughout the book, as I said, I was indifferent really to the story. It is only looking back that I realise how powerful it was. And I also said, evertime I try to think back to the plotline, the characters, anything... I just get that same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I'm glad I read it. If only because it has shown me how affecting novels can be. ( )

A book about a bunch of Californian rich kid substance abusers, and the people around them, and their relationships. It isn't too bad, but really not that big a deal, at all.

If you are after an example of self destruction of that sort, this novel will do you nicely. ( )

Forget the movie, read the book. ( )

http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/easto...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Eas...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_Tha... ( )